{"id":9853,"date":"2024-07-11T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T00:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=9853"},"modified":"2024-07-10T10:48:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T09:48:44","slug":"fourth-conviction-of-police-officers-in-case-of-drug-related-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/fourth-conviction-of-police-officers-in-case-of-drug-related-killing\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth conviction of police officers in drug-related killing case"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 18, 2024, the Caloocan City Regional Trial Court convicted<\/a> four police officers for the killing of Luis Bonifacio and his son Gabriel Bonifacio in 2016 during an anti-drug operation. Police Master Sergeant Virgilio Q. Servantes and Police Corporals Arnel De Guzman, Johnston M. Alacre, and Argemio Saguros Jr. were found guilty<\/a> of homicide with a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison. They were also ordered<\/a> to pay a total of 400,000 pesos in damages to the bereaved families of the victims.<\/p>\n

The court decision is considered<\/a> the fourth conviction of police officers in the tens of thousands of cases of extrajudicial killings in the context of the so-called “war on drugs” under the former Duterte government. So far, there have been four convictions<\/a> in three separate cases of drug-related killings with a total of five fatalities. These include<\/a> the conviction of three police officers in 2018 in the killing of Kian delos Santos and the double conviction of patrolman Jeffrey Perez in 2022 and 2023 for the torture<\/a> and murder<\/a> of Carl Angelo Arnaiz and Reynaldo “Kulot” de Guzman respectively.<\/p>\n

On September 15, 2016, Luis Bonifacio and his son Gabriel were<\/a> shot dead in their home in Caloocan, a suburb of Manila, during a police anti-drug operation. Around 15 to 20 police officers stormed<\/a> the house to arrest Luis Bonifacio. The police officers dragged<\/a> his wife and children outside the house; shots were fired<\/a> shortly afterwards. Luis Bonifacio died<\/a> at the scene, while his son Gabriel, who never left his side, succumbed to his injuries in hospital.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Bonifacio’s wife Mary Ann Domingo filed<\/a> a murder charge with the Ombudsman’s Office against the police officers who had shot her husband and son a year earlier. However, after a four-year investigation, her application was downgraded<\/a> to a charge of homicide. Domingo’s attempts to challenge this decision in court were rejected by the Supreme Court on the grounds that no intent to kill could be proven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the police reports, the officers had to defend themselves with their firearms in the course of a failed<\/a> drug buy, which resulted in the killing of Bonifacio and his son. Local organizations Rise Up and the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) independently collected<\/a> testimonies and evidence in the case that told a different story – that Luis and Gabriel Bonifacio were unarmed and pleading for their lives. Of the 200 drug-related killing cases supported by Rise Up and the NUPL, legal proceedings were initiated<\/a> in only 20 cases. Six of these cases resulted<\/a> in formal complaints, of which only two resulted in charges and one in conviction.<\/p>\n

The Philippine Department of Justice has cited this latest conviction as proof<\/a> that the national justice system is working. However, there are thousands of unsolved cases of drug-related killings, which is why impunity<\/a> remains a problem in the Philippines. The Dahas monitoring project at the University of the Philippines has documented<\/a> 700 drug-related killings under Marcos Jr. by the end of June 2024.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 18, 2024, the Caloocan City Regional Trial Court convicted four police officers for the killing of Luis Bonifacio and his son Gabriel Bonifacio in 2016 during an anti-drug operation. Police Master Sergeant Virgilio Q. Servantes and Police Corporals Arnel De Guzman, Johnston M. Alacre, and Argemio Saguros Jr. were found guilty of homicide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,73,58,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-on-drugs-en","category-aktuelles-en","category-human-rights-news","category-internal-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9853"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9884,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9853\/revisions\/9884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}