Davao Death Squad

Although the staggering number shocks the conscience, the issue had received little national media attention until the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) began a three-day public hearing in Davao City on March 30, 2009 on the 814 “extra-judicial killings” that have taken place in this Mindanao city between August 19, 1998 to February 1, 2009.

In his April 10, 2009 column, which appeared in the Manila Times and other international publications, Fr. Shay Cullen wrote: “The courageous chairperson of the commission, Leila De Lima, who led the public enquiry last week, said the majority of victims are very young, mostly youth, terribly poor, semi-illiterate street children. Few if any had been arrested, charged and found guilty of any crime. Their living presence is the embarrassing evidence of gross social inequality and injustice.”

De Lima called the killings "selective vigilantism" noting that “no big-time criminals, like drug lords or rich drug pushers and drug users, appear among the victims of the so-called "Davao Death Squad".


Witnesses who testified before the commission attributed the killings to the DDS which officially stands for the “Davao Death Squad” but is unofficially referred to by local citizens as the “Duterte Death Squad” pointing to the 6-term mayor of the city, Rodrigo Duterte, as the leader of the nefarious group.

In an article which appeared in Time Asia on June 24, 2002 (“The Punisher”), Mayor Duterte acknowledged “jokingly” to correspondent Phil Zabriskie that the first D in DDS does indeed refer to him.

Zabriskie wrote: “Duterte is unapologetic about his willingness to venture beyond what legal niceties might permit. Criminals and rebels, he says menacingly from his perch at the bar, "do not have a monopoly on evil." A long, hard stare leaves little doubt that this is not idle talk. One day his methods might be unnecessary, he says. But for now, he insists on what most people from this town have also come to believe: "The only reason there is peace and order in Davao is because of me."

In a speech before the Integrated Bar of the Philippines in February of 2009, Mayor Duterte explained his perspective: “If you are doing an illegal activity in my city, if you are a criminal or part of a syndicate that preys on the innocent people of the city, for as long as I am the mayor, you are a legitimate target of assassination.”

If you don’t count the summary executions (“salvagings”), you may agree with Duterte that Davao is “the most peaceful city in Asia”. In his Time Asia piece, Zabriskie wrote: “Duterte has achieved his results at a grim price, disregarding due process and anointing himself legislator, judge, jury and possibly executioner all at once.”

Beyond Davao City, CHR Chair De Lima expressed deep concern about “the growing culture or mentality of public acceptance of the executions. This is worse than apathy and indifference.”

Indeed, Manila Mayor Fred Lim told Zabriskie in 2002 that "if we had 20 more mayors like Duterte, the peace and order situation in the Philippines would improve."

But at what price?

In its April 2009 issue, Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org) documented the summary killings in a paper entitled “You Can Die Any Time, Death Squad Killings in Mindanao”. The group interviewed Clarita Alia, whose four sons were murdered. Alia said that back in 2001, a senior police officer came to her home to arrest her oldest son but Clarita Alia demanded to see an arrest warrant before handing him over. The officer warned Alia “Ok, you don’t want to give your child to me, then watch out because your sons will be killed, one by one!”

Shortly after that threat, 18-year old Richard Alia was stabbed to death in July of 2001, followed by 17-year old Christopher Alia in October of 2001, Bobby Alia, 14, in November 2003, and Fernando Alia, 15, in April 2007. When the police officer made the threat in 2001, Clarita Alia said, “I was really shocked he mentioned the other sons as they were just little kids then, but he was very angry because I was pushing him out.”

Human Rights Watch also reported on the case of 20-year-old Jaypee Larosa who was walking to a nearby Internet Café a block from his home when he was shot by three men in dark jackets who were riding a motorcycle. Witnesses reported that after they shot him, one of the men removed the baseball cap Larosa was wearing and said, “Son of a bitch, this is not the one,” before leaving the scene.

“Dozens of family members have described to Human Rights Watch the murder of their loved ones, all killed in similar fashion. Most victims are alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children, some of whom are members of street gangs. Impunity for such crimes is nearly total—few such cases have been seriously investigated by the police, let alone prosecuted.”

When it resumes its hearing on April 17, 2009, the CHR will reportedly also investigate the recent murder of Rebelyn Pitao, the 21-year-old daughter of Leoncio Pitao alias “Commander Parago,” a leader of the communist New People’s Army.

Witnesses reported that armed men abducted Rebelyn, a private school teacher in Davao City, while she was going home aboard a tricycle on March 4, 2009. The next day, her body was found in a creek in the neighboring town of Carmen with an autopsy finding that she was raped and tortured before she was killed.

