THE fight against the nefarious habit and activity of drugs is now at street level. Every day we wake up to the reality of blood and gore and how the illegal trade has germinated into a multi-billion business. As it goes, there are legitimate encounters between the police and those who continue to defy the call and warnings of the new Duterte Administration. There are however, as the President himself has pointed out, policemen who are cleaning-up their act, forever silencing their criminal connections from pointing fingers at their (joint) crooked enterprise. Dead men tell no tales. The press release being, the slain individual always “drug lords” or pusher.
From a simplified presentation, what we are likely witnessing are the lower level criminals being liquidated. The stratification being: the runners and or the addicts, petty/street pushers who may be users themselves and hence have to sell to provide for their habit, to mid-level. All of them, below the “bad cop” level. The people of interest should be those at the “police level” similar those recently divulged by President Duterte as suspected protectors and in the payroll.
However, the greater battle must be taken to those “drug phantoms” (big-time investors, foreign connections, operators of shabu laboratories) who pull the strings above law enforcement, able to bribe Prosecutors and turn Judges decisions. We cannot kill all the drug-pushers below police level since they are basically also the users and addicts.
Meaning, we will be decimating a great swathe of our own people. At this point in the anti-drug campaign, drug centers are a must with the volume of voluntary surrender and admission piling. A written confession will not suffice. It is time to take the fight and “killing” above the bad cop level. The more effective being to expose politicians in the drug trade and most likely connected with jueteng?
Cleaning-up the State Penitentiary of ‘Drug Lords’ and planting them in solitary confinement with minimum human contact. It sets a bad tone to have lowly Filipinos shot like a dog, while foreigners operating a shabu-laboratory are arrested. Example is required.
(Erik Espina)