Police Killings In Ph: A Personal Trouble Or A Social Issue?

The video recordings capture how Police Officer Nuezca shot the defenseless victims pointblank in the heat of a neighbor dispute. He used his government issued firearm in killing them, and his daughter, who was with him during the event, invoked his governmental position, saying, “my father is a police man” right before Nuezca hit the trigger.

Isolated Or Endemic?

The issue right now is to determine whether the tragic killings are a personal trouble (isolated case) or a social issue (endemic problem) affecting the entire Philippine National Police.

Using C. Wright Mills (1952) in his book, “Sociological Imagination”, he defines personal troubles as one emanating from an individual– it is cast more on a pyschological imbalance or malady.

It is a problem that emanates from the struggles of our day to day existence; that as human beings, we are prone to commit mistakes and to fail.

Selection Hiccups

Using a “personal trouble” perspective, we can explain Police Officer Nuezca’s deviant behavior as a byproduct of his personal deficits.

Probably, he is a “topak” as our President Rodrigo Duterte characterized him to be–meaning, he is mentally deranged and should not have been selected as a police officer in the first place.

Probably, he has anger issues, as what the Chief of Police said to rationalize his behavior, and thus, the solution was to give police officers some form of anger management therapy.

If cast in terms of “personal troubles”, the preferred explanation of the officers of the Philippine National Police and the spokespersons for the government, the solutions are also more likely to be done at the individual level: better selection of police officers, better training for those selected, provision of mental health support to address the psychological strains involved in police work, and other individual level interventions.

Maladies Of Society

C. Wright Mills, on the other hand, defines “social issue” as one emanating from the society — a product of the deficits and maladies of the society.

In this case, there is a social artifact, like a culture, that drives people, even if they are normal and without personal deficits, to behave in such a barbaric and deviant ways.

Using this explanation, Police Officer Nuezca pulled the trigger because he thought that, by being a police officer, he can get away with it.

News reports had mentioned that he had been accused of two homicide cases which apparently did not lend him any punishments.

A culture of impunity, which suggests that police officers will not get punished despite the flagrant violations of the law, must have enabled him in recklessly shooting the hapless victims point blank.

A Criminal Institution?

Using the “social issue” perspective, the problem is not the individual, Police Officer Nuezca seemed to be just pyschologically fine had this event not happened, rather, the problem is how the PNP has evolved to be the “criminal institution” it is right now.

There are some policies, pronouncements, and precedents that had driven even the most honest and law abiding police officers to be barbaric and deviant.

The “social issue” perspective is the one preferred by the progressive organizations and other critics of the government.

The preferred solution is for the government, specifically, President Duterte to tone down his rhetoric encouraging police officers to take matters into their own hands and be violent towards criminals.

Though, even if the President’s goals are honest and true, critics say, his words can always be misinterpreted and could lead to senseless killings such as these.

Stresses Of Police Work

A third explanation could be an integration of both perspectives, that is, it is both a psychological and social problem.

It is psychological because given the stresses of police work, individual police officers may feel anxious, agitated and frustrated all the time.

Police officers sometimes work extended hours, away from family for months on end (Police officer Nuezca works in Parañaque but lives in Tarlac) and usually deprived of our traditional family gatherings like birthdays, graduations, weddings, funerals, etc.

Police officers, in the Philippine setting, are usually overworked and underpaid, and with all the negative publicity lately, underappreciated.

Conditioned To Act That Way

While I do not condone the barbaric behavior of Police Officer Nuezca, clearly, he could have benefitted from Anger Management therapy if this had been made available for free for police officers.

This psychological state of mind may be exacerbated by the current climate of impunity.

When his daughter shouted, “my father is a police man” and he pulled the triggger thereafter, it shows how he had been conditioned to act that way– that being a police officer, he can get away with murder.

Thus, his anger issues, a personal deficit, was not restrained in any way, shape or form, by his training as a police officer– one that is supposed to serve and protect.

The culture of impunity had broken that social bond to his profession, and he had been free to commit a crime. Justice must be served by punishing Police Officer Nuezca.

He will have his individual desert by being prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison for a long long time.

But the issue here is how many more mothers and sons and daughters and fathers and neighbors will be recklessly killed by the police?

Blueprint For Recruitment

Using an integrated psychosocial perspective and based on the literature on police misconduct, here are some suggestions:

1. Strengthen police recruitment. Improve psychological testing to weed out individuals who are likely to wield power the wrong way. In the past, these tests were for sale. We need to do away with corruption in the recruitment stage.
2. Recruit police officers from the helping professions. We need more social workers, psychologists, sociologists, teachers, nurses, and other professions that value human life.
3. We need to have continuous training for police officers. We need to tell them about the value of human rights and and human dignity.
4. Create protocols to monitor abuse of power. There must be mechanisms to document incidents when police officers used force against the citizens.
5. Improve the criminology education in the Philippines. The criminology schools must be able to sensitize police officers in the corrupting nature of their work and how they can maintain police integrity despite these temptations.
6. Make statements against impunity. We should not encourage police officers to put matters into their own hands. We should always hold them accountable.