PNP looking at Reuters’ ‘motive’ for report on deadly police unit

The Philippine National Police is looking at the underlying “motive” of the international news agency behind a report on an elite police unit behind the “deadliest police station” in Quezon City in terms of the war on drugs, the chief of the National Capital Region Police Office said Thursday.

In an interview on GMA News TV's News to Go, Director Oscar Albayalde claimed the story had more than one side to it, prompting the police to investigate Reuters’ motives and methods for story production.

“Tinitingan natin, hindi lang naman one-sided yan ... tinitingan din natin yung  motibo ng Reuters diyan...kung papano nila ginagawa yung reports nila," Albayalde said.

“Dahil sabi nga ng Chief PNP, I think that’s the right word, na napaka-unfair and biased naman nung reporting, kung ganon lang, at one-sided at may conclusion kaagad. Sabi ko nga po, ‘yan naman (incidents, media reports) ay iniimbestigahan lahat,” he added.

Albayalde said he was not branding the report “unfair and biased” outright, but was merely looking at both sides of the coin.

“While we do not condone ‘yung mga wrongdoing po ng ating mga kapulisan,  titignan din po natin ‘yung motive nitong mga nagpapalabas ng news na ‘to,” he said, citing another Reuters report — a CCTV footage driven-story that showed apparently lifeless drug war victims despite police claims they were only injured and declared dead on arrival in the hospital.

The NCR police chief said this was spliced to reflect “kung anong gusto nilang (Reuters) ilabas.” Albayalde claimed the subjects of this earlier report, published late November, was part of “legitimate operations” which barangay officials could attest to.

On Tuesday night, Reuters released the latest installment of its investigative series into the Duterte administration’s deadly war on drugs.

It traced the operations of a “secretive” police unit led by Lito Patay, who handpicked 10 officers—the “Davao Boys”—to carry out what Reuters found was the highest number of killings in anti-drug operations of the QCPD: 108 people killed between July 2016 and June 2017, the drug war’s first year.

Albayalde could not immediately confirm the number of fatalities.

The day after, Malacañang cried foul, saying Reuters gave them only an hour to air their side of the story.

Reuters said it spent four months tracking the story.

PNP chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa defended the police unit as he touted the oft-used reasoning of police officers accused of summarily executing drug suspects: the “Davao Boys” were simply defending themselves, he said. Albayalde said the self-defense claim of Patay and his team was “subject for validation.”

Further, Albayalde said he does not think Patay and his unit had a “special mission,” or “special instructions” that guided their transfer from Davao City, the president's hometown, to Quezon City.

There also was nothing wrong with the transfer, he said, saying there is “nothing new” from officers being assigned from one place to another.

He assured the public that the police operations in question in all of Metro Manila are under probe by the PNP’s Internal Affairs Service, though he could not readily say how many have been solved. — Nicole-Anne C. Lagrimas/RSJ, GMA News