Resistance or execution?

There are some questions to ask in relation to the deaths of Jerome, John Vincent and Ruben Umpad, three brothers who died in a drug bust barely days after they secured their release from prison through the Enhanced Justice on Wheels program of the Supreme Court.

For one, is the Mandaue City Police Office willing to disclose publicly the details of their coordination report to the regional Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA-7) narrating the details that convinced them that the Umpad brothers dealt in drugs even while detained?

We understand that the Mandaue City police is willing to cooperate with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) in its investigation into the deaths of the Umpad brothers, which the agency said may yet be another case of police claiming the suspects had resisted or “nanlaban” when they were actually executed.

Though unrelated, it had been reported that the Mandaue City police earlier earned the ire of motorists and commuters for enforcing invasive body searches in one of their checkpoints in Barangay Subangdaku as part of their so-called security measures.

We hope the deaths of the Umpad brothers are not another case of the Mandaue City police being unduly overzealous in doing their jobs to the point that they don’t respect and uphold the basic human rights of citizens, even those who were convicted of crimes or had just been released from prison.

The area where the Umpad brothers lived is supposedly notorious for illegal drug activities, and there may be reason to suspect that these men still continued to engage in the drug trade even before they secured their release.

But as far as we know — and President Rodrigo Duterte himself tried to emphasize even as he continues to goad/encourage law enforcement agencies to kill criminal suspects who resist — there is no official state policy allowing them to kill people on mere suspicion of criminal activity.

As claimed by the mother, the Umpad family was forced by police to one side away from the scene where they cannot witness for themselves how the brothers were dealt with.

The mother assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the police executed her sons, and who can blame her when she didn’t see for herself the circumstances that led to her sons’ death?

With their numbers, training and firepower, the police could have easily prevented the Umpad brothers from escaping. But then, the cynical would assume that it was easier for the police to execute the suspects and be done with it rather than go through what they consider to be the tedious motions of due process.

We join the public in calling on the Mandaue City police to be transparent and fully cooperative with the CHR in investigating the deaths of the Umpad brothers, and if there is evidence of irregularity, then those responsible should be sanctioned immediately.