Before the CHR conducted its investigation, Human Rights Watch, an international organization based in New York, charged that “the administration of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has largely turned a blind eye to the killing spree in Davao City and elsewhere. The Philippine National Police has not sought to confront the problem. And the inaction of the national institutions responsible for accountability, namely the Department of Justice, the Ombudsman’s Office, and the Commission on Human Rights, has fueled widespread impunity.”

Where is the outrage?

Sarah Balabagan

On the Friday evening before Good Friday, I visited the Jesus is Lord church in Daly City to hear Sarah Balabagan, a Muslim convert to Christianity, describe her ordeal in the Middle East, a traumatic experience that was made into an award-winning film in 1997.

Sarah grew up in a poor Muslim family in the town of Sultan Kudarat in Maguindanao province. She had thirteen brothers and sisters but they were so poor, she said, when one of them got sick, they would just watch helplessly by as the brother or sister got sicker and eventually died. Her parents had no money for medical care so only six of her siblings survived early childhood diseases.

Sarah realized early on that education was her ticket out of the incredible poverty she was born into so she worked as a maid for relatives just to be able to go to school in return for a wage. But that only got her through fifth grade. At the age of 14, she decided to seek employment abroad.

A recruiter secured a job for her by listing her age as 28 (double her actual age) which Sarah learned only when she had already boarded the plane for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Assigned by contract to work for a 67-year old widower with four sons, Sarah was apprehensive about living with 5 men but she comforted herself with the thought that, being a Muslim, they would respect her.

But they did not and Sarah was continuously subjected to sexual harassment. The young sons would regularly order her to bring towels to them after they stepped out of the shower naked. Sarah would just close her eyes and resist their sexual advances.

On July 19, 1994, barely a month after she started working, her employer, Mohamed Abdullah Baloushi, entered her room at night and pressed a knife at her throat. He would stab her if she refused sex, he threatened. Sarah refused and Mohammed stabbed her, not enough to kill her but enough to allow him to rape her. In the course of the rape, however, Mohamed let go off his knife which Sarah then picked up and used to kill him.

Sarah was jailed without bail and in June of 1995, was sentenced by a local court to seven years in prison for manslaughter and ordered her to pay the Baloushi's family $41,000 in diyah, for "blood money". The court also found that Sarah had been the victim of rape and awarded her compensation in damages.

But the state prosecution appealed and a retrial was ordered. The second court found no evidence of rape and sentenced her to die by firing squad in the desert.

An international outcry led by Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos led to a reduction of her sentence to one year and 100 lashes, plus payment of "blood money" to her employer's family, which was paid for by a Filipino-Chinese businessman.

The 100 lashes were to be administered to her on five consecutive days of 20 lashes a day. Sarah described the kind of wood that was used as one designed to inflict the maximum pain. She was whipped before an audience of family members and friends of Mohamed Baloushi. She did not want to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry so she bore the pain of the lashings quietly. But it took her 3 months before she could sleep on her back.

After serving almost two years in Al-Ain prison in Dubai, Sarah was deported back to the Philippines in 1996, arriving in Manila to a hero’s welcome. A Philippine movie studio made a 1997 film about her, “The Sarah Balabagan Story”, which starred Vina Morales and was a box-office hit.

What money she received for the film she sent to her family and used to go to school. She wanted to be a lawyer to represent her fellow overseas workers who needed legal assistance but she got pregnant, three times, and that affected her educational goals. She took computer classes and voice lessons where she learned that she could sing and sing very well. She started a career as a singer whose songs have resonated with overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) as they often speak of the plight of the OFWs.

But fame can cause its own prison and Sarah got depressed with having to raise her three children, taking classes, and regularly sending money to her in Mindanao.

In the middle of her despair, she met a Christian singer named Dulce Amor who introduced Sarah to her pastor, Rev. Gasti Maribojoc. The minister told Sarah that the 100 lashes she received were also received by Jesus Christ, only 100 times more. After Sarah read the Bible and learned more about Jesus, she decided in 2003 to accept Jesus as her savior and to renounce her Muslim faith.

This “apostasy” – converting from Islam to Christianity – was especially difficult for her mother to accept as she believed the penalty for it is death. She didn’t speak to Sarah for six months and when she finally called, she told Sarah of her fear that Sarah’s lifeless body would end up in the Pasig River.

Sarah told her mother that she does not fear death because now she has found meaning in her life. She has dedicated herself to spreading the good word of Christ and if it is his will that she die, then so be it. She has also devoted her life to the cause of the OFWs and especially the domestic servants who have gone through what she went through.

When Sarah arrived in the Philippines in 1996, another domestic helper also returned on that same day, Elisa Salem, only she returned in a coffin, the victim of her Jordanian employer’s rape, one of 130 OFWs who died in 1996. In that year, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration received 14,000 complaints of abuse.

