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Amendments to drugs law could have prevented PNP-PDEA deadly shootout —Barbers

By ANNA FELICIA BAJO,GMA News

Surigao del Norte Representative Robert "Ace" Barbers on Monday underscored that proposed amendments to the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, which include the use of body cameras during operations, could have prevented the deadly shootout involving police and anti-drug agents last week. 

In the proposed amendments to the said law, particularly in Section 21, law enforcers are required to wear body cameras during anti-illegal drugs operations, according to Barbers. 

"This could have aborted any seeming illegal activity that were intended to be perpetrated by any personality against law enforcers or could have recorded all activities during the entire operation," Barbers, chairperson of the Committee on Dangerous Drugs, said. 

"Unfortunately, even as we have called for its use years ago, our pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears, whether intentional or otherwise. Now that we have included it in the law and passed it in the House, the Senate has yet to file a similar bill," he added. 

For the part of the Philippine National Police, the organization is eyeing to start using body cameras during their operations by next month. 

The alleged misencounter between the PNP and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency resulted in the death of five individuals, including two cops, two drug agents and one PDEA informant.

Both agencies claimed that their operations were legitimate. 

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President Rodrigo Duterte already tasked the National Bureau of Investigation to solely probe the incident. 

House Bill 7814 or An Act Strengthening Drug Prevention And Control, Amending For The Purpose Republic Act No. 9165, As Amended, Otherwise Known As The "Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act Of 2002" was passed on second reading last week. 

Barbers noted that other important amendments of the law would include legal presumptions against personalities who could be considered coddlers or protectors and financiers of drug suspects or syndicates, importers or exporters and manufacturers or cultivators of dangerous drugs, and consenting lessors of properties being used as laboratories or drug dens.

“If before, these personalities go scot-free, now these legal presumptions will put them on almost the same footing as the drug suspects themselves because of the presence of factual circumstances that will incriminate them and thus could make them liable under the amended law," he said. 

"There will be no place for them to hide now and their world will be much smaller if these amendments will be passed quickly," the lawmaker added. 

Meanwhile, the lawmaker believes that the Duterte administration's war against illegal drugs has brought a lot of gains for the country. 

"The tons of drugs confiscated from 2016 up to the present are testament enough that we are winning the war on drugs," Barbers said. 

"The fact that we have avoided and prevented the slip of the country into a narco state is the most important victory of this war. Those who cannot see that have something blocking their eyes," he added. —KG, GMA News