MANILAÂ â NorbertoÂ Maderal and George AvanceÃ±a made a fatal choice on the afternoon of October 19, the Philippine police say. The two pedicab drivers drew their guns in a slum in northern Manila and âtried to open fireâ at plainclothes officers posing as drug buyers, according to the police report into their killings.  The officers defended themselves, resulting in what the report called âthe instantaneous death of the suspects.â Dante Novicio, the police chief of Navotas City, told Reuters his men shot the pair âalmost simultaneously.â  Maderal, 42, and AvanceÃ±a, 33, are casualties in President Rodrigo Duterteâs âwar on drugs.âÂ Police say that 2,004 people have been shot and killed by officers in self-defense during anti-drug operations since the president took office on July 1.Â Â  When the police open fire in Duterteâs war, the suspects almost always die.  Reuters reviewed 42 drug-related shooting incidentsÂ involving the police in the Manila region covered by its journalists, as well as another 9 casesÂ investigated in the same area by the government-funded Philippinesâ Commission on Human Rights (CHR). In these combined 51 cases, police officers killed a total of 100 suspectsÂ and wounded just three. Of the three people who were shot but survivedÂ in these cases, two played dead and the third was arrested as he tried to flee the scene.Â Â  Video: âHe didnât have a gunâ  The presidentâs office responds to the Reuters investigation  Earlier: President Duterteâs dodgy data  The kill ratio is much higher than in countries with comparable drug-related violence.  The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, where police have been accused of extrajudicial killings in a bloody crimeÂ crackdown, pales next to the Philippines under Duterte. For every five people the Rio police killed between 2013 and 2015, they injured one person, according to a Human Rights Watch report in July.  In the Philippine cases examined by Reuters andÂ CHR, the police killed 97 percentÂ of those they shot â 33 deadÂ for every person wounded. A Philippine police spokesman said that no national statistics are available for injured drug suspects.  The figures pose a powerful challenge to the official narrative that the Philippines police are onlyÂ killing drug suspects in self-defense. These statistics and other evidence amassed by Reuters point in the other direction: that police are pro-actively gunning down suspects.  Eyewitnesses interviewed for this article often contradicted the police version of events. Norberto Maderalâs nephew told Reuters that his uncle was unarmed â and that he heard Maderal begging for his life before the police began shooting.  Efren Morillo, one of the rare survivors of a police raid, said he too was unarmed when an officer, standing a few feet away, shot him through the chest. As Morillo lay bleeding, feigning death, officers began shooting his companions. âI prayed to God to let me live,â he said.  Asked why almost every police drug encounter ended with the suspect being killed, Derrick Carreon, spokesmanÂ for the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, chuckled:Â âI guess some cops are just good at shooting. Theyâre probably good shots.â  Further stretching the plausibility of official statements,Â a review ofÂ police reports shows that officersÂ often give remarkably similar accounts each time a suspect is shot dead.  In their reports, officers describeÂ the typical victim as an alleged user or small-time dealer in a poor neighborhood. The attempt by undercover police to catch the suspect dealing drugs â a so-called âbuy-bustâ operation â quickly goes wrong. The suspect panics, draws a weapon and starts shooting. The police return deadly fire.  Found on the victimâs corpse is a .38 caliber revolver, often without a serial number, and plastic sachets of what police reports call âa white crystalline substance suspected to be shabu.â Shabu is the street name for crystal methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug that Duterteâs government has blamed for most of the serious crime in the Philippines.  âI prayed to God to let me live.â  Police crime-scene investigations and autopsies, meanwhile, are opaque and perfunctory. CHR investigators say that under DuterteÂ they have had to subpoena police forensics units to get access to full autopsies and forensic reports. The secretiveness has fueled suspicion among bereaved families and human rights monitors that guns and drugs are planted on suspects at crime scenes.  To Jun Nalangan, a special investigator at CHR, the pattern of evidence points to murder. âThe police report says there is a gun battle or a firefight,â he said. âIn our investigations, there is no such thing.Â Instead of drug bust operations, they are conducting extrajudicial killings.