Metro Manila Police Officers on the War Against Drugs

In the first week of January 2017, six months after the launch of the war against drugs, journalist Sheila S. Coronel interviewed three Metro Manila police officers on how they viewed the antidrug campaign. Their interviews are posted below.

• Oscar David Albayalde, then director of the National Capital Region Police Office talks about the Philippine Military Class of 1986 and his classmate, then the newly minted Philippine National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa. He also talks about the unprecedented support of President Duterte for the police’s antidrug campaign. The interview took place at the NCRPO office on January 3, 2917.

• In this interview at his office at the Manila Police Department on January 8, 2917 MPD chief Joel Napoleon Coronel talked about his unit’s strides in the war against drugs, the more aggressive stance against drug dealers and the loosening of regulations that allow antidrug units at the station level to launch operations without clearing with higher ups.

• Sr. Supt. Guillermo Eleazar, then director of the Quezon City Police Department, explained in an interview on January 9, 2017. that police all over the country were instructed to conduct anti-drug operations, and in police operations, people die because suspects resist arrest or fight back in armed encounters and have to be “neutralized.”