Discipline bites back
So who needs disciplining more — the enforcer who turned a curfew violation into a death sentence, or the officials who empowered their grotesque idea of public order?
Three young men are dead because, according to media accounts, a man charged with enforcing Quezon City’s ordinances took a curfew violation personally. It happened around 2 a.m. on 12 October in Batasan Hills, where Task Force Disiplina member Alvince Tolentino, reportedly drunk, confronted three teenagers.
An argument followed. The teenagers ran when Tolentino allegedly drew a gun, and police say he chased them and opened fire. An 18-year-old, a 19-year-old and a 15-year-old were killed.
In an interview after his arrest, Tolentino reportedly described the victims as “salot sa lipunan,” or the scourge of society. He said he would leave it to the court to determine if he committed the triple murders, while insisting that the boys had violated the curfew.
That response is particularly disturbing. It is one thing to deny a crime; it is another to suggest the victims somehow deserved what happened to them. Tolentino’s reported remarks offer a glimpse of the thinking that a uniform justifies impunity.
Unfortunately, Task Force Disiplina has a history that makes this tragedy difficult to dismiss as an isolated aberration.
In April 2020, a video showed an enforcer repeatedly striking a fish vendor with a rattan stick and dragging him to the ground. The vendor had been accosted for allegedly violating Covid-19 quarantine rules. The enforcer? Suspended for 60 days.
Four months later, the task force’s chief, Rannie Ludovica, posted a “shoot-to-kill” policy for quarantine violators. He also reportedly wrote that irresponsible residents should be killed.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government called the threat illegal. Mayor Joy Belmonte condemned the remarks as wrong and irresponsible, noting that Ludovica had apologized, as if that were enough to let him go his merry way.
The task force carried on. Whatever lesson was meant to be learned about restraint, particularly toward people with little power to defend themselves, went out the window.
Certainly, Tolentino served under Ludovica, but nobody should claim that these earlier incidents caused the Batasan Hills killings. Still, they point to a culture of violence that was tolerated, if not abetted.
When a unit’s chief publicly talks about shooting violators, what does that tell the people under him? When enforcers are caught using excessive force and the penalty is a 60-day suspension, what is being taught?
Belmonte has disbanded the task force and ordered background checks, neuropsychological examinations, and drug tests for its members to remain with the Department of Public Order and Safety.
Still, City Hall must answer how Tolentino was recruited, what screening he underwent, whether complaints were previously lodged against him, and how he came to possess a firearm when the city says the task force issued none.
It must account for the supervision and disciplinary procedures that govern the unit, and for who decided, after 2020, that it should keep operating as it was. Disbanding an office is easy. Answering for the people who ran it, and for the system that allowed it to operate, is harder.
Quezon City residents were told Task Force Disiplina would teach them discipline. Three teenagers are dead. So who needs disciplining more — the enforcer who turned a curfew violation into a death sentence, or the officials who empowered their grotesque idea of public order?