https://www.dawn.com/news/1349010/bloodbath-in-dutertes-philippines
More details are emerging about the police operation in Ozamiz
City that resulted in the death of 15 people, including Mayor
Reynaldo Parojinog Sr, his wife Susan, his brother Octavio Jr and
12 others. But on the face of it, it appears to have been an
operation gone horribly wrong. The purpose of a search warrant,
it’s reasonable to assume, is the gathering of evidence in
connection with a case presumably being built up by the police, and
not the death of suspects who might in fact have valuable primary
information that could buttress that case. But in this instance,
the warrants served on the victims by joint teams from the Criminal
Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), the Misamis Occidental
provincial police and the Ozamiz police resulted in nothing less
than a bloodbath. The police said it was a shootout — that their
raiding teams were met with resisting gunfire when they tried to
serve the warrants on six Parojinog properties at about 2:30am last
Sunday, thus forcing them to fire back. Residents of Barangay San
Roque Lawis said a power outage occurred right before the raid;
electricity was cut, apparently in aid of the operation. The police
version of what happened afterwards is being disputed by Jeffrey
James Ocang, legal officer of the Ozamiz local government, who said
in a TV interview that “there was no exchange of gunfire”. Based on
pictures that have gone viral, “all the wounds of the victims are
head shots”. The Parojinogs’ properties had CCTVs that could shed
light on how the raid unfolded, but these were reportedly disabled
by the cops before the operation, and no mention of them has been
made by the Philippine National Police (PNP). There’s also the
curious thing of search warrants served in the wee hours of the
morning, under cover of darkness — a peculiarity that recalls
another incident: the police raid in November 2016 on the station
in Baybay, Leyte, that held Albuera, Leyte, Mayor Rolando Espinosa,
based on a search warrant that was also being served at an ungodly
hour.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1349010/bloodbath-in-dutertes-philippines
