There was a time not too long ago when most local movies almost always ended with the arrival of policemen at the crime scene after the lead star had obliterated all the goons, indicating that the film has reached its climax.

Funny, but this says a lot about how cops have been seen then that it needed an image overhaul before they can even come near to what their slogan describes them — that they are there to serve and protect.

Without saying so, the job of policemen is to risk their lives to ensure the public's safety and the protection of their property.

Personal experiences with the police force, however, have molded a negative image of the supposed protectors of the people.

Their involvement in various crimes did not help any. Name them — kidnapping, drug distribution, smuggling — some of them have all been part of those shenanigans that you can't blame people for giving them low trust ratings when survey time comes around.

While most of the bad eggs have either been sacked or transferred jurisdiction, the fact that they remain distant in people's perceptive index is something that should be looked into by the government.

When former President Rodrigo R. Duterte waged his controversial war on drugs, the police force became the central figure in that bloody fight against the purveyors of the illicit trade, with most victims crying for justice and accusing their tormentors of violating human rights.

Tokhang, which literally means knocking on the doors of drug suspects and telling them to stop their trade, became a byword with negative connotations.

Instead of simply being the codename of the government's campaign against the vice, tokhang has become synonymous with death during an anti-illegal drug operation.

Rather than just knocking on the doors of suspected drug pushers, Oplan Tokhang became something else as thousands died in the anti-drug operations supposedly because the suspects fought back.

Memories of those tokhang days came rushing back as plainclothes police officers made unannounced visits to the homes of journalists over the weekend, triggering howls of protest among the working media and causing backlash online.