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The operations chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) denied that the national headquarters are paying policemen in the frontlines of the drug war to kill suspected drug offenders, as claimed by a report of international human rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) published on Wednesday.
“There is no such pay-offs,” Chief Supt. Camilo Cascolan, chief of the PNP’s Directorate for Operations, said in a text message to INQUIRER.net.
“(We) never [knew] about such thing. We just do our job for the people,” he added.
The AI’s report claimed that the police are profiting from the murder of “poor and defenseless people across the country while planting ‘evidence’, recruiting paid killers, stealing from the people they kill and fabricating official incident reports.”
READ: Duterte gov’t ordered, paid killers in war on drugs — AI
The AI said the PNP were merely “acting on instructions from the very top of government.”
The report even quoted a Senior Police Officer 1, who conducts operations for an anti-illegal drugs unit in the PNP, saying that the antinarcotics cops were “paid by the encounter.”
“We always get paid by the encounter … The amount ranges from P8,000 to P15,000,” the officer said.
The policeman alleged that they were “secretly” paid in cash “per head” by “headquarters.”
“If the operation is against four people, that’s P32,000,” the policeman reportedly claimed.
“There’s no incentive for arresting. We’re not paid anything,” AI quoted the policeman as saying.
Cascolan said the SPO1 who made the claims of pay-offs should immediately report to the PNP’s Internal Affairs Service (IAS), the unit which gives disciplinary sanctions to erring cops.
“Whoever said that should confer (as soon as possible) with the IAS,” Cascolan said.
The PNP has suspended its campaign against drugs while it focuses on purging bad cops within its ranks.
Since President Duterte assumed office in July, 2,551 drug suspects have been killed in police operations while there were 4,500 “deaths under investigation” recorded by the PNP. CDG