Reuters

More than two-thousand people have died when police have fired in ‘self defence’ in the Philippines violent crackdown on drug crime.

Police officers injured in 'acid attack' during drugs raid

But there’s something very, very odd about the deaths – police are killing 97% of the people they shoot.

Either they’re very, very good shots – or something’s not quite right.

Researchers from reviewed 42 drug-related shooting incidents involving the police in the Manila region covered by its journalists, as well as another 9 cases investigated in the same area.


In these combined 51 cases, police officers killed a total of 100 suspects and wounded just three.

The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, where police have been accused of extrajudicial killings in a bloody crime crackdown, pales next to the Philippines under Duterte.

A gun is placed inside a plastic bag as police investigate Reuters

For every five people the Rio police killed between 2013 and 2015, they injured one person, according to a Human Rights Watch report in July – fewer than are dying in the Philippines.



Reuters says that the evidence points towards one thing – that police are pro-actively gunning down suspects.

Chief Superintendent Leo Angelo Leuterio said, ‘We have to settle the debate of whom do we protect more.

‘The drug pushers, the drug suspects, the drug addicts? Or the government agent whose only intention is to preserve order in society?’