When Sarah sings of the pain and anguish of the OFWs in the Middle East, there is soulfulness to her music. When she sings of her love for Jesus, there is a joy in her heart and a fervent wish for everyone who has gone through hell to go to heaven.

Sarah will be speaking and singing at the Faith Worship Center at Serramonte Del Rey in Daly City on Sunday, April 12, at 10 AM. From April 17 until she returns to Manila on May 6, she will be in Los Angeles. She can be contacted at SarahB_light@yahoo.com.

Happy Easter.

Erap's Private Army, Part 2 (Conclusion)

Former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada’s 2007 conviction for plunder was apparently insufficient to convince former President Cory Aquino to not issue her December 22, 2008 public apology to Estrada for her role in the January 2001 People Power uprising that deposed him. But perhaps Estrada’s recently disclosed role in ordering the execution of his opponents may cause Aquino, a devout Catholic who reportedly values human life, to reconsider her apology.

In his February 14, 2009 affidavit, Col. Cezar Mancao disclosed the moment in October of 2000 when he heard his Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) boss, Gen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, order Col. Michael Ray Aquino, PAOCTF chief of operations, to liquidate his opponent, Gen. Reynaldo Berroya (“Bero”). Aquino agreed to do so but informed Lacson that “Bigote” had ordered him to finish off Delta first.

In paragraph 10 of his Affidavit, Mancao explained: “Delta” referred to media and PR man Salvador “Bubby” Dacer (Dacer), while “Bigote” was the commonly-known pseudonym of Erap. Lacson however insisted that Aquino rather operate on both Berroya and Dacer simultaneously, saying “Ipagsabay mo na at tingnan natin kung sino na ang mauuna”, which obviously meant that Aquino operate on Dacer and Berroya at the same time and to just see who between them is killed first.”

The PAOCTF surveillance of Dacer and the tapping of his phones had revealed that Dacer was set to meet former President Fidel V. Ramos for lunch at the Manila Hotel on November 24, 2000 where Dacer would show Ramos “highly incriminating” documents exposing the stock manipulations of the Best World Resources company of Erap crony Dante Ang.

What happened to Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito, as they headed for the Manila Hotel on the morning of November 24, 2000 is laid out in detail in the extradition complaint for Mancao that was filed by US Attorney Jennifer Keene in the Southern District of Florida on September 24, 2008.

Keene narrated that Dacer and Corbito were “abducted at the intersection of Zobel Roxas St. and Osmena Highway in Manila . Police Officers Thomas J. Sarmiento and Ruperto A. Nemena were identified as among those who abducted Dacer and Corbito. Immediately thereafter, the Sarmiento group made a U-turn at the intersection and headed towards the town of Dasmarinas , Cavite …At about 8:00 o’clock in the evening of the same day, Dacer and Corbito were brought to a creek in Barangay Buna Lejos, Indang, Cavite , where they were killed by strangulation. The bodies of Dacer and Corbito were then placed upon a heap of collected wood and tires, doused with gasoline and burned.”

In paragraph 11 of his Affidavit, Mancao recalled that “at around 11:00 in the morning of November 24, 2000, while Dumlao and myself were at my office at task group Luzon, Dumlao suddenly excused himself because he received a text message from Aquino saying that Dacer was already in the custody of Vina somewhere in the province of Cavite and thus directing him to proceed to the area to conduct tactical interrogation on Dacer. As Dumlao was leaving my office, I told him to share with me the results of his tactical interrogation.”

Mancao noted that “after Dumlao left, I immediately called Vina and verified about the alleged operation. Vina confirmed to me the operation and told me he will take care of it and that the same was upon the orders of Aquino”. Vina was also responsible for getting rid of Dacer’s car.

Later in the day, Mancao remembered that “when Dumlao returned to the office, I inquired what happened to his tactical interrogation of Dacer and he told me that he did not obtain any valuable information from the subject.”

“After learning about Dacer’s abduction”, Mancao added, “I immediately informed Lacson and asked for his guidance on the matter. Lacson instructed me to head the investigation of the incident since doing so will allow PAOCTF to control the situation by covering up the involvement of PAOCTF personnel. Accordingly, I dispatched my men to conduct a regular investigation of the incident; I also required all investigating police stations to forward to us all relevant documents, making us the repository of these documents, and thus enabled us to cover-up for the involved PAOCTF operatives. Due to my successful cover-up of the incident, Lacson and Aquino became warm and appreciative of me again.”

“Several days thereafter, news broke out about Dacer’s car being found dumped in a ravine in Margondon, Cavite ,” Mancao stated. “I chanced upon Dumlao in our office and asked him why it happened that way when Vina continuously assured me that he will take care of the situation. I remember me saying: “Akala ko plinantsa niya ng maayos?! Mapapasama tuloy tayong lahat dito!” (I thought this was supposed to be ironed out well. We’re going to look bad).