â  In the poor neighborhoods targeted by Duterte, many people interpret the police forceâs apparent freedom to kill without consequence as proof of a nationwide shoot-to-kill policy. While more than 1,500 anti-drug operationsÂ have come under investigation by the police forceâs Internal Affairs Service (IAS) since the start of Duterteâs drug war, no officers have been dismissed from the force for misconduct, an IAS official said.  Senior police officials say that IAS investigates all killings by officers. Chief Superintendent Leo Angelo Leuterio, the policeman who ran IAS until recently, told Reuters he was reluctant to prosecute officers while his country needed âwarm bodies in the fieldâ to fight the drug war.  For the police, the shootouts are far less deadly. Police say 17Â officers have died in anti-drug operations across the country since July 1. That means one officer has died for every 118 suspectsÂ killed. In Rio, for every officer who died in 2015, 24.8 people were killed by police, a rate more than double that of South Africa and triple that of the United States, according to the Human Rights Watch report.  President Duterte has denied that the police are conducting extrajudicial killings. At the same time, he has welcomed the mounting death toll. In September, he said heâd be âhappy to slaughterâ three million drug addicts.  âI guess some cops are just good at shooting. Theyâre probably good shots.â  Duterte also has signaled to the police that they can act with impunity. In the run-up to the May presidential election, he said he would pardon members of the security forces â and himself â if they committed human rights abuses while fighting crime. âPardon given to Rodrigo Duterte for the crime of multiple murder, signed Rodrigo Duterte,âÂ he told a group of business peopleÂ in Manila in April.  In a statement to Reuters, the Presidential Communications OfficeÂ said Duterte hasnât given the police license to kill drug dealers, but officers have a right to defend themselves when their lives are in danger. âThe drug war is not childâs play,â the statement said.  In one key area, the police do depart from Duterteâs stated game plan. The president and his senior officials routinely warn that âdrug lordsâ will be taken down. So far, almost all the victims have been poor, like Maderal and AvanceÃ±a, the two pedicab drivers who were shot dead by police in Navotas City in October.  Maderalâs nephew, Joemari Rodriguez, and other family members shared a house in North Bay Boulevard South, a district of teeming slums and trash-choked waterways in Navotas City. Reuters interviewed Rodriguez at the scene, less than two hours after the killings.  Rodriguez said he believes police executed his uncle but is too scared to lodge a complaint. âThey might come back for me,â he told Reuters outside the house.  Still quivering with shock, he said three plainclothes men barged into their home and dragged his uncle into the living room. âThey didnât say who they were,â said Rodriguez, 24, a medical technician.  Rodriguez said a man pushed him into his room and the door was held shut from the outside. Rodriguez couldnât see what happened next but said he could clearly hear his uncle pleading for his life. âHe was begging them, âSir, please!ââ he said. Then came two shots.  Minutes later, Rodriguez emerged from his room to find the men gone and his uncle slumped in a puddle of blood. âThere was a gun in his hand,â said Rodriguez. âI donât know where he got this.â He said his uncle was a drug user, but didnât own a gun and hadnât fought back.  Within five minutes of the shooting, said Rodriguez, uniformed police arrived to seal off the scene. Then, five to 10 minutes later, Rodriguez heard two more shots. He said this was when George AvanceÃ±a, a friend of Maderal who was hiding in a back room, was shot.  Two neighbours â Ruby Miradora, 49, a street sweeper, and Norminda Barbo, 38, a housewife â echoed Rodriguezâs account. They said they had heard two gunshots and then, 10 to 15 minutes later â after uniformed police had arrived â two more shots.  The killings of Maderal and AvanceÃ±a followed a familiar pattern described by eyewitnesses. Gunmen in civilian clothes burst into a home without identifying themselves. Suspects are moved away from relatives and other potential witnesses to a secluded spot or a different room, then shot dead by police. Many families also say the victims couldnât have fought back because they didnât own guns.  Dante Novicio, the Navotas City police chief, told Reuters he stood by his officersâ claim that Maderal and AvanceÃ±a were armed and were shot moments apart. Contradictory accounts were âallegations to confuse the result of the investigationâ and discredit his men, he said.  