MANILA, Philippines — The Senate Committee on Public Order and Illegal Drugs is holding a hearing on Monday into operational protocols of the police and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to avoid "misencounters" where teams conducting separate operations risk clashing with each other.
The call for hearings started in February, when personnel of the Quezon City police and the PDEA figured in a shootout outside a mall where they were conducting anti-drug operations independent of each other.
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"What we can tell you is that both the PDEA and PNP were conducting legitimate operations...both of them were doing their jobs," PDEA Director General Wilkins Villanueva said then in a joint press conference with Police Gen. Debold Sinas, PNP chief at the time.
A Senate inquiry was called off when Villanueva and Sinas both tested positive for COVID-19.
A "near misencounter" this month between the Novaliches police station drug enforcement unit and PDEA agents from the agency's Calabarzon regional office led to the revival of calls for Senate oversight into how drug operations are carried out.
Watch the Senate hearing here at 10:30 a.m. on May 24, 2021