In an affidavit executed by Mancao on March 1, 2007, Mancao recalled that “sometime in August of 2001 in a Las Vegas hotel, Michael Aquino was blaming fellow officer Teofilo Vina for sloppily dumping Bubby Dacer’s car into a ravine in Cavite where it was easily discovered. Aquino was complaining that the task had not been carried out correctly. This sloppy work resulted in an investigation which later implicated Michael Aquino in Dacer and Corbito’s disappearance.”

Such sloppiness would not be tolerated. In January of 2003, Col. Vina was shot and killed, supposedly by a balikbayan who had accused Vina of sleeping with his wife. The Vina killing remains unsolved.

In her column which appeared on December 3, 2000, just 9 days after the Dacer-Corbito abduction, Philippine Inquirer columnist Solita Monsod noted that "the circumstances under which Dacer was abducted are strikingly similar to those surrounding the (October 3, 2000) attempt on Chavit Singson [governor of Ilocos Sur province] — the one that convinced him to tell his story. The latter too, was stopped — allegedly for a traffic violation, with other cars trying the ‘sandwich’ operation. The only difference is that Chavit Singson was in a bullet-proof car, and, probably being very familiar with this kind of situation, was able to call for help which came immediately. He was lucky — his mayors were around. Dacer had no such luck.”

Neither did Pagcor casino employee Edgar Bentain. Soon after his name appeared in the press as the person who leaked the embarrassing video of Estrada gambling at the Heritage Hotel casino, Bentain disappeared. In his sworn testimony before the Philippine Senate on August 17, 2001, PAOCTF civilian employee Odor Mawanay revealed that PAOCTF men abducted Bentain and immersed him alive in cement inside a drum. Mawanay identified Col. Michael Ray Aquino as the officer who ordered the drum to be covered and buried near a bridge in Pampanga.

If Estrada had not been deposed in January of 2001, who knows how many more Dacers and Corbitos would have been killed on orders of “Bigote”?

Erap's Private Army

AFTER Joseph "Erap" Estrada was elected president in 1998, he stopped his predecessor's six-year campaign to disband the 560 "private armies" that had proliferated all over the Philippines. Instead, Estrada added one more “private army” to the list - but one that was crafted from within the ranks of the Philippine military establishment, an elite unit that would go after his political enemies and engage in “black operations.”

The activities of Estrada’s “private army” were exposed last month when Philippine National Police (PNP) Col. Cezar Mancao executed a sworn affidavit in Ft. Lauderdale , Florida on February 14, 2009 detailing his personal knowledge of the execution of publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito, on November 24, 2000.

As Mancao explained it, one of the first acts of Estrada after he was elected president was to create the “Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF)” in July of 1998 and to appoint Gen. Panfilo Lacson as its head. Lacson then appointed PNP Col. Michael Ray Aquino as Head of the Operations Division, PNP Col. Teofilo Vina as Chief, Task Group-Visayas and Mancao as Chief, Task Group-Luzon. Mancao thereafter appointed PNP Col. Glenn G. Dumlao as his deputy for operations.

Although Dumlao was under Mancao’s command, he was given orders by Aquino to “conduct discrete Background Investigation on a certain personality” which turned out to be media man Bubby Dacer. He was instructed to monitor Dacer's visitors and to surreptitiously enter his office at the Manila Hotel and purloin whatever documents could be taken. Following his orders, Col. Dumlao proceeded to the Manila Hotel, posed as a hotel guest, and checked in using the alias “Irwin Chavez.”

In his February 14, 2009 affidavit, Mancao wrote: “While I was opposed to Aquino’s use of my personnel, there was nothing that I could do then to prevent him because he occupied a position higher than myself in terms of designation at the PAOCTF organizational hierarchy. Additionally, these special operations were under the direction of Lacson as PAOCTF head. However, I still instructed my men at Task Group Luzon to bring to my attention orders regarding special operations not directly coming from me and not to be keen in performing operations outside of the PAOCTF mandate, especially illegal ones.”

Why was Dacer a special target of the PAOCTF?

Although Dacer had actively campaigned for Estrada in the 1978 presidential elections, he incurred Lacson’s ire because he openly opposed Lacson’s appointment as head of the Philippine National Police (PNP), writing a letter to Estrada noting Lacson’s “ruthless abuse of power in pursuit of his goals” and “because many foresee a police state” under Lacson.

