“Trust us, we value life!”

The Philippine National Police chief made that plea on Monday, as he asked critics of human rights violations in President Duterte’s brutal war on drugs to focus their attention on reforming drug users instead of on abusive policemen.

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Police admit to killing more than 3,800 suspects since Mr. Duterte launched the crackdown on narcotics in June last year, but they say they only defended themselves when the suspects resisted arrest.

But more than 2,000 others have been killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen, whom human rights groups say could be hired guns working for the police or are policemen themselves working for rewards that come with the campaign.

More reliable figures are hard to find, but Sen. Risa Hontiveros, speaking at a Senate inquiry into the police killings of minors last month, said more than 13,000 had been killed since the start of the crackdown.

‘Don’t ask us to change’

But the “bleeding hearts,” including the Catholic Church, should ask people to stop using drugs so the police would not have to do anything to begin with, PNP Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa said in a World Pandesal Day press briefing at Kamuning Bakery Café in Quezon City on Monday.

“Do not ask us to change. Ask that [of the drug users],” Dela Rosa said. “If the war on drugs is bloody, stop taking drugs, stop fighting the police!”

“You’re always focusing only on the police. Please turn around, do an about-face,” he added.

Dela Rosa said the PNP would not have waged the war on drugs if it had no regard for life.

Essence of ‘Tokhang’

He stuck to the official line that the police were not out to kill suspects in the controversial “Oplan Tokhang,” a door-to-door campaign to persuade users to surrender for rehabilitation.

“From the very start, we wage the war on drugs because we value life. If we don’t value life and we value money, we will just accept money from the drug lords,” Dela Rosa said.

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“What’s the essence of Tokhang? Knock and plead. Knock [on the door of the suspect] and plead, ‘Please, if we learn you are a pusher, stop it and turn over a new leaf,’” he said. “We don’t shoot the [suspect] right away.”

But witnesses have a different story: Victims are forced to their knees and shot.

Two teenagers were killed by police in Caloocan City that way in September, leading to an explosion of public anger that pulled down Mr. Duterte’s poll ratings—and to the demotion of the 185,000-strong PNP from the lead role in the war on drugs last week.

Mr. Duterte gave the lead role to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), which he noted had fewer kills.

Defending his agency, Dela Rosa said he could not say the PDEA “values life more than the PNP does” because the fewer deaths in PDEA operations were due to “ratio and proportion.”

Degree of doubt

He said he was “confident” about the PDEA’s takeover of the lead in the campaign against narcotics, although he expressed “a degree of doubt” because of its smaller capacity.

Last week, Dela Rosa said the PDEA had only 1,700 agents.

The transfer of the lead role in the war on drugs to the PDEA gives the PNP a chance to concentrate on the motorcycle-riding hit men who have tarnished the image of the government’s campaign against drugs, Dela Rosa said.

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