by GEMMA LUZ COROTAN

THREE years after it was set up, the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC) has left a trail of bungled cases and bloody corpses.

Once hailed as the nemesis of crime, the agency has been criticized by judges, congressmen and human rights watchdogs as an inept investigator, careless about legal procedures and unmindful of the rights — and lives — of suspects.

The commission was created in July 1992, amid great fanfare and drama, when Vice-President Joseph Estrada was named the country's chief crime-buster. As PACC chief, Estrada promised to be a zealous reformer who would battle crime and sweep the police clean of rogues and scalawags.

The commission claims that it has since solved 53 kidnapping cases and busted 30 syndicates.

"Our track record shows that we have rescued several victims and arrested kidnappers who resisted arrests," Estrada said in an interview published last month. "We brought the kidnappers to court and they were sentenced."

But an examination of case files and investigation reports of law-enforcement agencies, Congress and the Human Rights Commission CHR as well as interviews with witnesses and victims show that at least 40 people have been killed under questionable circumstances in the course of the PACC's work — an alarmingly high body count for a three-year-old agency.

"Most of the killings, if not all of them, are rub-outs, not shoot-outs, as the PACC has claimed," said a high-ranking NBI official who has investigated PACC killings in the last three years.

Estrada, however, has denied that his men were involved in unlawful killings. He cited PACC's arrest in Nueva Ecija of seven men suspected of involvement in the 1992 Cochise Bernabe kidnap and slaying case. "If we had the habit of salvaging, we would have salvaged them there," he said.

(The PCIJ tried to interview the vice-president for this series, but he is in the US for medical treatment.)

In the courts, despite Estrada's claims, the PACC's record is dismal: Of 53 kidnapping for ransom cases it claims to have solved, only eight have resulted in convictions. Over all, the commission lost more cases than it won.

Trial judges, the CHR and the House Committee on Good Government have pointed to a disturbing pattern of perjury (inducing witnesses to give false testimony), planting and mishandling of evidence, arrests and searches without warrants, and other violations of human rights.

In fact, PACC methods so alarmed the Supreme Court that last year, it banned the commission from arresting lawyers Diosdado Allado and Roberto Mendoza who were accused of kidnapping a British national.

"The facts of this case are fatefully distressing as they showcase the seeming immensity of government power which when unchecked becomes tyrannical and oppressive," the high court said.

For the most part, however, the public and law-enforcement agencies acquiesced. The commission rode on the crest of a wave of kidnappings and bank robberies: people were willing to look away as long as the agency got the hoods.

Despite accusations of human rights violations committed by the PACC, Estrada, the public figure most closely associated with the commission, obtained a 75 percent approval rating in the latest Social Weather Station survey, only three points lower than popular former health secretary Juan Flavier.

To many, especially the Chinese-Filipino community which was terrorized by a rash of brazen kidnappings, Estrada and the PACC were great white knights of deliverance. "After the PACC rescued many of these kidnap victims, there was greater willingness on the part of the victims' relatives to report these incidents to the police," said Tessie Ang See, head of the Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order (MRPO). "Its mere existence provided a deterrent."

Ang See's group, however, reported 120 kidnapping cases in 1994, while PNP statistics show that kidnap cases rose from 23 in 1993 to 50 in 1994.

Former Task Force Habagat Chief Panfilo Lacson did not dispute these figures, but pointed out that most of these incidents were in Mindanao. "Even though our mandate is to fight crime nationwide, we don't have the capability to operate there," he said. "Compared to 1991-1992 figures, kidnapping has gone down by 70 to 80 percent."

The PACC's latest embarrassment was the acquittal on July 28 of Brig. Gen. Dictador Alqueza, supposedly the prize catch in the commission's anti-kidnapping campaign. Months earlier, nine army soldiers and three PNP intelligence officers charged by the PACC with involvement in kidnapping were also set free. In both cases, acquittals were due to lack of evidence.

Estrada, however, blames "hoodlums in robes" — a corrupt judicial process and incompetent state prosecutors — for his dismal court record. He admits that 80 percent of the agency's cases are thrown out by fiscals and judges.