Despite Dacer’s opposition, Estrada promoted Lacson as Director-General of the PNP on November 16, 1999. Lacson, in turn, appointed Col. Aquino as the Deputy Director of the PNP-Intelligence Group (“PNP-IG”), the country’s counterintelligence agency. Col. Aquino later served as the Acting Officer-in-Charge of the PNP-IG while still maintaining his concurrent position with the elite “Black Ops” unit known as the PAOCTF.

Dacer incurred Estrada’s “severe displeasure” because of repeated stories appearing in Emil Jurado’s columns linking Dacer to destabilization attempts against the Estrada administration. On February 16, 2000, Dacer wrote Estrada informing the president that in order to “permanently take myself out of the line of fire,” he was “now planning to close my PR business and finally retire…despite the tears of my children…who feel that I was unjustly taking the fall for other people’s sins.”

In September of 2000, Dacer met with two of Estrada’s closest cronies, Butch Tenorio, the head of the Philippine Amusement Games Corporation (PAGCOR), and Dante Tan, the head of Best World Resources, to assure them that he was not involved in any effort to destabilize the government of President Estrada.

Tenorio and Tan thereafter reported their conversation with Dacer to Lacson. Soon after that meeting, Lacson convened a group of PAOCTF operatives in October of 2000 with instructions “to silence Dacer” after a “clearance from Malacanang was given.” According to Mancao, Tenorio and Tan were tasked to handle the expenses of the “operation”; Col. Dumlao and his assistants were ordered to handle the monitoring, surveillance and abduction of the “target individual”; and Task Group-Visayas Chief P/Supt. Col. Teofilo Vina was directed to take care of the “final phase.”

When Mancao learned about Aquino’s orders to Dumlao, he and Dumlao went to Aquino’s office to inquire about the matter. “Aquino informed us that these “special operations” had been previously approved and cleared by Lacson and by Malacanang itself. Dumlao mentioned to me that the “special operations” had for its target a certain media man critical of Erap, whom they referred to as “Delta”. Being in the nature of a special operation, I decided not to inquire further. For purposes of clarity, PAOCTF’s “special operations” then pertained to operations that did not follow the normal channels of command and did not come under the purview of its mandate.”

On November 21, 2000, Bubby Dacer was summoned to Malacanang to meet with Estrada. At the meeting, Estrada informed Dacer that his intelligence operatives had proof that Dacer had been actively working with former President Ramos and other opposition figures to have him impeached. Dacer strongly denied the charges but Estrada could not be placated. Estrada severely berated Dacer during their meeting, and the latter left the Palace in fear of his life.

In his affidavit, Mancao recalled a fateful conversation: “I heard Lacson order Aquino to liquidate Berroya, his public-known nemesis, saying: “Noy, tirahin nyo na si Bero.” Lacson said this while we were on board his car en route to a Japanese restaurant in Greenhills, San Juan , for lunch. I was seated at the front seat of the car then driven by Sgt. Oximoso (“Oxy” as we usually called him), while Aquino and Lacson sat at the back. Aquino responded to Lacson that he intends to neutralize or liquidate Delta first because Erap was already peeved at him, saying: “Tapusin muna namin si Delta, Sir, kasi naiirita na si Bigote sa kaniya.” (“We’ll finish with Delta first, Sir, because the mustachioed one is irritated with him”).

To be continued.

What Goes Around

When the news article about my Ninth Circuit loss (“Cops can’t be sued in ‘counterfeit’ arrest”, San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 2009) appeared in the paper's on-line edition (sfgate.com) more than 98 comments were published in the first 24 hours.

One of the first comments came from “Akit” who wrote: “Let me get this right... the Walgreens manager used the special marker to prove its authenticity, and it was authentic. But they still called the cops who arrested him for being a fake? If the cops were smart, they would have used the marker to test it themselves, and wham! Can I get my change for my purchase? Problem solved.”

A comment from “szander” echoed the same sentiment: “So the manager at Wallgreens used a special pen to determine that the bill was legitimate and called the police anyway? Why, then, was the guy arrested after it was proven that the bill was authentic? That sounds incompetent to me.”

Quite a number of comments asked why I did not sue Walgreens instead. Well I did. In fact, as a result of my lawsuit, Walgreens fired the manager (Dennis Snopikov) and hired a Filipino, the first to be promoted to store manager in San Francisco. Walgreens also issued a public apology and paid my fees.

The transcripts of the 911 taped call of the Walgreens manager revealed that Snopikov had merely expressed a suspicion that the bill may be counterfeit, he did not claim that it actually was a fake. It was the police officers who jumped to that conclusion without conducting any investigation and that is why I sued the two police officers who were responsible for my false arrest (Sgt. Jeff Barry and Officer Michelle Liddicoet).

