The top cop in the Philippines said yesterday he is ready to resign after a South Korean businessman was allegedly killed by police officers who arrested him on bogus illegal drugs charges.
Police Director General Ronald De La Rosa said he would ask President Rodrigo Duterte if he was becoming a burden to the administration following the uproar over the killing of the South Korean.
“I am ready,” he said when asked about calls for his resignation. “I will ask the president if I am burden to him.”
“If he agrees, then I will resign,” he added.
The suspects in the case, all members of a police anti-narcotics task force, allegedly seized the victim in October on a fake arrest warrant and extorted 5mn pesos ($100,000) in ransom from his wife.
The victim was strangled to death inside a vehicle in the national police headquarters in Manila on the day he was seized, according to one of the officers arrested in the case.
The man’s body was then cremated in a funeral parlour, whose owners and employees are also being investigated.
Legislators and human rights groups warned that the South Korean’s killing highlights abuses under the government’s aggressive anti-drug campaign.
Since Duterte came to power in late June, 2,256 suspects have died in police operations against drug users and pushers, according to police statistics.
The figures are through January 18.
Police are also investigating nearly 3,000 additional deaths in the first six months of Duterte’s presidency, including possible vigilante killings in connection with the drug war.
Earlier, House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez called on Philippine National Police (PNP) chief De la Rosa to resign over the abduction and killing of South Korean businessman.
Alvarez joined the growing call for the PNP chief to quit after police arrested the policeman said to have been responsible for the killing, Senior Police Officer (SPO) 3 Ricky Santa Isabel, who had surrendered to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
“(De la Rosa) should immediately resign as chief of the PNP to save President Rodrigo Duterte from further embarrassment and restore respect to the Office of the PNP Chief,” Alvarez said in a statement.
“The commission of a heinous crime right under his very nose is not only an insult but a clear indication that he has lost the respect of his people,” he added.
De la Rosa on Thursday said he would kill the policemen involved if he had his way and that he wanted to melt in shame after learning that the South Korean was killed inside a sport utility vehicle in Camp Crame, on a spot beside the PNP chief’s office. Alvarez described the incident as a meltdown of PNP discipline.“General de la Rosa seems more interested in having a showbiz career and in landing on society pages of newspapers with him being everywhere doing mundane things like singing videoke and watching concerts,” the Davao del Norte lawmaker said.
Alvarez also called out De la Rosa for the latter’s apparent cowardice, as shown by a video of the PNP chief running away from a news conference in December “like a headless chicken” after the pyrotechnic device he was holding started to smoke.
“How can we believe the stern statements De la Rosa had been making against criminals in the aftermath of the Davao City bombing, when he was the first to run in the slightest possibility of danger?”
The PNP spokesman, Sr. Supt. Dionardo Carlos, said the killing was an “isolated case” and it would be unfair to place the onus of the blame on De la Rosa.
“Every day, crime is happening so every day we’ll have a new PNP chief if that case is going to be their basis for the chief to resign,” he said in a news conference in Camp Crame on Friday. “You don’t judge the chief for the wrong of one,” he added.
Senate President Aquilino Pimentel said the decision should be left to President Rodrigo Duterte, while a key administration ally, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, told reporters there was no need for De la Rosa to resign.
While Cayetano said he believes in the doctrine of command responsibility, it would be difficult for the PNP chief to monitor every move of the more than 1,000 personnel in Camp Crame.
“I am not calling for his courtesy resignation, I think he’s doing a good job,” said Cayetano.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former PNP chief, said the abduction and killing of Jee should serve as a wake-up call to the police hierarchy. 
“The PNP leadership should lose no time in addressing the issue by henceforth going hammer and tongs against all rogue cops who only care about their personal gains to the detriment of the entire police organisation,” he said.
Opposition lawmakers condemned the killing, with Ifugao Rep. Teodoro Baguilat saying it was a “huge slap to the anti-corruption drive of the administration.”
Rep. Harry Roque of Kabayan party-list, a Duterte ally, warned that the Philippine government could be held liable under the international law.
“Under international law, a state may be held liable for failure to protect the life of foreign nationals in its territory…. Since the suspected killers are members of the PNP, they acted as agents of the Philippine government regardless of the illegality of their acts,” he said. The Public Attorney’s Office will represent Santa Isabel in court proceedings after private lawyers refused to handle his case, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre said.


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