But the PACC lost many cases, our investigation shows, because evidence gathered during arrests and searches without warrants are inadmissible in court. Moreover, state prosecutors said, the agency has often resorted to questionable methods and inadequate evidence to build its cases.

"They put a lot of premium on so-called intelligence reports from tainted sources," said lawyer Haydee Yorac. "Intelligence reports are not a statement of facts but a statement of information from people who are not infallible. They are apt to draw conclusions without benefit of solid evidence, and they are apt to release these conclusions to the media when on cross-examination, they cannot stand scrutiny."

Yorac witnessed for herself how the PACC built a case when she defended four bemedalled PNP officers — P/Supt.Rodolfo Mendoza Jr., P/C Insp Allen Bantolo, P/SI NSP Federico Bulanday and P/SPO1 Jesus Ramos — who were recently cleared of charges of reviving the Red Scorpion Group (RSG) and giving its members mission orders.

In a decision dated June 23, 1995, the National Police Commission Summary Hearing Committee upheld the validity of the mission orders as part of an intelligence project aimed at infiltrating the communist assassination squad, the Alex Boncayao Brigade. The committee also threw out the testimony of PACC officials because they were based on "hearsay and presumptions," not solid evidence.

In a similar decision, a Lucena trial court judge threw out PACC's case against nine soldiers of the Army's Intelligence and Security Group who were accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Nene Tantuco in 1992. "The evidence, aside from being weak, was not clear and convincing," Judge Jaime Viscaya said in an April 28, 1995 decision.

In defending the soldiers, lawyer Jose Manuel Diokno of the Free Legal Assistance Group established how the PACC tampered with the evidence to pin the blame on the soldiers who coincidentally were in the same area working on another operation. The soldiers are now claiming damages for the frame-up.

The most dramatic example of prosecution journalism was Estrada's widely publicized arrest, in front of TV cameras, of police officers Jose Pring and Timoteo Zarcal on August l7, 1992. The officers were accused of kidnapping-and later acquitted because their arrest was unconstitutional. For while Estrada made sure the TV crews were present, he did not bother to get an arrest warrant.

All the Vice-President's Men

The Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC) started out three years ago with ambitious pronouncements about eliminating "hoodlums in uniform," corrupt and abusive personnel who were giving law enforcers a bad name. Today, there are serious accusations that some of those hoodlums may be inside the PACC itself. Among them:

Chief Supt. Panfilo Lacson, who has been convicted of human rights violations, including torture, arrests without warrants and confiscation of property. In a case filed in February 1993, Lacson and other members of Task Force Makabansa, a composite group of AFP intelligence units, were ordered to pay five victims-former detainees of the Camp Bagong Diwa Detention Center-P350, 000 each in damages.

Chief Inspector Wilfredo Reyes, Task Force Habagat intelligence chief, who was accused by the NBI of the January 1995 murder of Rafael Almero and the wounding of three others in Paranaque, and Manila. Roberto Ramos, an alleged Kuratong Baleleng member, has also implicated Reyes and another PACC agent, Chief Inspector Michael Ray Aquino, in five bank robberies: Landbank, Muntinlupa; Far East Bank and Trust Company on Quezon Blvd.; MetroBank in Ermita; and a Rizal Banking Corporation armored van in Calamba, Laguna. Ramos also executed sworn statements implicating the PACC in other crimes, including a kidnap attempt on the children of the owners of Sulpicio Lines, a shipping conglomerate.

