12/8/16

By: Ian Maloney

Months ago, Filipino President, Rodrigo Duterte had a radical idea to deal with the country’s drug problem. Most took it jokingly when he said he wanted citizens and police shooting and killing drug dealers on site if caught. Since June 30th, when he said this, approximately 2,000 have been shot and killed in the streets and 35,600 more arrested for drug charges. The horrifying part being tactics the police are using and how the police are being affected.

Other than just being gunned down by police in the streets, the most infamous tactic used is now nicknamed “Riding Tandem”. The tactic is when two people are riding on a motorbike and the driver pulls up to a supposed drug dealer and both the driver and the passenger gun down the drug dealer and speed off. The police are not only shooting drug dealers but those supposedly using these drugs.

Police forces in the Philippines are also being reprimanded if they are not killing enough people. Chief Inspector Paulito Sabulao got a lot of heat from his bosses for his men not killing enough drug dealers since the “bounties” were sent out. Police are being forced and basically threatened to kill people, many being innocent bystanders who are talking to a drug dealer, not having anything to do with the drugs itself.

“You can expect 20,000 to 30,000 more” President Duterte told the world in October. THe true horrifying part is he sees no wrong with his actions, and not even President Elect Donald Trump. According to Duterte , Trump had invited him to the White House, and appraised his actions, and even endorsed what he was doing. In America we see Trump supporting the Stop and Frisk system as crazy , which it is, but if Trump supports Duterte , it should lead us to believe he might want to try something similar in the U.S.

Their tactics are getting other drug dealers and drug abusers to come out clean to avoid being executed, but another report revealed that Philippine jails are already overcrowded. With Duterte showing no signs of slowing down this process, it seems more executions will happen to those in jail as well.

The police aren’t even being truthful themselves, in many cases killing innocent people. In one case the Police told a reporter that a man pulled a gun when being questioned in his home ,and was promptly shot and killed. The man’s wife, had a different story though. In her story he was fixing his mother radio when police barged into the home and shot him point blank, and marked him as a “shabu”(Methamphetamine) user and put his body in the streets for the world to see.

The Philippine government is using these killings as a way to scare out other drug dealers and drug abusers into getting “treatment” but as we can see they changed their treatment from rehabilitation to a bullet to the head.