Philippine National Police Director General Ronald Dela Rosa (Paulo C. Rizal/davaotoday.com)
DAVAO CITY– Philippine National Police Chief, Director General Ronald Dela Rosa lashed out at the critics of the government’s anti-drug campaign.
“You be the police, let’s see how far you can go,” Dela Rosa said.
“All you do is criticize,” he said.
“The Duterte administration is still one month old and you already criticize us? You can criticize us to high heavens, but you can’t derail us from doing our jobs,” Dela Rosa said as he graced the 115th Police Service Anniversary celebration held in Camp Quintin Mericido, Buhangin, Davao City, Tuesday morning, August 9.
Dela Rosa admitted that they have to hurdle challenge in the nationwide crackdown against illegal drugs, but said the three to six months target of eliminating it is “achievable”.
He said that the massive campaign of illegal drugs in the country will be because they set the target “real high so that if we falter, somewhat we are still passing grade.”
“I am very positive, the way things are going, I can see we can do it, we are still in our first month and we still have five months to go,” he said.
He added that their target is for all drug personalities in the area to be “neutralized, meaning they should surrender, (be) arrested or killed during drug operation.”
He cited a Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) estimate that there are 1.8 million drug personalities in the Philippines.
After more than a month of the operation they already have 600,000 surrenderees in the whole Philippines.
“From the 1.8 million drug personalities, we still have to neutralize 1.2 million in the remaining five months of the three to six months campaign,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dela Rosa said that on the issue of President Rodrigo Duterte where he announced one judge who died eight years ago in the list of alleged high ranking officials involved in drugs, he clarified that there is a process that’s why it happen.
“If you are in the list, it is not easy to remove your name. We call it adjudication, where sometimes, if the adjudication court would not be convened for that watch list of the counter intelligence group, it would be difficult to remove your name from the list even if they are already dead,” he said.
PO3 Filomeno Soroño, a police officer who was also named in the list has “died due to cardiac arrest in Mati, City,” Police Regional Office 11 spokesperson Chief Inspector Andrea dela Cerna said.
Dela Rosa said that it is up to the PNP to validate the reports.
The police official added that there will be an application named “Itaga sa Bato” that will be launched nationwide this week to help the public to report immediately drug-related activities or individual. (davaotoday.com)
