Police officials sacked over PNP-Army ‘misencounter’
MANILA, Philippines — Two police officials involved in the “misencounter” between Army troops and cops in Samar have been relieved of their duties, Philippine National Police chief Director General Oscar Albayalde said.
Superintendent Glen Oliver Cinco, Regional Mobile Force Battalion 8 officer-in-charge and Chief Inspector Don Archie Suspeñe, 805th Mobile Company, RMFB 8 commander have been temporarily sacked as the PNP and the Armed Forces of the Philippines mounted joint and independent probes into the clash that left six police officers dead and nine others wounded in Sta. Rita, Samar.
AFP chief of staff Gen. Carlito Galvez, for his part, said that he will relieve Army personnel should they see lapses as the investigations progress.
“This is a very unfortunate incident. No one really wanted this to happen. It’s really an accident,” Galvez said. He and Albayalde visited the wake of slain cops Wednesday.
Both the PNP chief and AFP chief of staff said that they want to find out where coordination between the two parties failed.
“Baka ‘yung sinasabing coordination, sa taas lang and it did not go down to lower units,” Albayalde said.
He added: “We’re not here to find faults. We’re here to find out what went wrong… If it’s coordination, then we improve the level of coordination between the AFP and PNP, especially operating units.”
The STAR reported that the police personnel who were conducting combat operations, were attacked by personnel of the Army’s 87th Infantry Battalion. The soldiers only realized they had mistakenly engaged law enforcement when police reinforcements arrived after a 20-minute firefight.
The 16-man team from the Army was conducting combat operations for the last six days in the mountainous area as a response to the repeated sightings of New People’s Army rebels, Maj. Gen. Raul Farnacio said.
In a speech Wednesday, Duterte blamed the Murphy Law for the “misencounter”—a government term for a clash between friendly forces. The age-old adage goes: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
He vowed that he will go to the victims’ families to extend his condolences. — Gaea Katreena Cabico
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