In their depositions, two of the San Francisco police officers who arrested me (Liddicoet and James Nguyen) stated that they thought the bill looked genuine to them when they examined it. In fact, at the police station, after Nguyen removed my handcuffs and informed me that the Secret Service had verified that the bill was genuine, Nguyen even boasted to the other police officers that he knew all along that the bill was genuine.

Liddicoet and Nguyen also claimed in their depositions that my false arrest was the result of a mix-up. The first two SFPD police officers to arrive at the scene, Sgt. Barry and Officer Barbara Dullea, reported a Code 4 - “situation was under control” (SUC)- to Liddicoet and Nguyen who unfortunately, they said, understood Code 4 to mean “suspect in custody” (SIC) and expected to see the suspect already in handcuffs upon their arrival. However, when they entered the store and saw it wasn’t the case, they proceeded to place me in handcuffs.

That’s the Keystone Cops “plainly incompetent” version.

The real story is that Sgt. Barry, the first officer to arrive at the scene, had a personal beef against me dating back to 1998 when our sons were 3rd grade classmates in a parochial school. While we were discussing a school policy, Barry started complaining about a City College policy of not allowing campus police officers to carry firearms on campus. He believed that this policy placed his brother-in-law at risk for his personal safety. As I was a City College Board member then, he wanted me to change the policy but I disagreed with his view.

So when Sgt. Barry saw an opportunity for payback five years later, he just couldn't resist it. He told Liddicoet (who had just arrived at the scene and who had asked him for a status update) “Oh it’s that lawyer, he hates cops”. (Honestly, I don’t). Liddicoet replied, “Don’t worry, Sarge, I’ll take care of him”. And take care of me she did.

Although Barry was the first to arrive at the scene, I didn’t recognize him because I was speaking with the store manager at the time. After I was placed in handcuffs in the backseat of the police car, I overheard an officer come up to Liddicoet who was seated in front of me and whisper to her: “Make sure my name isn’t on the police report, ok?” LLiddicoet replied "Yes, Sarge". I couldn’t see the face of "Sarge" as it was dark but I kept asking myself throughout the ride to the Taraval police station “Who is Sarge and why doesn’t he want his name written on the police report?”

So when I saw the police report which included Sgt. Barry’s name (Nguyen wrote it), everything finally made sense. Wow, I thought, this officer can carry a grudge.

The Ninth Circuit’s March 9, 2009 decision means that police officers like Sgt. Barry now have the power to arrest anyone that they have a personal grudge with and people like me can’t sue officers like Barry. It’s no longer a qualified immunity, it’s now an absolute immunity.

My long-time critic, Roy Recio, cheered the Ninth Circuit decision in an email to me a few days ago because, he wrote, “This is what you deserve”. The question is not whether I deserve it but whether Recio deserves it. He may one day find himself falsely accused of a crime and arrested even without probable cause. To make sure that it doesn’t happen again to anyone else and to compensate him for the embarrassment the false arrest may have caused him, Recio may file suit against the police officer. Ironically, his suit would then be thrown out of court because of the decision he is now cheering. If that happens to Recio, I promise I won’t email him to gloat that what goes around, comes around.

Disappointing Ninth Circuit Decision

Police authorities in countries and societies all over the world have the power to safeguard the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of their citizens and the same awesome power to deprive them of any or all of the above. What essentially separates the police in democracies from their counterparts in totalitarian societies is not their potential for abuse of power but their liability for the abuse of that power.

If I had entered a pharmacy in the Philippines during its martial law years and a police officer had assumed from my appearance that I might be passing counterfeit currency, he could arrest me even without any evidence that the currency was counterfeit or that I knew it was so, place me in handcuffs behind my back, parade me before the customers of the store and haul me off in a police car to a precinct where I would be handcuffed to a bar in a cell. Under the Marcos Dictatorship, I would have absolutely no recourse against that officer, if I were ever released.

But if that same incident happened in San Francisco on February 17, 2003 - not in Manila 30 years before - I would have recourse. I could sue the officer for arresting me without probable cause and I could be awarded damages for his abuse of power. This threat of a potential lawsuit for the police abuse of power is what protects law-abiding citizens in democracies. No such threat hangs over the heads of police officers in dictatorships so they can abuse their power with impunity.

This is precisely why every citizen should be alarmed by the recent March 9, 2009 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Rodis v. City and County of San Francisco et al) which ruled that I have no right to sue police officers for arresting me on suspicion of counterfeiting after I used what turned out to be a genuine $100 bill.

One of the officers I sued, Sgt. Jeff Barry, had known me for years not just because our sons were classmates in third grade at St. Stephen Elementary School in 1998 but because we had a heated argument in our last meeting about a City College policy of not allowing campus police officers to carry their firearms. “You’re endangering the life of my brother in law!” he accused me then. At the end of that school year, my wife and I took our kids out of that parochial school.

