President Digong’s war on drugs has brought about an ugly by-product: Policemen who extort money from innocent civilians by accusing them of involvement in the drug trade; and cops who use the campaign to settle personal scores.

Cops who extort from innocent civilians, mostly Chinese Filipino businessmen or expatriates, outnumber the latter.

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Then there are law enforcers who engage in outright kidnapping in the guise of arresting their prey, bringing them to a safehouse and releasing them only after ransom is paid.

These officers of the law should be disposed of with “extreme prejudice” or be made to disappear when evidence against them is indisputable.

Charging them in court is a waste of time as our judiciary is utterly inefficient or corrupt; these villains might even be acquitted and go on with their evil ways.

The policeman who led the kidnapping of a Korean businessman should be tortured (c’mon, guys, the torture of suspects is a common practice among our law enforcers—RT) until he gives up his accomplices.

After the other members of the kidnap gang are taken into custody, the policeman and his cohorts should be shot in the head, their bodies dumped on the streets with a cardboard that says, “I was a kidnapper, don’t emulate.”

That same treatment could be given to other policemen involved in criminal activities such as drug trafficking or the recycling of seized narcotics, car theft, robbery and killers-for-hire.

Bodies of notoriously rogue policemen found hanging from electric posts or lying in the streets in the morning, placed there while the city or town slept, will send chills down the spine of other cops with criminal minds.

There is no other way to cleanse the Philippine National Police (PNP) of bad elements but to take the final option or solution.

How would the government go about eliminating criminals who are officers of the law?

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The Duterte administration could make use of elite soldiers to do the job.

Members of special operations units of the Armed Forces will obey orders to kill enemies of the state—for that’s what policemen who abuse their authority are—seeing it as a patriotic duty.

If President Digong wants to instill fear among policemen and criminals—there seems to be no more distinction between the two—he should replace PNP chief Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa.

Dela Rosa is all bluster but lacking in action.

He has not inspired respect among the PNP officers corps and the rank and file because they look at him as a clown; always making the public laugh instead of being serious in his work.

His promise to give huge bonuses to top-ranking officers last Christmas, which never came true, confirmed their suspicion that he’s irresponsible. (An Inquirer.net report quoting a source said some police officers were given the bonuses in private—Ed.)

Whenever there was a crisis involving the PNP—such as the US Embassy incident where a police car rammed several demonstrators, and the killing of Mayor Rolando Espinosa in his jail cell—Dela Rosa was out of the country.

Dela Rosa is deemed soft on erring policemen like those who kidnapped a Chinese-Filipino businessman in August and more recently, a Korean businessman.

His biggest mistake was to attribute the reinstatement of an erring police official to his “compadre,” forcing the President to come clean.

How can the President be taken seriously in his war on drugs when its chief implementor, Dela Rosa, is a clown?

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