Maderal and AvanceÃ±a are two of 18Â peopleÂ police say they have killed in anti-drug operations in North Bay Boulevard South. An additional 14 bodies have been found in the district, most of them near C-3 bridge, a local dumping ground for victims.  The killings are part of a vast anti-drug campaign whose impact has been felt nationwide. Police say they have arrested more than 38,000 people. And over 800,000 drug users and pushers have registered with the authorities, a process known as âsurrendering.âÂ  In addition to the 2,004 drug suspects killed by officers, police are investigating another 3,060 deaths, though it isnât clear how many of those are drug-related. Human rights monitors believe many of these people were killed by vigilantes operating with the backingÂ of police - a charge the police and the government deny.  The police version of the August 21 shooting of Efren Morillo and four others in another poor Manila neighborhood closely follows the pattern of other killings. The police report says that the suspects opened fire, and that four guns and shabu were found at the scene.  But there was one difference: Morillo survived. The 28-year-old fruit vendor played dead until the police left.  Morillo said in an interview that he was standing only three paces from the police officer who shot him in the chest. He collapsed. A friend fell dead beside him, blood spewing from his mouth and head. Nearby, he said, police killed three other companions.  That night, said Morillo, only the police had guns. The officers appeared relaxed when they arrived. Two were carrying fighting cocks in baskets. âThis is the police!â one of the officers joked. âNo one run! Our fighting cocks might get squished.â  Morillo said he has no criminal record or involvement with drugs. Even as he was being led around the back of his friendâs shack by the police, Morillo thought the worst that could happen was that he would be photographed and arrested.  Then the police started shooting. Morillo was hit first and collapsed into a chair. Pretending to be dead, he said, he heard three of his companions outside crying before they were shot.  The police left. Holding his shirt to his wounds, Morillo slid down a nearby hill, waded across a creek and then struggled up the other bank, where he chanced upon a friend who drove him to a clinic. In an interview at CHR headquarters in Manila in early November, he lifted his shirt to reveal his scarred chest. The bullet that passed through him missed his heart and lungs.  He said his family had sold their home to pay his medical bills and other expenses. When the police discovered he was still alive, they pressed charges against him for assaulting a police officer. He turned to the Commission on Human Rights, which is helping defend him.  Fearing for his life, he rarely goes outside and has stopped working. A daily CHR stipendÂ of 150 pesos, about three dollars, isnât enough to feed his two sons, aged 8 and 9, he said. Morillo must also face his alleged attackers in court; one of them, he said, had shot him âdagger looksâ during his first court hearing.  âThese operations are not meant to just apprehend or arrest the drug suspects but really to liquidate them.â  The most outspoken opponent of Duterteâs crackdown, Senator Leila de Lima, says the drug busts are designed to be lethal.Â âThese operations are not meant to just apprehend or arrest the drug suspects but really to liquidate them,â she said in an interview.  At an August Senate inquiry, de Lima, a former justice secretary, quizzed national police chief Ronald Dela Rosa about the killings. At that time, police had killed 756 suspects.  âAll resisted arrest?â asked an incredulous de Lima. âYes, they resisted,â replied Dela Rosa. âOtherwise, they are alive today,â he added. His response provoked disbelieving laughter.  In November, the National Bureau of Investigation charged de Lima with involvement in the illegal drug trade at a national jail. De Lima called the charges "trumped up," part of a harassment campaign by Duterte and his allies.  The mounting death toll is putting pressure on the police forceâs forensics unit, the Scene of Crime Operatives (SOCO). Officers routinely work 24-hour or even 48-hour shifts, its chief, Reynaldo Calaoa, told Reuters. From the moment a suspect is shot to the time the funeral parlor gives his or her body to the family for the wake, SOCO controls almost every process by which forensic evidence is gathered.  Forensic evidence can be vital in determining whether cops or witnesses are telling the truth. But in the Philippines, police forensic scientists are underfunded and overwhelmed, and the evidence they produce is hard for CHR investigators to access. The crime laboratory at the police headquarters at Camp Crame in Manila has only two dissection tables and no cold storage for bodies, SOCO said. It also lacks an X-ray machine to scan corpses for bullet fragments.  