Sgt. Barry was the first officer to respond to the 911 call of the Walgreens manager on February 17, 2003. When he saw that I was the suspect, he stopped at the entrance and waited for the other officers to arrive. It was “payback” time. He then directed officer Michelle Liddicoet to arrest me and to make sure that his name did not appear on the police report.

When this case was first presented to the Ninth Circuit several years ago, it ruled in a 2-1 decision on August 28, 2007, that the fact that a drugstore manager was suspicious of the bill that I used to make a purchase on February 17, 2003 wasn't enough for San Francisco police officers to arrest me, handcuff me, parade me in cuffs before the store’s customers, and hold me at a police station for almost two hours. Even if it had been counterfeit, the court majority said, innocently passing a counterfeit bill is not a crime, and the police had no evidence that I thought the bill was a fake.

"No reasonable or prudent officer could have concluded that Rodis intentionally and knowingly used a counterfeit bill," Judge Dorothy Nelson wrote in the majority opinion.

Judge Nelson added: "What is more, several facts known to the officers at the time of the arrest significantly decreased the probability that Rodis violated § 472. Viz., Rodis had other $100 bills in his possession that were genuine, one of which he used to complete the transaction; the counterfeit detector pen indicated the bill was genuine; and the officers knew Rodis was both a San Francisco attorney and a locally-elected public official with strong ties to the community in which the store was located. Specifically, Barry had known Rodis for several years. He knew Rodis was a member of the Community College Board, and he had interacted with Rodis personally, encountering him at activities associated with the elementary school that both Barry’s and Rodis’s children attended. Also, Rodis informed Liddicoet prior to his arrest that he was a public figure, and that he lived and worked within two blocks of the store."

San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Scott Weiner appealed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and asked the entire Ninth Circuit court of 27 judges (en banc) to review the decision of the 3-judge panel that handed down the published opinion. The Ninth Circuit agreed to review the decision but affirmed it. Weiner then filed a writ of certiorari (request for review) to the US Supreme Court.
Early this year, the US Supreme Court granted Weiner certiorari and directed the Ninth Circuit to review its decision in light of its rulings in two cases where the police had probable cause to arrest the suspects who later sued the police for unlawful arrest.

Even though I was disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling, I was confident that the Ninth Circuit would uphold its previous ruling because, in my case, the police had absolutely no probable cause to believe that I knew the bill was counterfeit, particularly since it was genuine.

So I was greatly surprised and disappointed to learn of the new decision from a San Francisco reporter who called me up at noon on March 9 to ask for my reaction to the Ninth Circuit Court’s unanimous decision reversing its previous ruling.

According to Judge Dorothy Nelson, who was joined in the 3-0 opinion by Judges Consuelo Callahan and Cormac Carney, "Although the arrest was unfortunate, we cannot say that the officers' belief that (the bill) was fake was plainly incompetent... The arrest, therefore, was not clearly established as unlawful."

Judge Callahan, the dissenting judge in the first decision, somehow managed to convince the two other judges that her dissent should be the court’s opinion this time around. In the past decision, the majority judges had concluded that viewing the facts in the “totality of circumstances”, there was just no probable cause to believe that I knew the bill was counterfeit - which was a necessary element of the specific intent crime of passing a counterfeit bill.

This time around, the focus of the court was on the subjective belief of the police officers that they thought the bill was counterfeit and their mistaken belief was not “plainly incompetent”.

When asked by the Chronicle reporter to comment on the Ninth Circuit’s new decision, Scott Weiner explained that “officers have to make arrest decisions with very limited time and limited information. Even if the person ends up being innocent, the officers are not liable. The system would collapse if it were any other way."

The image of a cataclysmic collapse of the entire system if police officers were required to employ common sense was highly effective in persuading the Court to just give police authorities full immunity from having to conform to constitutional restrictions. It worked effectively for George W. Bush.

When the same San Francisco Chronicle reporter asked me for my reaction to the new decision, I expressed my deep disappointment. "This ruling gives the police the unfettered license to arrest anyone for the flimsiest of reasons without having to use common sense."

The lines are blurring. I will appeal the Ninth Circuit’s new decision all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary.

Filipinos Need No Enemies

Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio), the lone Filipino American member of the US Congress, told the vast TV viewing audience of ABS-CBN’s Balitang America that he voted against the stimulus bill even though it would allocate $198-M for Filipino WW II veterans because, he said, the money would not go towards stimulating the weak US economy. Instead, Austria said, he wanted a “stand alone” bill that would allot lump sums to Filipino veterans.

