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Agence France-Presse

The police force is widely regarded as one of the Philippines’ most corrupt institutions, a reputation reinforced by accusations three officers were involved in abducting and killing a South Korean businessman.
“Extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances” by police and military forces were the Philippines’ most significant human rights issue, the US State Department said in its annual human rights report in 2015.

Since then police have reported killing 2,250 drug suspects and another 3,710 people killed in unexplained circumstances as part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial drug war.
Three policemen abducted the South Korean businessman last year when they went to his house on the pretext of a raid on illegal drugs, then killed him the same day but claimed he was still alive to extort money from his wife, authorities said.
Here are some of other notorious cases of recent years:
July 2016
Newly elected President Duterte accused five police generals – two retired and three in active service – of being part of the country’s illegal drugs trade.
All five denied involvement, but the three active-duty officers were removed from key posts, though none of them has been charged in court.
October 2016
A judge dismissed a case last year against an Australian man accused by police of drug trafficking. Police had claimed the man was arrested in a raid on a Manila street with ecstasy tablets.
But CCTV footage presented to the court showed police had hauled him out of his hotel room. The judge dismissed the case after ruling the police officers had fabricated evidence and their testimonies had no “integrity”.
October 2016
Two gunmen on a motorcycle killed a female anti-crime activist outside her home on the central island of Mindoro in October last year but were then wounded in a gunfight with police and arrested.
The assailants turned out to police officers, one of them a police chief of a neighbouring town. Police said the two would be charged with murder.
May 2015
A policeman was charged in 2015 over his alleged involvement in the kidnapping-for-ransom by Islamic militants of an Australian man, Warren Rodwell, in the southern Philippines.
Rodwell was held for 15 months and released after a ransom was paid. Rodwell then identified the policeman as the negotiator for the Islamic militants.
July 2013
Ten police officers were sacked in for running a secret prison in a safe house near Manila where jailors wearing wigs and masks spun a roulette wheel to pick among a list of tortures to be meted out against inmates.
The tortures included a 20-second beat=down, electric shocks and hanging inmates upside down like a bat for 30 seconds. The government’s Human Rights Commission exposed their activities.
August 2010
A video went viral on social media showing a naked man at a central Manila police station screaming in pain as the precinct chief whipped him and yanked a rope that appeared to be tied to the victim’s penis.
The police chief was sacked.
November 2009
Sixty-five police and military officers were among nearly 200 people charged for participating in the Philippines’ worst political massacre in 2009, when a prominent Muslim clan organised the ambush of a convoy of its political rival and accompanying journalists. Fifty-eight people were killed.
The officers allegedly took part in the attack to stop a rival of the Muslim clan from filing his election candidacy for provincial governor. Their trial is ongoing.
October 2008
Nine senior Philippine police officials, including the comptroller in charge of the force’s budget at the time, were briefly held at a Moscow airport for carrying €105,000 euros (US$112,000) while on their way to an Interpol conference in another Russian city.
The Ombudsman, the government’s special anti-graft prosecutor, filed graft charges against the officials in 2013 for the alleged misuse of police intelligence funds for their travel expenses. The case is ongoing.


A long history of corruption in Philippine police force

This photo taken on December 23, 2016, shows policemen at the crime scene where the body of an alleged holdaper lies on the street killed by police during an encounter in Manila. People going to mass at one of the most famous churches in the Philippine capital over Christmas were met by a disturbing sight: poster-size pictures of Filipinos dying in pools of blood. The shock Baclaran church exhibit was part of a campaign by one of the nation's oldest and most powerful institutions to stop the killings under President Rodrigo Duterte's war against drugs, which has claimed about 6,000 thousand lives. / AFP PHOTO / NOEL CELIS / TO GO WITH AFP STORY PHILIPPINES-CRIME-RIGHTS-CATHOLIC-CHURCH,FOCUS BY CECIL MORELLA

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte looks on during an awarding ceremony for outstanding Filipinos and organizations overseas, at the Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines December 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ezra Acayan

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