Wanted: a credible PNP death investigation
AS we all calm down after more details had started to surface about the death on New Year’s Day of beauteous flight attendant, Christine Angelica Dacera, our collective anger has begun to turn into collective dismay (again) over dismay on the performance of Philippine National Police (PNP) director general, P/General Debold Sinas, personally and the entire PNP, generally.
Briefly, Dacera, 23, was found unconscious by her friends at a bathtub inside a hotel in Makati City after a near all-night “partying” to welcome the New Year.
She was brought to the hospital but was declared ‘dead on arrival’ by attending physicians.
Three of her ‘friends’ who brought her to the hospital (all of them were apparently ‘gay’) and who also reported the incident to the police subsequently ended up as suspects after the police, with our Chief PNP in the lead, accused them of raping and then killing Dacera.
And with that, Sinas boldly claimed the case as ‘solved.’
But not so fast, said the Makati City Prosecutor’s Office, who rejected the police accusation, ordered their release on January 6, 2021, for ‘insufficiency of evidence’ against them while admonishing the Makati Police to further investigate the matter.
That the PNP, for the nth time, has again resorted to a ‘’rush job’ to earn “pogi points from the public still horrified by the murder of P/MSgt. Jonel Nuezca of a mother and her son in Talac province over a neighborly quarrel or the beheading of Benguet policemen of an illegally apprehended drug suspect in the rundown to Christmas, as some quarters maintain, may be true.
Or that as in times past, the PNP, in its laziness and incompetence, wants to “fit” their narrative to that of their top officials regardless of what the evidence said, may also be true.
For in the case of Dacera, her autopsy report conducted by the PNP disclosed she was not killed nor was she also raped
The autopsy report of course, has shocked her family as its wentt contrary to what Sinas had told them.
The report too, has become the target of criticisms from many quarters, even from Dacera’s family with other forensic experts and other victims of heinous crimes concluding the autopsy was sloppily conducted thus producing a sloppy report.
This is not surprising as PNP, despite efforts at reforms also for the longest time, has been notorious for conducting sloppy “death investigations.”
Thus, the call by the Volunteer Against Crime and Corruption (CVACC) and other well-meaning civic organizations for creation of a “separate” office composed of professionals and experts not beholden to the PNP leadership is now timely more than ever.
The government should seriously look at this proposal if it wants the PNP’s eroded image, restored.