The Filipino veterans (FilVets) know all about "stand alone" bills because they have been down that road many times before. When Austria's party controlled the US Congress, the Republican chair of the House Veterans Committee (Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana) refused to even hold a hearing of his committee to consider the FilVets claim.

With the Democrats in control of Congress last year, Filipino veterans finally succeeded in getting both Houses of Congress to hold hearings on the FilVets bill and to endorse the bills. The US Senate passed its bill by a 96-1 vote but only after it had been folded in with other veterans issue in an omnibus veterans bill (S. 1315) crafted by Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), chair of the Senate Veterans Committee.

But even that omnibus bill could not be approved by the House until the Filipino veterans provision was excised from it. The only hope in November of 2008 was for the Filipino veterans provision to be included in the Senate-House conference committee compromise. But Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) killed off any hope of that by rejecting the request of Sen. Akaka for a unanimous vote to cut off debate and vote on its inclusion.

Fortunately, all was not lost because Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, somehow managed to include in the appropriations bill for the US military a provision allocating $198-M to Filipino WW II veterans which was signed into law in November of 2008. All that was needed was for a bill authorizing the release of those funds to be passed.

When the stimulus bill was introduced in the House this year, Rep. Bob Filner (D-California) - the author of the bill that would allocate lump sum payments of $15,000 each to Filipino veterans who were US citizens and $9,000 each to those vets who were not - lobbied the Democratic leadership in the House to include language authorizing the release of those funds. But his efforts were rebuffed because House Democrats feared that it would not pass the Senate if it included a FilVets provision that was not connected to stimulating the US economy.

The fate of the veterans was then left to Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and long-time champion of Filipino veterans equity.

In an act of incredible leadership and guts, Sen. Inouye included the Filipino veterans provision in the bill as Section 1002 of Title X. During the Senate debate on this issue on February 9, 2009, Sen. Inouye defended the FilVets provision against attacks from the two Republican senators from Arizona, Sen. John McCain and Sen. John Kyl, who not unexpectedly charged that it had nothing to do with stimulating the US economy and should be removed. Sen. Inouye agreed but nonetheless insisted that it should be included because it was a matter of “honor”.

[An unsung heroine of the entire Filipino veterans’ struggle over the last 15 years is Marie Blanco, a long-time aide of Sen. Inouye, who has been as involved as anyone in the background and as responsible as anyone in the foreground in securing benefits for Filipino WW II veterans.]

Sen. Inouye succeeded in winning over the critics and keeping the FilVets provision intact in the Senate and later in the Senate-House compromise bill that was signed into law by Pres. Barack Obama on February 17, 2009.

Instead of cheering the infusion of more than $100-M of veterans benefits to the Philippine economy, the bill was attacked by politicians and political commentators like Prof. Winnie Monsod, former head of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) under Pres. Cory Aquino.

In her February 24, 2009 commentary that appeared on her daily talk show, Prof. Monsod blasted the bill as “the latest indignity heaped on Filipino Veterans” (the actual title of her broadside). She recounted the “shameful and disgraceful” history of the Rescission Act of 1946 and criticized the bill for being discriminatory in that “non-US citizens will get only 60% of what US citizens would be getting.”

What Monsod and other Philippine critics fail to understand is that even the staunchest Republican opponents of the Filipino veterans bill were willing to support it if only US citizen Filipino WW II veterans received benefits under it. They opposed it because it would be a stimulus bill for the Philippine economy, not the US economy.

Monsod charged that “the Filipino veterans of WWII who served the United States when the United States needed it most, are expected to be grateful for this $198 million one-time package rather than being given the $100 million a year package that they in all fairness deserve.”

The “package” that Monsod referred to was the “stand alone” Filipino veterans equity bill sponsored by Rep. Bob Filner which provided $900 a month to US citizens and $300 a month to Philippine citizens. The bill she supported was also discriminatory but how could the 33.33% of the Filner bill be better than the 60% of the bill that was passed?

When Winnie Monsod and I were in our youth in the Philippines, it was commonly believed that the US government was a monolithic entity with everyone in the government thinking and acting in concert. After having lived in the US for almost four decades, I understand the political dynamics of the US government. I know, for example, that there are Republicans who believe that the US should be concerned primarily with national security issues and there are Democrats who believe that the US should be primarily concerned with justice and honor issues.

After 40 years, however, Prof. Monsod still clings to the notion of a US government that acts as a monolith unwilling to give the proper amount of funds to the Filipino veterans “because they are too busy spending $435 million a day, which is the estimated cost of prosecuting the Iraq war.” They?

Prof. Monsod ends her commentary with this swipe: “With friends like the United States government, the Filipinos need no enemies.” With this slogan, good luck to those who want to lobby the US Congress for more benefits for Filipino veterans.