Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa is hurting.

Why, oh why is the United States doing this to

him, laments the former police chief turned rookie senator — this being the widely
bruited about but unconfirmed report that the US Embassy has cancelled his visa and
banned him from entering that country, as part of US government efforts to sanction
human rights violators.
Not one word has been heard from the US Embassy commenting on the allegation
either way, but that has not stopped Dela Rosa from floridly expressing his
unhappiness.

Granting the report is true, that means he can no longer visit his siblings and relatives
in the Big Apple, he lamented.
And what to do if his boxing idol and colleague Sen. Manny Pacquiao has a fight in
the United States? Woe, oh woe. “Sino bang masaya (Who can be happy with this)?”
he asked.
The United States must have heard wrong, he insisted: If it’s true “that the basis of the
cancellation is the involvement in EJK (extrajudicial killings), well, they are very
biased, they are misinformed, they are misled by their informants.”
Then Dela Rosa turned to the media: “You, the media, right here in the Philippines,
did I encourage (the police) to kill the drug suspects? Did I order (them) to kill? Did I
cover up the wrongdoings of our policemen?”
Well, let’s see…
It was during Dela Rosa’s stint as chief of the Philippine National Police from July
2016 to April 2018 that EJKs were at their highest and most prevalent. Various
reports during his leadership said that at least 4,000 were killed, and perhaps up to
12,000 if the killings by vigilantes and riding-tandem assassins were included.
In launching the Duterte administration’s antidrug war operations and serving as its
chief implementer, Dela Rosa remained unmoved in the face of widespread
accusations of summary killings by policemen, and routinely echoed the police
narrative that those killed invariably fought it out (“nanlaban”) with the authorities,
despite testimonies of victims’ kin and other evidence to the contrary.
It was during Dela Rosa’s reign when 17-year-old Kian delos Santos was barbarously
killed by Caloocan police while kneeling and begging for his life. CCTV cameras had
captured the crime, and yet Dela Rosa would spend the next days and weeks
defending the police conduct and sliming the Delos Santos family with insinuations
that they, including the young Kian, were into the drug trade — accusations that were
belied by neighbors and barangay officials in the community.
When three policemen were eventually convicted of Kian’s murder, not one word of
apology or regret was ever heard from Dela Rosa’s mouth, even with Judge Rodolfo
Azucena Jr.’s ringing condemnation of the deed all but a rebuke of the brutal methods
the Duterte administration and its chief henchman had brought to their centerpiece
drug war: “A shoot first, think later attitude can never be countenanced in a civilized
society. Never has homicide or murder been a function of law enforcement.”