Senator Ronald dela Rosa vowed Friday to investigate the death of a 3-year-old girl in a police drug raid last Sunday, after drawing widespread condemnation for saying “shit happens.”
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Dela Rosa, who had led President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on illegal drugs when he was chief of the national police, made his comment as police burned 1.4 tons of seized narcotics while warning that the nation still faces a flood of illegal drugs.
Authorities said the 3-year-old girl, Kateleen Myka Ulpina, was killed Sunday in a sting operation in Rodriguez, Rizal, on June 30. Manila. Her father, a drug suspect, as well as an undercover police officer were also shot dead.
“Of course you need to secure everything—no collateral damage. But if you infiltrate, it’s not really possible,” Dela Rosa told a news conference, dismissing allegations by the dead girl’s family that the father had been unarmed.
Dela Rosa was police chief in the first 21 months of Duterte’s presidency. The crackdown has officially killed over 5,300 alleged users and dealers—a number rights groups say could be three times higher.
Human rights activists say the drug war killings could amount to crimes against humanity.
Although the Philippines has pulled out of the International Criminal Court, the war crimes body is pushing ahead with a preliminary examination of the crackdown.
Human Rights Watch condemned Dela Rosa’s comments.
“It is unfortunate that… Dela Rosa, the first chief enforcer of Duterte’s ‘drug war’ that has killed thousands, would display such uncaring, even contemptuous attitude to (the victim) and, by extension, the dozens of other children killed in the brutal campaign,” it said.
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The Commission on Human Rights, an independent government agency, said Friday it will investigate the shooting.
“Minors caught in the crossfire of the government’s initiative in combatting illegal drugs in the country are simply not collateral damage. They are victims. Their hopes and dreams fall short once bullets enter their bodies,” the commission added.
On Friday, Dela Rosa told GMA News he would conduct a Senate hearing on the case once he is appointed chairman of the committee on public order and illegal drugs, a panel currently headed by Senator Panfilo Lacson.
Lacson, also a former national police chief, has said he would give up the committee to Dela Rosa.
On Thursday, asked to comment on Myka’s death, Dela Rosa said in a mix of Filipino and English: “Who wants that to happen? If you’re the police, do you want a child to be hit? Never, because you have kids of your own. You don’t want things like this, but shit happens during operations.”
Lacson and other senators disagreed with Dela Rosa’s attitude.
The Palace, however, defended Dela Rosa, saying it was “only an expression” that means accidents do happen.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said the Palace would await the results of an investigation that Philippine National Police chief Oscar Albayalde has certainly ordered.
The PNP on Friday said it has not yet accepted the version of events presented by police who were in the Rodriguez raid.
“It was an accident that nobody wanted. It is unfortunate that a child died. We are saddened by the incident. Nobody wanted this to happen. A police officer also died,” PNP spokesperson Col. Bernard Banac told the ANC news channel.
Banac said police claimed Myka’s father, Renato Ulpina, drew his firearm when he sensed the buyer in the buy-bust operation was a police officer.
“In the firefight that ensured, it turned out that a child was also hit,” he said.
To make way for an impartial investigation, the PNP said, the Calabarzon regional police office has ordered the relief of the entire 14-member drug enforcement team of the Rodriguez police and six provincial police intelligence officers involved in the anti-drug operation on June 29.
Duterte had suspended the drug war twice in the past two years as the government investigated alleged abuses by drug police, but later allowed them to continue without significant reforms.
Three low-level police officers were found guilty last year of the 2017 murder of a Manila teenager who they said they mistook for a drug suspect.
Police said they are now targeting higher-level traffickers.
“We have shifted to supply reduction because the flood of illegal drugs continues despite our intensified campaign… on the street level,” national police spokesman Bernard Banac told reporters as he watched the incineration of about a fifth of the drugs seized since the Duterte crackdown.
Cellophane-wrapped bricks of cocaine and methamphetamine were packed into a massive incinerator in Trece Martires City under armed guard in a carefully staged event before TV cameras. With AFP
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