Instead, SOCO performs most of its autopsies at police-accredited but privately owned funeral parlors, which act as both official morgues and crime labs. The funeral parlor then embalms the body before it is given to the family for the wake.  SOCO autopsies are mandatory and usually take place at the funeral parlor within hours of the bodyâs arrival. The full autopsy reports are not released to the families. CHR investigators told Reuters they had to subpoena SOCO to get full autopsies, even though CHR is a government agency.  Those autopsies are potentially damning, as a killing in the first week of Duterteâs campaign suggests. Police said they shot dead Conrado Berona, 36, who was wanted for robbery and drug dealing, in a gunfight on July 6, and that shabu was found on his body. But a CHR investigation into his death, reviewed by Reuters, noted that the bullet wound in Beronaâs chest showed âtattooing.â This distinctive skin abrasion is caused by partially burned or unburned gunpowder and indicates the victim was shot at close range.  In its report, based in part on sworn witness testimony, CHR found that âthe alleged shootout never happened,â and that Berona was unarmed and surrendering when plainclothes and uniformed police shot him. CHR said it recommended filingÂ criminal and administrativeÂ cases against the policeÂ who killed Berona.  SOCO medical-legalÂ officer Jane Monzon told Reuters she had seen evidenceÂ of tattooing in four victims of police buy-bust operations in Manila. She declined to say more. SOCOâs chief, Reynaldo Calaoa, said his agency is not tracking close-range shootings.  SOCO came under scrutiny in November in the shooting of one of the few high-profile people targeted in the anti-drug crackdown. On November 5, Rolando Espinosa, a mayor from central Leyte Province, was shot and killed in his prison cell. A fellow prisoner, Raul Yap, was also killed in what police said was a shootout.  Earlier, Duterte had put Espinosaâs name on a list of top drug suspects. The mayor, who denied involvement in narcotics, was arrested on October 5 on drugs and firearms charges. Police said Espinosa and Yap fired at a police team that had come to search their cells for guns and drugs. Police returned fire and killed them.  A Senate hearing on November 10 into the mayorâs death found that the police team had summoned SOCO crime-scene investigators about 40 minutes before entering the prison, according to an affidavit from an officer at a police operations center.  Senator Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief who co-led the hearing, likened this to phoning a funeral parlor before a shoot-out. He said the call suggested Espinosaâs killing was âpremeditated.â  A policeÂ spokesman said a preliminary investigation showed operational procedures had not been followed, and a number of officers have been confined to police headquarters while the investigation continues.  The shooting followed the familiar pattern. Police said they recovered two guns from Yapâs and Espinosaâs cells. Drug paraphernalia and a small sachet of suspected shabu were also found inside Espinosaâs cell, police said.  Angela Lafuente has been trying to get hold of SOCOâs autopsy report for her brother Angelo, who was murdered in August after witnesses said he was detained by police. She believes it could prove that police were involved in his gruesome death.  âPardon given to Rodrigo Duterte for the crime of multiple murder, signed Rodrigo Duterte.â  During his election campaign, Duterte vowed to dump the corpses of criminals into Manila Bay and âfatten all the fish there.â Angelo Lafuente didnât make it as far as the water.  According to Navotas City police records, Lafuenteâs body was found on August 19 at about 3.20 a.m. next to a filthy river that feeds into the bay under C-3 bridge. His corpse was riddled with bullets and covered with what his family said were signs of torture â deep cuts and cigarette burns.  The deaths of Lafuente and two companionsÂ cast doubt on police claims that they have nothing to do with these killings.  Two eyewitnessesÂ said Lafuente, 22, was last seen alive in police custody on August 18, about 12 hours before his body was found. Police, including a SWAT team, had swept through his squatter settlement, a dense jumble of shacks near Navotas fishmarket. The operation, according to police records, turned deadly when police shot and killed three other menÂ who opened fire or tried to open fire on them.  When police arrived that afternoon, Lafuente ran, said his sister Angela. Running with him was a cousin, Renato Forio, 26, and another local known only as Benjie, also in his early to mid-twenties.  Angela and other residents say the three young menÂ were caught by police near the main road that runs past the settlement. Standing in a crowd on the other side of the road, Angela said she saw men in plainclothes bundle her brother, Forio and Benjie into a marked police van.  