Duterte had previously served as mayor of Davao, a prosperous and quiet city on the southern island of Mindanao, for two decades. There he became best known for reducing crime. Bars stopped selling alcohol at 1 a.m. A strict curfew for teenagers was enforced. Duterte’s policies, though, weren’t without controversy. Human-rights groups said he encouraged vigilante squads to kill criminals. He gloated about personally shooting three men accused of kidnapping a girl. But that seemed to have little effect on his popularity. People liked what he did with the city so much, they believed he could make the same happen across the Philippines. When a New York Times reporter asked a woman in Davao if she feared he’d encourage rogue murders throughout the country if elected president, she said: “He’s only going to go after the killers and the drug dealers. Don’t be afraid.” Filipinos appreciated Duterte’s candor. He cussed during speeches. He joked about castrating overly amorous men in order to reduce the country’s birth rate. People saw him as someone who could clean up the Philippines from the state decades of elitist politicians had left it in.

Against his two elitist rivals in the election campaign, Duterte marketed himself as a man of the poor. The public loved it when he challenged one rival to a gun duel; the media dubbed him “Duterte Harry.” In May he beat his closest opponent by 15 percentage points. On June 30, Duterte took the oath of office in a room full of the country’s elites who applauded most fervently when he said, “My adherence to due process and the rule of law is uncompromising.”

Then, as a counterpoint, he said, “I know there are those who do not agree with my methods of fighting criminality. In response let me say this: I have seen how corruption bleed the government of funds. I have seen how illegal drugs destroy individuals and ruin families’ relationships.”

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Those killed by the vigilantes are usually poor, some drug addicts, and some labeled drug dealers. The killers shoot from motorcycles, drop a cardboard sign with something like “addict” or “drug pusher” scribbled on it, then speed away. Killings like these went from being rare, to becoming daily occurrences, to reaching double digits every day.

The killings weren’t normal. All were tied to Duterte’s call for the extermination of the country’s undesirables—the addicts and criminals. He had promised to “fill Manila Bay with their bodies.” Within a week of Duterte officially taking office, the Inquirer was already writing about the killings in a fatigued tone: “The killings—and the explanations given by the police to justify them—continue to pile up.” Officers killed two suspected drug dealers while they were handcuffed. Vigilantes killed a man who had mocked the new national police chief. They shot up a cemetery and killed five people, including a mother and her son celebrating a birthday, leaving behind one sign for all of them. They killed a teenager feeding his dog, who seemingly had no ties to drugs; and police shot and killed a suspected drug dealer because he “tried to grab” an officer’s gun. Journalists like Lerma, the photographer with the Inquirer, chronicled many of these killings. But until July 23, when Siaron, the sidecar driver, was killed, the deaths attracted little attention.