ANOTHER sad day for the government with the Philippine National Police (PNP) losing six of its personnel and the wounding of nine others in a bloody mis-encounter with soldiers from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the morning of Monday in Sta. Rita Samar.
It’s too early to tell but there seemed to be a lack of coordination between the two groups or inadequate or poor communication and cooperation as they conducted combat operations against suspected New People’s Army members in Samar.
It was not denied that both the PNP and the AFP were conducting combat patrols in the area perhaps due to the presence of NPA rebels or simply to maintain peace and order. But what is perplexing is the fact that even if both the PNP and the AFP knew that their members were in that area on that unfortunate day, they still managed to shoot blindly at each other leading to and resulting to the unnecessary deaths of the policemen and the further wounding of their comrades.
Isn’t there supposed to be a basic protocol to follow on how these police and military maneuvers are to be executed especially if there is a possibility that they are conducted simultaneously in one specific area?
Isn’t it standard operating procedure for those participating in the combat patrol to be given comprehensive briefings and orientation in the area where they are supposed to operate?
How can two armed and uniformed groups of the government suddenly clash in the morning without even knowing or recognizing who they were shooting at? Is Sta. Rita, Samar unofficially declared as a no man’s land so that anybody caught within that area is fair game?
These are just some of the questions that the leadership of the PNP and the AFP have to answer.
What happened is simply unacceptable. The loss of lives at the hands of friendly forces definitely brings deeper pain and anguish for those left behind by the six policemen killed in the mis-encounter.
Understandably the police and the military have acted with dispatch on the unfortunate incident and reports have it that the PNP higher command have relieved the ground commanders of the police unit involved in the bloody mis-encounter even as they formed a Board of Inquiry (BOI) to investigate the incident.
The BOI investigation will be led by Directorate for Integrated Police Operations Eastern Visayas Director Rolando Felix while Directorate for Operations Executive Officer Chief Supt. Rene Pamuspusan, Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management Executive Officer Chief Supt. Adelio Benjamin Castillo, and a representative from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group will also participate in the investigation. The Eastern Visayas Police Regional Office has also created a Special Investigation Task Group (SITG) to help with the investigation.
We sincerely hope that the unfortunate matter will be resolved so that justice can be delivered to those whose lives were lost or harmed because of the said mis-encounter, but more than that, measures have to be implemented to avoid any future similar incident.