THE WAR on drugs in the last nine weeks — or even before Rodrigo R. Duterte took his oath as president a fortnight ago on June 30 — has yielded ever bigger numbers of casualties, arrests, and “surrenderees,” and a volume of cases filed in court.

This is according to the Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) that has been monitoring the conduct of anti-drug operations from May 10, 2016 — or the day after the last elections.

A copy of DIDM’s report to PNP Director-General Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa that PCIJ obtained showed that from May 10 to July 10, 2016, police operations against illegal drugs have yielded the following results:
 

• 192 persons killed;

 

• 8,110 persons arrested;

• 3,001 cases “referred”; and

• 3,477 cases “filed in court.”

The report also said that from May 10 to July 11, a total of 35,276 persons have “surrendered” to the authorities.

 

The DIDM report is a separate dataset from that produced by the PNP National Operations Center (NOC) on its “Monitoring of the Anti-Illegal Drugs Accomplishment” that covers the period from July 1 to July 13, 2016.

Getting the numbers right in the PNP’s war on drugs is hampered in large measure by the fractious but parallel agencies assigned to operations and case monitoring.

In this instance, the DIDM and the NOC reports seem to be focused on the same monitoring pegs — numbers of people killed, arrested, surrendered, etc. — but across different time frames.

But if their numbers are correct and identical, except for the covered periods in their respective reports, a comparison of their data would yield clustered numbers for the period before the birth of the Duterte administration, and in the two weeks since it assumed power.

Thus, from May 10 to June 30 — the day Duterte took his oath as President — and again from July 1 to 13, 2016, the war on drugs, according to the PNP’s DIDM and NOC, yields these clustered numbers:


• 57 killed from May 10 to June 30; 135 killed from July 1 to 13, 2016.

• 6,266 arrested from May 10 to June 30; 1,844 arrested from July 1 to 13, 2016.

• 31,260 “surrendered” to the PNP from May 10 to June 30; 4,016 “surrendered” to the PNP from July 1 to 13,2016.

Note that in addition to the number of suspects who reportedly surrendered to the police, the PNP NOC, in a separate report, said that more than 60,000 “drug users” and about 6,000 “drug pushers” had been located or had “surrendered” to local and barangay officials under ‘Oplan Tokhang,’ the anti-drug war operations on the village level.

What the PNP’s NOC reports do not reveal, though, are the numbers of cases “referred” and “filed in court” that the DIDM report shows.

What the DIDM report does not offer, and which the PNP’s NOC reports enroll are the number of “houses visited” under ‘Oplan Tokhang.’ 

— PCIJ, January 2019