Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to kill drug dealers himself Friday in an effort to stop his war on crime.
“Those who rape children, who rape women, those sons of … if you don’t want the police, I am here now. I will shoot them. That’s true! If nobody would dare it, I will pull the trigger,” he said Friday night.
Duterte’s comments follow an Oct. 11 announcement to pull cops from his war on drugs due to their alleged killings of thousands of people. He has since created the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), comprised of 2,000 agents compared to the police force’s 165,000-man operation, according to the South China Morning Post.
“OK, let us see, six months from now. If things get worse again, I will say to these apes: ‘Go back to this job. You solve this problem of ours,'” he said of the police.
The spokesman of the PDEA told the South China Morning Post he would stand with the president if he follows through with the threat.
“If the president so decides, we will welcome that,” Derrick Arnold Carreon said.
Duterte previously threatened in September to have his own son killed if he was caught distributing drugs, following his campaign promise to kill 100,000 people guilty of selling or making illegal narcotics.
“I said before my order was: ‘If I have children who are into drugs, kill them so people will not have anything to say,’” Duterte said in a speech in September.
He pledged during his election campaign that none of his four children sold drugs, but threatened punishing them if they were. Paulo Duterte, one of his sons, was accused of helping a Chinese triad gang smuggle meth into the Philippines. Duterte didn’t address the allegation directly, but threatened killing Paulo if he did in fact assist.
“So I told Pulong [his son’s nickname]: ‘My order is to kill you if you are caught. And I will protect the police who kill you, if it is true,’” Duterte said in September.
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