Elisa Martinez, 59, a local resident, was standing closer to the police van. She saw three young menÂ emerge from the van, their hands tied behind their backs. She told Reuters they were put onto motorbikes ridden by masked men in civilian clothes, and driven away.  Angela went to the station to look for Lafuente, Forio and Benjie. She didnât find them. She returned home. Around 2 a.m., a neighbor told her that three bodies had been discovered. âWe knew then that Angelo was dead,â she said.  His body was found with Benjieâs by C-3 bridge. According to Angelo Lafuenteâs death certificate, the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the âhead, trunk (and) right lower extremity.â  KILLING TIME: Local residents mill around C-3 bridge, a dumping ground for drug-war victims in the North Bay Boulevard South district of northern Manila. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj  DUMPING GROUND: A woman peers from a home near C-3 bridge. The corpse of Angelo Lafuente and other drug-war victims were found nearby. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj  TROUBLED WATERS: A woman washes clothes near C-3 bridge in North Bay Boulevard South. Most of the victims in Duterteâs drug war have been from impoverished areas. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj  AFTER DARK: Locals fix a street light near C-3 bridge. So far, President Duterteâs crackdown has focused on small fry, despite his vow to go after drug lords. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj  CRAWL SPACE: A man enters a shack beneath C-3 bridge.Â People in targeted areas like this slum feel the police are shooting to kill.Â REUTERS/Damir Sagolj  Forioâs body was found outside a nearby school, also around 3.20 a.m., according to police records.Â Cause of death: âGunshot wounds, head and trunk.â  Angela went to the funeral home to see the bodies. She said her brother had short, deep cuts on his chest, arms and face, and what looked like cigarette burns on his chest and hands. Benjieâs neck looked broken and his left eye had popped out, she said.  Forioâs father, also named Renato, told Reuters his sonâs face had been beaten so badly it was âunrecognisable.â  Police said the bodies of Lafuente and Forio were foundÂ with their hands bound with plastic straps, and they had sachets of âa white crystalline substance suspected to be shabuâ on them.  There was no record of Lafuente, Forio and Benjie having been detained during the August 18 police operation, Navotas City police chief Novicio told Reuters. âMaybe they scampered away because of their illegal activities,â he said.  Novicio said their deaths were under investigation, but âwe are expecting nothing.â Local residents werenât cooperating with police, he said, mainly due to their âfear of these criminal elements.â  On November 14, police gave Angela a two-page summary of the autopsy they had performed on her brother nearly three months earlier. It recorded the cause of death as gunshot wounds. The full autopsy, police told her, was âconfidential.â  National police chief Ronald Dela Rosa and other top officers have said that all operational deaths are investigated by the Internal Affairs Service (IAS), the police watchdog, and that their men were blameless unless proven otherwise.  But the sheer volume of shootings is overwhelming IAS. Chief Superintendent Leo Angelo Leuterio, who was actingÂ head of IAS until recently, said the office investigates all cases in which there has been a discharge of weapons, the death of an officer or a civilian, or allegations of human rights violations or evidence tampering.  Of the 1,548 cases IAS scrutinized from July 1 to November 24, about a quarter were dropped for lack of evidence or witnesses - IAS doesnât have a witness protection program. More than a third were still pending investigation.  Only 29 cases had reached a stage that could result in disciplinary action. IAS lawyer Maria Constantinopla estimated that perhaps 21 of these cases would be dismissed on grounds of self-defense due to evidence of a shootout between the police and suspects.  Leuterio, who remains a senior official at IAS, acknowledges that witnesses and families fear the police and either donât file a complaint or refuse to testify in IAS cases, which are dropped as a result. And he suspects investigators are failing to uncover some police wrongdoing. âI think that there are a greater number of abuses committed in the course of these operations than the numbers reflect,â he said.Â Â  But Leuterio makes his sympathies clear.  âWeÂ have to settle the debate of whom do we protect more,â he said. âThe drug pushers, the drug suspects, the drug addicts? Or the government agent whose only intention is to preserve order in society?