More details are emerging about the police operation in Ozamiz City that resulted in the death of 15 people, including Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr, his wife Susan, his brother Octavio Jr and 12 others. But on the face of it, it appears to have been an operation gone horribly wrong.

The purpose of a search warrant, it’s reasonable to assume, is the gathering of evidence in connection with a case presumably being built up by the police, and not the death of suspects who might in fact have valuable primary information that could buttress that case.

But in this instance, the warrants served on the victims by joint teams from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), the Misamis Occidental provincial police and the Ozamiz police resulted in nothing less than a bloodbath.

The police said it was a shootout — that their raiding teams were met with resisting gunfire when they tried to serve the warrants on six Parojinog properties at about 2:30am last Sunday, thus forcing them to fire back.

Residents of Barangay San Roque Lawis said a power outage occurred right before the raid; electricity was cut, apparently in aid of the operation.

The police version of what happened afterwards is being disputed by Jeffrey James Ocang, legal officer of the Ozamiz local government, who said in a TV interview that “there was no exchange of gunfire”. Based on pictures that have gone viral, “all the wounds of the victims are head shots”.

The Parojinogs’ properties had CCTVs that could shed light on how the raid unfolded, but these were reportedly disabled by the cops before the operation, and no mention of them has been made by the Philippine National Police (PNP).

There’s also the curious thing of search warrants served in the wee hours of the morning, under cover of darkness — a peculiarity that recalls another incident: the police raid in November 2016 on the station in Baybay, Leyte, that held Albuera, Leyte, Mayor Rolando Espinosa, based on a search warrant that was also being served at an ungodly hour.

Like Espinosa, the Parojinogs were among the politicians publicly tagged by President Duterte as involved in the trade in illegal drugs. And, like Espinosa, they eventually ended up dead, gunned down in what the police insist was a legitimate operation that followed standard operating procedures.

CIDG chief Roel Obusan said the police were even more careful in the Ozamiz operation, given the Albuera incident: “We spent a long time planning this; in fact we followed all the procedures of the PNP as well as the law.”

If so, PNP regulations also say a thorough and transparent investigation of this incident should be made promptly.

In a Facebook post, lawyer Severo Brillantes points out: “Regardless of the notoriety of the Parojinogs, the PNP’s Internal Affairs Service is mandated to conduct a motu proprio investigation (that is, even without any Complainant) of this incident where death occurred in the conduct of a police operation (Section 1, Rule 6 of Napolcom Memorandum Circular No. 2016-002), where the police have the burden of proving that they acted in self-defence, that is, that they are not the unlawful aggressors; there was lack of sufficient provocation on their part and they employed reasonably necessary means to prevent or repel the alleged aggression from the Parojinogs (Section 11, par. 1 of the Revised Penal Code), pursuant to the mandate of the 2000 Rules of Criminal Procedure that ‘no violence or unnecessary force shall be used by them in making arrests’ (Section 2, par. 2, Rule 113 thereof)….”

Brillantes adds, tellingly: “It should be noted that at least two women were killeD ... Did they also fight back and if so, was it reasonably necessary to kill them?”

—Philippine Daily Inquirer

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2017