Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Nicolas Torre III vowed to launch an aggressive legal offensive against what he described as “DDS vloggers and trolls” who are allegedly spreading manipulated crime videos to falsely portray the country as plagued by lawlessness.
Torre announced the campaign Monday, Aug. 18, pledging to hold accountable those responsible for circulating fake news and foreign footage misrepresented as local incidents.
“These were all posted by DDS vloggers, DDS trolls who have no legitimate issues to throw at the government, that’s why they are making up stories, fake news like their idol,” Torre said during a press briefing.
Torre cited three cases of the crime videos that were allegedly manipulated to paint a bad image of the PNP.
First was a video of three young motorcycle-riding men who placed a wooden bench in the middle of the road. The bench resulted in a motorcycle crash.
Torre said the video indeed happened, not in the Philippines though as the motorcycle license plate turned out to be registered in Indonesia.
The video was uploaded by Mitsy Vlogs and Torre said they are now coordinating with Meta to take down the video from Facebook.
Torre then presented a second video uploaded by a certain Kerwin Salvador dela Cruz that showed a group of teenagers ganging up on a young man.
He said the verification made by the PNP’s Anti-Cybercrime Group revealed that the incident happened in Vietnam.
“We will have all of these taken down and we will also file charges,” said Torre.
The third video, according to Torre, happened in Cebu but it turned out to be a case of a fistfight between two bus passengers, not a case of robbery as claimed by the vlogger who uploaded it.
The Police Regional Office 7 already filed a case against the vlogger in connection with the incident.
“These people, especially the critics of the President, could not get legitimate issues against the government that’s why they are making these things up,” said Torre.
“This is crazy. They are misleading the public into believing that all these happened in the Philippines, that there is no orderliness, that there is no peace and order in the country,” he added. (Aaron Recuenco)
