by Laniel Eszy Arive
We are surely enraged by another case of police killing, but we can hardly call it a surprise. In the Philippines, whether filmed through the lenses of a camera or seen with the naked eye, we have grown numb to murders orchestrated by men in uniform. Although it is wrong, it has become the norm to wake up to news that an unsuspecting civilian has died in the hands of a cold-blooded officer. Again.
Last May 31, the video of one drunk Police Master Sergeant Hensie Zinampan went viral. The cop shot and killed 52-year-old Lilybeth Valdez, igniting social media outrage and the calling for an institutional change in the Philippine National Police (PNP).
Unfortunately, amid the blaring call for police reform, the not-all-cops-are-bad card has again been pulled out by police officers and other loyalists who are blinded by the institution’s broken, or should I say fake, promise that its duty is “to serve and protect.’
The not-all narrative not only makes it harder to realize that the killings are but the fruits of systemic impunity and violence, it also enables the continuation of problematic policing in the country.
How isolated are ‘isolated cases’?
Whenever deplorable news about police brutality explodes, the office of the president hurriedly defends the institution, adding that the police force should not be generalized as abusive because “every organization has a ‘bad egg.’”
However, contrary to the template of their defense about police killings being ‘isolated’ cases, the facts say otherwise.
The Zinampan case was not the only instance of killing in the country, and I fear it would not be the last either. A week before the said murder in Quezon City, Edwin Arnigo, an 18-year-old with special needs, was also shot by Police Master Sergeant Christopher Salcedo in Valenzuela City, May 23.
The police officers said that Arnigo took the gun from the authorities after being arrested for involvement in illegal cockfighting, but the family later clarified the teenager was afraid of cops. They also claimed that there were eyewitnesses who said that Arnigo was shot in a different location and was then dragged into the cockfighting area.
On March 28, another case of police killing occurred involving Leovil Pelletero, a 19-year-old worker and father, shot dead by Police Corporal Javier Ian Medel over a heated argument that embarrassed Medel. Instead of talking things out, the officer resolved the matter with his firearm instead of his words.
These cases are also reminiscent of what I think is one of the most dreadful cases under police brutality, that is the killing of Sonya Gregorio, 52, and her son Frank, 25, last December 2020. The two were confronted and shot dead by Police Senior Master Sergeant Jonel Nuezca over an argument about “boga” (a noisemaker used in New Year’s celebrations).
Nuezca uttered the words, “gusto mo tapusin na kita ngayon ah?” (do you want me to finish you here and now?), and for two heartstopping seconds, he repeatedly shot the Gregorios, his young daughter and several passerbys watching in shock.
This and a towering pile of other downplayed, unspoken, and unresolved ‘isolated’ cases of police cruelty are all rooted from somewhere-- perhaps, a broader, unaddressed institutional concern.
It is inexcusable that these police killings are due to the influence of alcohol like Zinampan, lack of autism recognition training like Salcedo, or due to anger management like Medel.
It is not because of people’s lack of disrespect to authorities like in Nuezca’s case; but even if it is, who can blame the masses for fearing them, these heartless armed officers, who point their guns willy-nilly at anyone at any time and for any reason? Who can blame the public if in our minds the common question is: where do we turn to when the police themselves are the killers?
An enabling culture
Police brutality happens because it has been ingrained into the system of the PNP, and continually perpetuated by those occupying the seats of power. They see civilians not as people to protect but as would-be enemies that should be kept in line. President Rodrigo Duterte himself said that “my police and my army, they are trained to kill.”
Policing in the country thrives on a culture of violence and impunity--and everyone who wears that glittering police badge is part of the system.
People may say that not all police officers kill. And I agree. Not all cops shoot people dead because some of them assist and do the cover ups, while others just watch and keep themselves silent-- and these police officers, who are deemed by many as the ‘good cops”’, are what inspire others to grow as monsters.
Long before now was the right time, but I will reiterate that there is no such thing as ‘not all cops are bad’ because all these ‘bad apples’ stem from a rotten tree-- the PNP whose mandate is to serve those in power, and not the people.
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