For responding to an official request from their police counterparts in their area of operations, 25 Army Special Forces (SF) personnel got themselves in hot water for the questioned shootout at a checkpoint in Atimonan, Quezon Province last January 6.
The joint police-Army operation was in line with the existing memorandum of agreement (MoA) between Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the discharge of their respective law enforcement and internal security functions.
Ironically included in the casualty count in the shootout during the joint checkpoint operations were three police officers and two from the Air Force as among the suspected armed lawless elements. What made the checkpoint incident more questionable was the fact that among those mowed down with them in the hale of bullets was Vic Siman, a known operator of jueteng and other illegal numbers game in Calabarzon.
As the gory details of the joint operations are coming out, the initial report of shootout has been placed under a cloud of doubt. The picture coming out is that it might be a case of a rubout over rivalry in the lucrative jueteng operations in the region.
No less than President Benigno “Noy†Aquino III expressed such doubts after all these information and reports were filtered to him. With details getting clearer, President Aquino immediately ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to be the “sole investigative†agency to get to the bottom of this Quezon checkpoint incident.
Unfortunately, even P-Noy’s official mouthpieces spoke too soon in defense of the checkpoint incident as a legitimate shootout.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte relied on the information she initially got from the PNP. P-Noy had to hold a press conference at the Palace last Wednesday to clear things up after families and relatives of the slain cried for justice and claimed rubout.
As a presidential spokesperson, you speak for and on behalf of the President. Unlike the President, Valte does not have all the information that the Chief Executive immediately gets from all sources, both official and unofficially. You are not supposed to second-guess your President. Obviously, she violated the cardinal rule for presidential spokespersons not to second-guess your principal.
Anyway, under the AFP-PNP MoA, there is a Joint Peace and Security Coordinating Council that, by its very title, serves as the coordinating body between the police and military. It is still unclear if this particular joint operation that resulted in the killing of 13 people at the Quezon checkpoint even passed through this Council.
The police and the military establishments have their respective mechanisms and organizations that process intelligence information. In fact, they have established ratings on the reliability and accuracy of such intelligence information with the rating “A-1†as the highest. It is regarded as 99 percent true and accurate, with only one percent margin of error.
As part of their standard operating procedures (SOPs), any intelligence information must pass through such stringent process before operations on the ground can actually take off.
Based on an alleged intelligence reports, elements of PNP Region 4-A officially asked for assistance from their counterparts for law enforcement operations against supposed armed lawless group suspected to pass through their area of jurisdiction that day. Region 4-A covers the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Quezon, Rizal, or collectively called under its acronym Calabarzon.
The police request was passed on to the 1st SF Battalion headed by Lt. Col. Monico Abang who deployed his 25-man platoon to serve as back-up forces for the apparent hastily organized joint police-military checkpoint operation.
This was according to the initial fact-finding conducted by Southern Luzon (Solcom) chief, Maj. Gen. Alan Luga on the incident. Luga identified Abang as the only one who was not in uniform but in civilian clothes at the checkpoint while the rest of the Army men were in full battle gear and uniform.
In their initial fact-finding, PNP Director-General Alan Purisima disclosed the 24 policemen in the joint checkpoint violated their own SOPs. They were not wearing proper police uniforms and did not put up any signage for police checkpoint ahead, and there was no marked police vehicle at the checkpoint area.
In the case of military, Luga said Abang explained to him he was in civilian because he came from a shooting competition when he got the police request for assistance. As head of the SF Battalion, Luga said Abang decided to proceed and join his platoon in this mission despite not wearing his military uniform. Abang belongs to Philippine Military Academy Class 1991 while Luga is a member of PMA Class 1981.
As being pieced together, the police request for assistance was purportedly sent by PNP-4-A regional deputy chief for intelligence, Superintendent Hansel Marantan. It was just the mere say so of Marantan of purported intelligence report that the presence of this armed lawless group would pass this checkpoint on that particular day.
Obviously, the request of Marantan was granted immediately given his background as a graduate of the PNP Academy in 1998 and who had trained with the Army SF in the past. But among the 24 policemen and 25 Army men in the checkpoint, it was only Marantan who got shot in the arm and leg.
Marantan is currently confined in a Metro Manila hospital for gunshot wounds he sustained in the alleged Quezon checkpoint shootout. Marantan vehemently denies any wrongdoing on their part nor about his alleged links with jueteng operations. He was earlier implicated in the complaint for multiple murder filed against him last November in Calamba by Gerry Siman, one of 13 fatalities in the Quezon incident. Marantan had also figured in other controversial police operations where suspects were killed in an alleged shootout.
All these things will come hopefully out into the light. In the meantime, there is obvious need to review and assess the misuse of intelligence information that is being fed and processed by our police and military establishments.