Senators slam slay of another teener in Caloocan

FILE:  Sen. Edgardo “Sonny” Angara. (PNA Photo)

MANILA — Senators on Monday slammed the killing of another teenager in Caloocan City, 19-year-old Carl Angelo Arnaiz, two days after the killing of 17-year-old student Kian Delos Santos on August 16.

“It looks like a repeat of the Kian killing and in the same area reportedly,” Senator Juan Edgardo Angara said in a statement. Angara pointed out that reports from the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) showed that Carl was killed in a similar way — bullet wounds in the back.

He said the Philippine National Police (PNP) should run after perpetrators and not take the role of executioners themselves.

“This is simply unacceptable. We should teach our police proper law enforcement and that their role is to bring suspects to justice and not be executioners,” Angara said.

“We don’t need killing machines. We need speedy fair and efficient justice machines that people can trust, and don’t fear,” he added.

Senator Joel Villanueva, for his part, described Carl’s killing as “another injustice” to a young person. He called on the PNP to “stop putting the law in the triggers of their guns and in their hands.”

“We must always remember that the law is created for the people and not against them. It must always be put in mind that the Philippine National Police is created to serve and protect the people,” Villanueva said.

Moreover, he said that the recent injustices that happened calls for a reevaluation of the sworn duty of the PNP.

In a joint statement, the Liberal Party also expressed outrage on the killing of Carl likening police officers to “hitmen.”

LP said that the PNP should delve into these cases of killings with “dispatch and transparency otherwise, PNP would face the risk of being perceived as “no different from criminal syndicates.”

“The PNP should start with the Caloocan policemen,” LP said.

Carl was a former University of the Philippines student from Cainta, Rizal who went missing for 10 days before his body was found in a morgue in Caloocan City. PAO’s postmortem analysis showed that Carl was physically attacked before he was shot dead.

Caloocan City police, however, claimed that the young man robbed a cab driver prior to an alleged shootout with responding policemen.