Only 1,398 deaths not over 7,000 in PH war on drugs – PNP
MANILA: The Philippine National Police has clarified the statistics on Duterte’s war on drugs which allegedly killed over 7,000 on Friday, April 7.
Speaking to Thinking Pinoy – RJ Nieto, PNP spokesperson, Senior Superintendent Dionardo Carlos belied Rappler’s claim that at least 7,000 have died of extra-judicial killing (EJK) or summary executions related to President Duterte’s war against illegal drugs.
“We have only 6,011 homicide cases. These (are) formerly (called) DUI or deaths under investigation. (Among these, we have) determined that there are only 1,398 cases that are drug related,” S/Supt. Carlos said. “So it’s automatically wrong to say that there have been over 7,000 EJK’s or summary executions that they attribute to the campaign versus illegal drugs,” he added.
According to the spokesperson, (media men) collect the number of fatalities from police operations and add it to the previous list of deaths which causes are not drug-related. He insisted that deaths under investigation are homicide cases that the agency is still investigating.
S/Supt. Carlos confirmed to Thinking Pinoy that only 1,398 deaths are related to Duterte’s war on drugs based on records from July 1, 2016 to 24 March 2017.
“These 1,398 incidents refer to cases where the suspect, the victim, or the motive has a history of, or is connected to, illegal drugs,” the senior superintendent explained.
“It is wrong to say that all 6,011 are EJKs or summary executions or summary killings because the circumstances surrounding each of the 6,011 deaths differ. The motives vary.”
According to the PNP statistics , as revealed by the Supt. Carlos, of the remaining number of non drug-related cases, 828 cases have been resolved. A total of 3,700 cases are still under investigation.
Belying reports from the mainstream media, the spokesperson said the real result of the war on illegal drugs is a drop of all other types of crimes.
“Rape incidents dropped, physical injury incidents dropped, theft and robbery cases dropped, car-napping and motor-napping cases dropped, homicides also dropped,” he said.
PNP statistics revealed crime rate has dropped to almost 60% while implementing the intensive war on drugs .
Supt. Carlos confirmed that Rappler has been notified of its erroneous statistics but did not do act on it.
“We saw that the (Rappler) article (shows figures) different (from what we provided), and they claim that the data comes from the PNP… Whenever I give them updates, I myself insert an accompanying note stating “Deaths Under Investigation are not automatically extrajudicial killings and these are crimes of murder and/or homicide (that are) still being investigated (on), ” he claimed.
President Rodrigo Duterte has remained firm on his campaign against drugs despite criticisms of local and internal media.
Below is the video shared by Thinking Pinoy on its Facebook page:
Disclaimer: Statements that appeared in this article are based on the subtitle provided by Thinking Pinoy in the video interview.
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