Revealing Duterte's War With Data, Cameras and Shoe Leather
Andrew R.C. Marshall
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Clarita Alia knew what was coming.
I met her with Reuters colleague Manny Mogato in May 2016 in a slum in Davao City, just after its long-time mayor, Rodrigo Duterte – also known as “The Punisher” – was elected president of the Philippines. Four of Alia’s sons were killed in Davao in a brutal anti-drug campaign that Duterte had vowed to take nationwide.
“Blood will flow like a river,” Alia predicted.
She was right.
Read the investigation here.
We did this by melding data journalism, multimedia and shoe-leather reporting. Clare and I accessed and analysed a trove of official crime reports, security camera footage and crime scene photos. This allowed us to identify not just new patterns in the killings, but also the top killers.
We corroborated our findings with months of reporting in slums and hostile police stations, often working as a team to watch each other’s back. Clare was greeted at one station by homicide detectives who shouted and lifted their shirts to display their guns.
Human-rights groups blamed thousands of vigilante-style killings on the police or their associates. The police publicly denied this. But two senior officers – one of them, at times, trembling with nerves - told Clare and Manny that police had carried out most of these killings. That story also cited a secret report, leaked to Manny, that detailed how police received cash for executing suspects, planted evidence at crime scenes and disabled security cameras in neighbourhoods where they planned to kill.
Even so, we continued to pry data from the police by making calls, writing letters and visiting stations to inspect and record blotters and other original documents. This allowed us to identify a deadly police unit from Duterte’s hometown – the “Davao Boys.” Armed with this data, Clare and I retraced the unit’s lethal path through Metro Manila’s streets. When Clare asked one Davao Boy why he had been chosen for the unit, he smiled and replied: “Special kill skills.”
(Reuters)
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