The Philippine National Police (PNP) said Thursday it is ready to face possible charges to be filed by Vice President Sara Duterte over last weekend’s confrontation with police officers who secured the transfer of her chief of staff from a hospital.
“That is always the right of anybody to file a case against the police, especially if they feel that they were aggrieved. We welcome that and we will wait for the case to be filed before we make a statement and make the appropriate answer, wherever forum they make this case to,” Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) chief Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III told reporters in a press briefing held at Camp Crame, Quezon City.
Duterte said she is considering filing charges for disobedience, kidnapping and robbery against the PNP.
This came after the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) filed on Wednesday charges for direct assault, disobedience to authority and grave coercion, all punishable under the Revised Penal Code, against Duterte, Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group (VPSPG) chief Col. Raymond Dante Lachica, and two John Does before the City Prosecutors Office.
Video footage obtained by the PNP showed Duterte and Lachica pushing Lt. Col. Jason Villamor, chief of the QCPD’s medical and dental unit, who was then assigned to accompany the Vice President’s chief of staff Undersecretary Zuleika Lopez during her transfer to the Veterans Memorial Medical Center from the St. Luke’s Medical Center on Nov. 23.
Torre said they also looked into filing other cases but decided to defer to the Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation considering that many of these contain “intricate questions of law”.
“We asked from the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) the names of their personnel who were on duty at that time and I have already received it at idi-direkta na namin (we will direct it) to a supplemental affidavit para ma-implead sila sa kasong ito (for them to be impleaded in this case),” Torre said. (PNA)
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