MANILA – Around 400 officers have been sacked for illegal drug-related offenses as part of the Philippine National Police’s internal cleansing.
Of the number 267 were suspected of drug use, according to Senior Superintendent Benigno Durana Jr., PNP spokesperson.
“This alone will more or less communicate to the public that we do not tolerate misfits and scalawags in our campaign against illegal drugs,” Durana told the press.
“Our war on drugs has its good intentions. We don’t want it to be marred by irregularities attendant to the police operations of some of our personnel,” he said.
“So we’ll be hard on them, weeding out misfits and scalawags because our war on drugs has very good intentions,” he added.
Meanwhile the PNP official said the number of deaths due to police antidrug operations reached more than 4,800 as of Aug. 16 and average deaths per week decreased to 23 from 105.
“I think this figure would tell us that while we can be relentless and chilling, as much as possible, we also want [the operations] to be less bloody,” Durana said.
“Meaning, we are improving. We are making sure that, you know, we are also very sensitive,” he added. “We are one in protecting and upholding human rights and constitutional rights not only of the accused but also of our law enforcers.”/PN
