Executioner cries how fellow cops kill criminals

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

A retired police colonel, known as a berdugo (executioner) among police circle, smirks on those cops who overzealously and summarily executed suspected criminals like dope pushers.

“It could not be counted how many crime delinquents I ordered kill. But I have a standard where I discussed with my men if the target was needed to be executed,” he told me recently.

He said he asked his hit men if they were “morally convinced” that the subject was riped for execution after they apprehended him or assassination if they chanced upon him in an opportune place.

“Makakatulog ba kayo nito pagkatapos ninyong patayin? Makakatulong ba itong kamatayan niya sa pagbaba ng crime rates sa area natin?” he told me his posers to his men.

He lamented the bravados nowadays of policemen in even crashing in the prison cells and houses of suspected narcotics pushers known for their notoriety and peppered them with bullets without considering the procedures mandated by laws.

“Remember may 20 years prescription ang murder. Iyong mga nagyayabang na madami silang pinatay, remember President Duterte's term will end in 2022. Di sila nakaka siguro na makakasuhan sila ng murder (non-bailable and metes a life sentence) after that year,” he explained to me what will happen to those behind the murders who were not pardoned by the president.

He deplored the way those three cops dragged and executed the 17 years old Kian delos Santos in Caloocan City.

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He cited policemen should practice prudence in killing their targets and not to be swayed on their carelessness by the “quota system” given by their superior because another police station had killed a lot of malefactors.

He also said the cops should not be overconfident about being pardoned by the president because there is still an International Criminal Court, where the ICC tried those even given presidential mercy based on its criteria, to go after their scalp.

When he was a chief of police in local government units, this colonel did not brag to any body the “police characters” he and his men exterminated.

He told me that when the chief of the Philippine National Police, a four-star general, called a conference in the region and incidentally asked the whereabouts of those notorious criminals, the soft-spoken colonel, known for his humble demeanours, told him that as far as he knew these people including those notorious Muslim drug peddlers have just disappeared without any traces.

“Ito ang gayahin ninyo mga chiefs of police, nagkakawala-an ang mga criminals at di na rin makita ang mga katawan nila,” the chief of the national police lighted up in a dull conference.

In some of my interviews with police officials, most of them wanted that the cadavers of those they ordered killed should be covered by the media.

“Our purpose there was deterrence. Para matakot ang mga snatchers ng cellphone, akyat bahay, pushers, robbers o holduppers na pamarisan,” one of them told me.

But this colonel chose to work silently with his death squad.

“Kahit di niya pinagyayabang, nalalaman din ng mga media kasi iyong ibang hepe kinukuwento iyong mga feats niya how he and his group in the intelligence community almost wiped out a gang in the Visaya when one of them was arrested in Manila,” a broadcaster - who sensationalized the “take no prisoner policy” of the colonel in his program - cited.

According to the commentator, when the colonel was still a captain, he and his men tortured a kidnapped- for- ranson gang member. When they psychologically controlled him, they goaded him to call in a phone another gang member to meet with him with a promise that he (first gang member) would go scott-free after the arrest of his companion.

“But we did not fulfill our promise. One of my men choked to death with the rope the squealer who was seated in a car while we arrested his companion at a bar. We did what we do with the first gang member to the second member until almost all of them fell in our hands and die like pigs with the same bait,” he told the radio commentator.   

 “His being a silent worker was deafening and reverberated to the sanctuaries of the members of the syndicates and bad guys who shievered after hearing his presence in their area,” he cited.

These phenomena of a berdugo should be a bench mark for fool hardly cops to emulate so you can, salamabit, avoid being in a bind someday. 

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)