TACLOBAN CITY- Officials of both the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) promised to dig deeper into the misencounter between policemen and soldiers in a remote village of Sta.Rita, Samar on June 25.
Facing with members of the media, both AFP Chief Carlito Galvez, Jr. and Police Director General Oscar Albayalde promised that justice will be served to the slain policemen as their respective forces have now conducted separate investigation on the incident that shocked the nation.
On Wednesday (June 27), Galvez and Albayalde visited the wake of slain policemen lie in state at the gymnasium located inside the regional headquarters of the PNP in Palo.
Galvez said that the soldiers involved in the misencounter have already been disarmed and restricted at their camp in Calbiga, also in Samar as the investigation is now underway.
The AFP chief has maintained that what happened was an incident and could not be considered as an ambush.
“We cannot say that it is (an ambush).We really don’t know what happened. We really have to wait for the result of the investigation,” Galvez said.
Albayalde also vowed that justice would be given to the families of the slain policemen, all holding PO1 rank, as he asked the public to wait for the result of the team he formed that is tasked to conduct the investigation over the incident.
“We will find out after the board of inquiry release the findings of their investigation,” he said.
Both Galvez and Albayalde said that they want to know up to what level the supposed coordination made by both parties was reached.
The alleged lack of coordination was cited as possible reason why the incident happened.
“We don’t want to point fingers, to find faults. What we want to find out is what went wrong so that it will not happen again,” he said.
“If it is with coordination, then we probably might be able to improve the coordination between the police and the Army especially so with our operating units,” the PNP director general added.
(LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA)