â  Additional reporting by John Chalmers in Manila.  Reuters submitted five questions to the Presidential Communications OfficeÂ of Rodrigo Duterte for the news agencyâs investigation into police killings of drug suspects. The questions and replies are reproduced here in full, edited only for spelling and punctuation:  1. In anti-drug operations in which police say they kill suspects in self-defense (2,004 deaths), almost none of the suspects survive. Why is that?  Answer:Â THE DRUG WAR IS SERIOUS.  The drug war is not childâs play.  Unfortunately, those who resist and fight back with arms have to be dealt with by tough law enforcement. Violent encounters do have the risk of the suspects being killed because they are armed in the first place. If they are fighting the police, the police have no recourse but to shoot back, else they could be the ones to end up dead. Itâs unfair to say that none of the suspects survive. Police and drug personalities can end up wounded, if they survive. For more detailed information, you may want to contact the Public Information Office of the Philippine National Police.Â [Editorâs note: The police told Reuters that they did not have statistics for suspects injured in anti-drug operations.]  2. Philippine police operations are much deadlier than those of police forces in other comparable countries. Why?  Answer:Â The statement is evidently one-sided trying to depict the Philippines as The Wild, Wild West in this part of the world. If indeed Philippine police operations were much deadlier than those in other countries, why are there increasing incidents of police authorities getting wounded or killed in operations?  There are two sides in every story. Unfortunately, our hardworking law enforcement officers who are risking life and limb to rid society of drugs and crime do not land on the front pages of the papers.  3. Many Filipinos, and not just the families of victims killed in drug raids, suspect that police buy-bust operations are actually extrajudicial executions. Family members say that relatives have been executed by the police and that many of the police shootings follow a similar pattern, with the suspect opening fire and then a revolver and shabu (methamphetamine) being found on their bodies after the police shoot them dead. What is your response to the claim that this points to extrajudicial killings by the police?  Answer:Â We decry the attribution of drug-related killings to the police. Again and again, the President has reiterated that his adherence to due process and rule of law is uncompromising. He knows the limits of his authority as President.  The President has consistently indicated that the drug war is on the level of narcopolitics. This means the drug trade is so serious that the nature of a number of deaths implies internecine, or killings within the organization of the drug trade. These do not fall under the ambit of the law but remain our concern.  4. What does this high number of killings by police say about the progress of the war on drugs? When will the war on drugs end?  Answer:Â We have only scratched the surface. No one knew the magnitude of the drug problem in the country. It is just recently that we have learned of the disturbing rise of narcopoliticians who use drug money to buy votes.  As to when this will end, to quote the President, âIt will continue until the last pusher is out of the streets.â He said: âThe drug war will be sustained and relentless until the last drug lord, the last financier, and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars.â  5. President Duterteâs critics say that, in his war on drugs, he has given free rein to the police to execute drug suspects. What is the Presidentâs answer to this criticism?  Answer:Â The President has not empowered the police to kill drug dealers and suspects. His marching order to the police is that they have the right to defend themselves when their lives are endangered when drug suspects violently resist arrest. As the Chief Executive said in his first State of the Nation Address, âTo our police officers and other officials, do your job and you will have the unwavering support of the Office of the President. I will be with you all the way. Abuse your authority and there will be a hell to pay, for you will have become worse than criminality itself.â  Also, police authorities take seriously allegations of all officersâ involvement in drug-related killings, and they follow established internal procedures for investigating and addressing such cases.  By Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Damir Sagolj  Edited by Peter Hirschberg and David Lague
In 51 Philippine drug busts, cops killed 100 people. Just 3 were wounded. The 97% kill rate and other evidence suggest cops are summarily killing their targets.