Filipinos are not safe — We haven’t been for years now
By: Danterio Aquino
Tags: Police, Philippines, Politics

How many times has the double murder in Paniqui, Tarlac been the subject of conversations around town, half a day after it happened? Presumably countless. The uncle next door, the delivery guy, the sari-sari store owner down the street — they were all talking about it come morning. After all, murderer and police officer Jonel Nuezca is a fellow Pangasinense, born in Urdaneta City, surrendered in the Rosales Municipal Police Station with fresh, warm blood on his hands. The unspeakably horrifying atrocity caught on cam and viewed by millions virtually happened right on our doorsteps.

Police brutality, abuse of power, and impunity are no new things. Yet it strikes us on an entirely different level when we become proximate to the event, and such is true with the burgeoned killing of mother and son in Tarlac. Many of the same people who decried the killing did not bat an eye with the many other eerily identical atrocities that happened and became subject of news before, and for an explainable reason. These people simply were indifferent because they believed the alley where Kian Delos Santos was tortured and slain in 2017 was somehow unreal; they believed that the brutal world where state forces murdered 14 peasant activists in Negros in 2018 was too far from theirs. On the other hand, seeing the video — Sonya and Frank Gregorio, both unarmed and stationary, getting shot at point blank by a policeman with daughter as inciter and therefore accomplice — positions the ordinary citizen to the place of the person taking the video. Consequently, we were not only viewing the video as anonymous social media users. Rather, viewing it brings us into the ordeal, within the situation, in that tragic afternoon on the lawn of the victims’ home. Viewing it turns us into a frightened, shaking close relative, witnessing the horror firsthand. We become part of it, and even more so when we reside a couple of towns away, or we relate to the victims on an ethnic or subcultural sense, or we finally recognize our spitting similarity to them: powerless civilians who have nothing to protect themselves with before the barrel of a policeman’s gun.

As children, we had been warned repeatedly to behave, or else “cops will come for us.” It has been customary to use the image of the police in keeping kids in line, and it reflects something we have not been paying much attention to: the Filipino vox pop towards the police and their function, a subject matter seldom discussed outside the bounds of legal affairs or the academe. It required the death of mother and son and a raw footage of the crime to open such discussion on our streets, and even then, people almost whispered as if afraid of getting heard.

It seems that Filipinos have accepted the fact that the AFP-PNP are state weaponries to be feared, not only by wrongdoers but by everyone — everyone who cannot afford special treatment through the bureaucratic jungle at least. As was mentioned earlier, the country has known police brutality, abuse of power, and impunity long before we started talking about them. Perpetually for decades, the clacking of their shiny leather shoes is imposing, the gleaming badges pinned on them are reminders of their ability to kill, and their guns are insignias of absolute rule. Under the command of many different heads of state over the course of history, the power of the police force oscillated but never ceded, and at times, even amplified with authorization and assurances of no penalty. “To serve and protect” was never embodied by the police as a government body. Ironically, it is them whom we need protection from, and they definitely never served the interest of the people. Cops, or “mamang pulis” as the masses call them, are dreaded, rabid animals that rule atop the predatory chain. All of them.

All policemen are part of an institution that was meticulously engineered throughout the years to amass the social, political, and cultural advantage that they are enjoying today. Designed like a complex edifice where every nook and cranny exists to support the entire structure, the AFP-PNP nurtures its offshoots — arms cops like Jonel Nuezca of unconstitutional authority, grants them consent to terrorize the people as they please, acquits them of their crimes. With the encouragement of Malacañang, the police, led by a murderer and lawbreaker, have garnered even further fortification, and their brutality and impunity today is only matched by the brutality and impunity of their predecessors during the Marcos era. They are no public servants, but entities unstoppable even by law. It is beyond doubt that this institution shaped a country where cops are royalties in our communities worthy of ingratiation and worship, and the masses are expendables to their temper and shrunken patience. Needless to say that Jonel Nuezca and his daughter are products of this fantasy.

Meanwhile, the Filipino people continue to become weaker and more powerless against them. The Constitution lacks provisions that protect Filipinos from human rights violations. The Commission on Human Rights that is supposed to safeguard the people from police abuse is defunded and undermined. Human rights activists are branded as terrorists. With promoters of state fascism occupying majority in legislation, the executive stripping the police off of accountability, and the judiciary’s silent acquiescence and submission to right-wing political agenda, the government continues to produce more and more Jonel Nuezcas everyday. They are at large. There are thousands of them. We are not safe. We haven’t been for years now.