A ‘fishing expedition’

Trumped-up charges and sloppy case work have no place in the judicial system. That’s the stern reminder once again served the Philippine National Police when Mandaluyong City Judge Monique Quisumbing Ignacio threw out last week the illegal possession of firearms and explosives case the PNP had lodged against journalist Lady Ann Salem and trade unionist Rodrigo Esparago.

Ignacio, presiding judge of the Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court Branch 209, specifically scored the PNP’s charges for what she said were the blatant and significant inconsistencies in the testimonies of informant Kharl Lou Geronimo, patrolman Ernie Ambuyoc, and Police Capt. Michael Nathaniel Visco of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-National Capital Region Field Unit. Their words “cannot be given full faith and credence” because of “numerous inconsistencies and contradictions” in their testimonies, said Ignacio in her Feb. 5 order.

Ambuyoc, for example, said in his affidavit that he saw Salem taking photos of firearms before encoding them in a laptop. But in the actual hearing, he said it was Esparago that took the photos. He also testified that the firearms were placed in a single bag; Geronimo said there were three bags. And the operatives could not get their story straight on whether the firearms were encased in bubble wrap.

“There were not enough facts and circumstances which would lead a reasonably direct and prudent man to believe that an offense has been committed,” Ignacio concluded.

She also declared “null and void” for lack of probable cause the search warrant issued by Judge Cecilyn Burgos-

Villavert of Quezon City RTC Branch 89, which was used by the police to enter the accused’s condominium unit in Mandaluyong City where firearms and explosives were allegedly seized, along with other items such as laptops and gadgets. The warrant “suffered from vagueness,” noted Ignacio, because it did not “specify with sufficient particularity the laptop and cellphone to be seized… They [the police] undertook a ‘fishing expedition to seize and confiscate’ any and all cellphones and laptops they found in the premises.” Thus, all of the evidence collected were deemed inadmissible and the records expunged.

Ignacio then admonished the police authorities, saying “there is a right way to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason.”

Salem, editor of red-tagged alternative media site Manila Today, and Esparago, founding member of the Sandigang Manggagawa ng Quezon City, were among the so-called “Human Rights Day 7” who were arrested on Dec. 10, 2020, International Human Rights Day itself.

The Public Interest Law Center, Salem’s counsel, welcomed the dismissal as “a severe blow to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, which claimed the arrests as a victory in the anti-insurgency campaign. The first blow was their failure to assert this in court. The nail in the coffin is the dismissal of the cases, exposing not just faulty police work but vicious political persecution.”

Indeed, the PNP’s latest embarrassment testifies to its propensity for shortcuts and faulty case buildups in its zeal to go after those it deems enemies.

In October last year, Judge Amelia Lourdes Mendoza of the Negros Oriental RTC Branch 34 likewise rapped the appalling misbehavior by law enforcers against five suspects whose cases the judge determined to have been fabricated by agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. The five accused had been illegally arrested and the evidence against them was inadmissible, ruled Mendoza.

In December of the same year, it was the turn of the Office of the City Prosecutor of Manila to push back against the police, dismissing a complaint filed by the Manila Police District against LGBTQ activists rallying against the controversial anti-terrorism bill after finding no probable cause to charge them with illegal assembly, resisting arrest, and violating quarantine protocols. Assistant City Prosecutor Kristine Cirilo noted that the complaining police officers could not even name the organizers and leaders of the march who could be penalized for supposedly holding the assembly without a permit.

Mendoza’s October 2020 ruling contained ringing reminders not only for her colleagues in the judiciary (“The courts must step in and take the cudgels for individual liberties, and in no other situation is this duty more critical and necessary than when the supposed protectors of law and order become the perpetrators themselves,’’ she said), but, more pointedly, for the police force: “Mere expediency was never intended as an excuse for constitutional shortcuts, which are abhorrent to the rule of law ideals defining constitutionalism in this country.” The police better take heed, or it will continue to suffer humiliations before the country’s conscientious courts.