It was the day when Davao city had three police chiefs. Was that baffling? Apparently not.
On July 10, at around 8 in the morning, the notorious Lito Patay of the killer Davao Boys infamy in Police Station 6 in Quezon City, assumed his new post as chief of the Davao City Police Office. At 12:38 pm, Camp Crame called to relieve him of his post.
In his place, another police colonel, Sherwin Butil, was appointed. That evening, Butil was relieved and replaced by Hansel Marantan, who was assigned to the National Capital Region’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.
Was there a snafu somewhere? There wasn’t. Patay’s appointment was the call of the pro-Duterte boys in the PNP. Butil was also seen as sympathetic to the Dutertes. In the end, Marantan was appointed. He was not in the short list of the regional police office of Davao region.
There is a standing order from Malacañang to rid the Philippine National Police (PNP) of Duterte boys. Current estimates claim more than 60% of the police force is pro-Duterte, coming as it is from six years of feeding the police with bribe rewards for every kill in the extrajudicial killing frenzy of Rodrigo Duterte. The policemen are missing the moolah.
Let’s face it – the PNP has deteriorated into a criminal institution under Rodrigo Duterte. The least the Department of the Interior and Local Government can do is to prevent the Duterte boys from assuming strategic posts. And that is exactly what happened in Davao City. The PNP is in a hit-or-miss situation if appointees are Dutertismo loyalists or not.
Why was Patay appointed in the first place? He was the choice of Baste Duterte, revealed one city councilor who chairs the committee on peace and public safety of the Davao city council. And there’s the rub. If he was the choice of Baste, it only means one thing – the mayor is hell-bent on reviving the city’s extrajudicial killing (EJK) sprees.
The last time Baste Duterte tried to do that last May, 35 police personnel were relieved because of drug-related killings. Relieving EJK policemen was unthinkable during the term of his father, but Baste appears to be itching to put his hand on another EJK spree by picking Patay. The Dutertes are not a tough act to divine. They are very predictable. They have no qualms about negative public opinion.
Patay’s appointment immediately raised alarm bells. Lawyer Kristina Conti, assistant counsel for the International Criminal Court, voiced a statement that was brave: “The development that Lito Patay – one of the implementers, one of the worst recorded violators during the war on drugs – is now Davao City police chief, is concerning to us.”
Contrast that with the reaction of Davao City media. While the Dutertes were dismayed, some in local media sympathized with them. “The change of police chiefs is confusing Davao city’s popular peace-and-order image.” It is an image that was built on the shifting sands of fake news. Under Rodrigo Duterte as mayor from 2010 to 2015, Davao City was No. 1 in the Philippines in recorded murders. In 2018 when Duterte was president, the city was highest in the country in the number of rape cases. The source of these reports? The Philippine National Police.
Expectedly, the media report was mum on who Lito Patay really was, and the fact that the local police could not even apprehend fugitive Apollo Quiboloy. Two years after the end of Rodrigo Duterte’s term, many still live the fantasy of the Dutertes as “law-abiding crimebusters,” including some in Davao city media.
While Baste Duterte’s statement on the relief of his policemen involved in the last extrajudicial killings was published, no one gets to read about the Davao City police of what it has become under the Dutertes – corrupt and decrepit of morals.
The last irony belongs to Hansel Marantan, a dreaded figure in the police force. Marantan was a former cop – he was dismissed from service in April 2014 together with 12 other cops. The reason? They were found guilty of extrajudicial killings in the famous Atimonan Massacre that killed 12 people, including environmentalist Tirso “Jun” Lontok Jr. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) ruled it was not a shoot-out but a rubout.
The NBI report was damaging to Marantan, that he was allegedly involved in the illegal numbers game jueteng. The NBI said that Marantan had a tiff with Vic Siman, the object of that rubout, who was said to be a gang leader protecting a rival jueteng group. The NBI’s contention was Marantan stood to benefit from killing Siman and his group. He used the state’s forces to eliminate his enemy in crime.
In 2017, Marantan was reinstated after he made an appeal to the National Police Commission (Napolcom) appellate board. In 2017, the chief of the PNP was Bato dela Rosa.
Lito Patay, Duterte boy, was replaced. Sherwin Butil, Duterte boy, was replaced. Enter Hansel Marantan, not in the list of perceived Duterte boys, but consider his background in the Atimonan rubout case: that is the quality of the Philippine National Police after 6 years of Dutertismo; no more choice of good and upright police personnel.
Shudder at the thought of when this plague will end. – Rappler.com