The Philippine National Police chief on Monday said he did not want to pick up a fight with the Senate President, who had criticized him for calling critics of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs “ingrates.”

But Director General Ronald dela Rosa asked Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III to go out in the streets and ask people if they felt safe there.

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“I am just a policeman,” Dela Rosa said. “I don’t pick a fight with a senator, the Senate President at that. But if he is asking about peace and order, he should ask the ordinary people in the streets how they really feel, if there is really change… He can say what he wants to say, but to me, he should sk the ordinary people how they feel about what we are doing.”

De la Rosa added that the police actually caught the suspects in the killing of a Puerto Galera Councilor Melchor Arago and the local official’s 15-year-old son Kenneth last Oct. 3.

The murder of the Aragos angered Pimentel, Duterte’s right-hand man in the Senate, who questioned Dela Rosa’s claim of restoring peace and order through the bloody war on drugs.

“If you say that [instilling] peace and order meant wiring people’s brains not to commit a crime, that would be very unfair to the police. It is unfair to attribute to us all the killings because we cannot wire people’s brains [to tell them] not to kill. But at least if we failed to prevent the commission of the crime, we were able to solve the crime,” De la Rosa said.

Surveys have shown majority of Filipinos expressing fear they might be victims of extrajudicial killings.

Another Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey last week indicated that 90 percent of Filipinos would want drug suspects arrested alive.

In a speech after Monday’s flag-raising ceremony at PNP headquaters in Camp Crame, Quezon City, Dela Rosa likened the PNP to the late action star Fernando Poe Jr., who got beaten by villains for much of his movies but always emerged victorious in the end.

“There is war of perception,” Dela Rosa said. “We are being portrayed as villains most of the time. Perhaps we could be like Fernando Poe at times, right?”

Known for breaking down at Senate hearings or showing his temper, De la Rosa was no different at Monday’s press conference, even when seated beside the Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, Gen. Eduardo Año, who was his upperclassman at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA).

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Dela Rosa emotionally defended the PNP from critics of the killings of drug suspects and stood by the statement of Chief Supt. Dionardo Carlos, the PNP spokesperson, that there were no extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the war on drugs, following the definition of EJK in Administrative Order No. 35 of 2012, signed by then President Benigno Aquino III.

“It is opposition propaganda to call the killings EJKs,” De la Rosa said.

He cited the AO, saying that during the previous administration, EJK victims were members of cause-oriented groups, indigenous peoples and journalists.

“Those who have been killed [in the drug war], did they die because they were members of cause-oriented groups? Samahan ng Magsa-shabu ng Pilipinas [Organization of Shabu Users in the Philippines]? Or are they members of the media?” De la Rosa said in a raised voice.

But he also vowed reforms in the PNP after opinion polls showed a steep drop in Duterte’s approval rating and public apprehension about people’s safety amid the war on drugs. /atm

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