Raymond Tan, a PACC special assistant, was accused of facilitating the smuggling of five high-powered firearms to Taiwan from the Laoag International airport. Police sources say that the smuggled guns were issued by the PACC to Tan. A 43-year-old businessman, Tan claims to be a friend of PACC chief, Vice-President Joseph Estrada. On July 2, he allegedly escorted Taiwanese national Sy Chi Sien from Manila to the Laoag airport, where he took a flight to Taiwan. Police reports allege that Tan used his PACC ID to whisk Sy and his companions past airport security personnel. That card identifed him as a civilian agent with an "all-access" pass to the airport. On his arrival at Kaoshiung airport in Taiwan, Sy was cornered by the local police who had discovered that he was carrying five 9mm pistols. Sy fired at the cops and chose to kill himself rather than surrender. Later, when the Laoag police began investigating the case, Tan identified himself as Estrada's "business associate." The vice-president, however, said Tan was "only a friend"; he also denied that he gave the businessman a PACC card. But a copy of Tan's PACC card, identifying him as a "special assistant to the vice-president," shows that it was signed by Estrada. His application for a Manila International Airport Authority Access Card, endorsed by high PACC officials, also identifies him as such. Copies of receipts also showed that Tan occasionally paid for Estrada's bills and that of his wife Guia Estrada when they are visitors of Fort Ilocandia Resort Hotel. Moreover, a flight plan and military clearance issued to Tan by the Air Transportation Office shows that he accompanied Sy on a chartered Beechcraft Baron plane that flew from Manila to Laoag.

Landrito Peredilla, a former associate of Calauan Mayor Antonio Sanchez, was a member of now disbanded Task Force Habagat. He has been identified by one of the convicts in the Sarmenta rape-murder case in Los Baños, as among those who killed Ricardo and Nestor Peñalosa on April 13, 1991. The Peñalosas were Sanchez's political foes.

Fourteen policemen who had been accused by the CHR of salvaging two suspected robbers in Manila in 1991 were later recruited to the PACC, even if they were facing murder charges. Despite a pending case in the Sandiganbayan, the policemen were assigned to PACC operations.

In acquitting the two officers, Pasig Judge Santiago Estrella said, "Let this be a lesson to other peace officers whose impulsiveness may be the very cause of acquittal of persons who deserve to be convicted, escaping the clutches of the law because, ironically, the law has not been observed by those supposed to enforce it."

Behind the scenes, the PACC was even worse, often resorting to controversial — and in the end, counterproductive — shortcuts to achieve its ends.

In the last three years, PACC operatives have practiced "prosecution journalism," resorting to quickie investigation methods aimed at grabbing headlines, rather than nailing hoodlums. Critics say that the PACC top brass spend more time in press conferences than in the field looking for hard evidence.

PACC agents often built their cases on confessions. This is the reason the commission got its fingers burned in the investigation of the slaying of UP Los Baños students Allan Gomez and Eileen Sarmenta.

It presented to the media the confessions of Edgardo Lavadia and Aurelio Centeno to pin the murders on Kit Alqueza. Centeno and Lavadia later recanted their statements, saying they were coerced and tortured into pointing to Alqueza as the mastermind.

"The problem with PACC is that they rely too much on confessions," said a state prosecutor. "This is risky because you are building your case not on a solid body of hard evidence but on confessions, many of which are extracted under threat of torture."

Another prosecutor criticized some PACC agents for not knowing even the most basic procedures for gathering and handling evidence. "These are not technical people," observed an NBI official who has worked closely with the PACC.

This was evident in the sloppy investigation last year of the murders of former Integrated Bar of the Philippines president Eugene Tan and his driver, Edgardo Constantino. The PACC declared the crimes solved after only 48 hours of investigation.

The NBI, however, came up much later with a completely different set of findings, saying the self-confessed hitman, Bonifacio Rojas, had earlier implicated Tan's alleged mistress Gilda Lim as the mastermind, and that the PACC failed to pursue this angle, as well as ignored the physical evidence of the case.

PACC methods are best summed up by Judge Lorenzo Veneracion of the Manila Regional Trial Court in a decision acquitting Cezar Galicia and Carlos Galicia on September 10, 1993 of the kidnapping and murder of teenagers Kenneth Go and Myron Uy. The Galicia brothers, he said, were victims of a frame-up and a "highly defective system that acutely lacks professionalism, integrity, moral values and dedication."

The PACC actually bungled the case, said Veneracion. Its agents were seen by the kidnappers during the payoff. Panicking, the hoodlums killed the two teenagers, even after they had received the ransom money. The PACC then stormed Batangas and arrested the Galicia brothers and declared the case solved.

The judge accused the commission of framing the brothers in their desire to make up for their blunder. "Unless we adopt an attitude of positive perception of our rights," he said in his decision, "many more like them will be arrested, detained and charged on flimsy evidence."