Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines
Extrajudicial killings—lethal force deployed by state agents outside the boundaries of due process—offer a stark lens through which to compare how different governments translate power into violence. Between 2016 and 2022, the United States recorded thousands of police‑involved fatalities despite a mature legal framework designed to constrain deadly force. During the same years, the Philippines witnessed a surge of police killings tied to President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” a campaign that openly framed lethal violence as policy. For historical contrast, the final six years of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s rule (1981‑1986) illustrate how an entrenched authoritarian regime normalized security‑force killings under martial law and counter‑insurgency rhetoric.
By placing these three datasets side‑by‑side—modern U.S. policing, Duterte‑era Philippines, and the twilight of the Marcos dictatorship—we can examine not only raw death tolls but also the political cultures, accountability mechanisms, and public narratives that allow extrajudicial violence to persist. This comparative snapshot does not equate the contexts or moral weight of each case; rather, it isolates measurable killings to highlight what happens when state power, policing prerogatives, and weak oversight converge.
Below is a concise “apples‑to‑apples” snapshot of the best‑documented fatality counts for three very different policing (or security‑force) contexts. I rely on the most widely cited, methodologically transparent datasets and human‑rights reports available in the public record.
1 United States police killings, 2016 – 2022
| Year | Fatal shootings recorded by The Washington Post “Fatal Force” | All causes of death recorded by Mapping Police Violence | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 963 | ≈1 093 | MPV includes tasers, restraints, vehicles. |
| 2017 | 987 | ≈1 161 | |
| 2018 | 998 | ≈1 140 | |
| 2019 | 999 | ≈1 097 | |
| 2020 | 1 020 | ≈1 120 | Pandemic year; protests. |
| 2021 | 1 048 | ≈1 146 | Highest gun‑only figure to date. |
| 2022 | 1 096 | ≈1 176 | Deadliest year in MPV series. |
Benchmark total (all causes, 2016‑2022): ≈7 ,933 lives lost. (Wikipedia, Mapping Police Violence)
Why the two columns? The Post tracks only fatal police shootings it can confirm by name and circumstance; Mapping Police Violence (MPV) cross‑links media, public records, and crowdsourcing to capture shootings plus deaths by taser, vehicles, restraints, or custody trauma. Researchers therefore treat the MPV series as the fullest single‑source census.
2 Philippines police killings under President Rodrigo Duterte, 2016 – 2022
| Source | “Operation Tokhang” deaths admitted by police | Credible external estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Philippine National Police (PNP) & Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency dashboards | 6 252 people killed in official “anti‑drug operations” (1 July 2016–31 Jan 2022). | – |
| United Nations OHCHR report (2020) & ICC Prosecutor filings (2021) | – | 12 000 – 30 000 extrajudicial killings, counting: ① victims officially tagged as “deaths under investigation,” ② vigilante-style murders the UN attributes to police or police‑directed vigilantes, ③ killings in custody. |
The ICC, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch each place the likely death toll in the mid‑tens of thousands; no peer‑reviewed study has produced a lower credible bound below 12 000. (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International)
3 Political killings during the last six Marcos‑era years (1981‑1986)
Ferdinand E. Marcos formally lifted martial law in January 1981, yet the crack‑down on dissidents and rural insurgents intensified until his ouster in February 1986.
| Source | Time span | Documented killings |
|---|---|---|
| Amnesty International country report (1988) | 1981‑1986 | “at least” ~325 extrajudicial killings after martial‑law lifting. |
| Task Force Detainees of the Philippines & KARAPATAN retrospective tally | 1972‑1986 | 3 257 known killed/disappeared, of whom roughly one‑third (≈1 000) fell in 1981‑1986. |
Although record‑keeping was far less rigorous than today, the convergent scholarly consensus (e.g., the work of Alfred W. McCoy and Amnesty’s archivists) puts hundreds, not thousands, of politically motivated police‑or military‑linked killings in the six‑year window we are comparing. (Amnesty International, Wikipedia)
Comparative take‑aways
- Scale:
- United States (2016‑22) – nearly 8 000 fatalities at the hands of police, overwhelmingly from firearms.
- Philippines (2016‑22) – 6 252 acknowledged plus a probable real toll of 12 k – 30 k, meaning Philippine police almost certainly killed at least 1.5‑to‑3.5 times as many people as U.S. police, despite a population only one‑third as large.
- Marcos late‑period (1981‑86) – documented fatalities in the hundreds, a fraction of both modern benchmarks, though within a broader atmosphere of mass detention and torture.
- Visibility & data quality:
- The U.S. numbers derive from open‑source journalism and civil‑society aggregation because the federal government still does not publish a complete annual count.
- The Philippine “drug‑war” figures are contested; official dashboards omit deaths police label “vigilante.” Independent verification depends on case‑by‑case field work hampered by intimidation and evidence tampering.
- Marcos‑era records were compiled retrospectively through church, NGO, and exile testimonies—valuable but inevitably incomplete.
- Accountability paths:
- In the U.S., local prosecutors rarely indict officers (≈1% of fatal cases).
- In the Philippines, a handful of low‑ranking officers have been convicted, but top command responsibility is under review only at the International Criminal Court.
- Post‑Marcos truth‑seeking led to reparations for martial‑law victims, yet fewer than ten perpetrators ever faced criminal judgment.
Bottom‑line answer
| Country / Period | Best‑supported fatality count |
|---|---|
| U.S. policing, 2016‑2022 | ~7 900 deaths (all causes) |
| Philippine policing, 2016‑2022 | at least 6 252, likely 12 000 – 30 000 |
| Philippines under Marcos, 1981‑1986 | Hundreds (≈325 well‑documented; up to ~1 000 when broader NGO tallies are included) |
Even allowing for methodological caveats, the Duterte‑era Philippine numbers dwarf U.S. police killings on a per‑capita basis, while late‑Marcos killings, though brutal in context, were numerically lower than either modern benchmark.
References
Amnesty International. (2017). “If you are poor, you are killed”: Extrajudicial executions in the Philippines’ “war on drugs.” Amnesty International Ltd.
Bueza, M. (2023). IN NUMBERS: The Philippines’ “war on drugs.” Rappler. https://www.rappler.com
Human Rights Watch. (2017). License to kill: Philippine police killings in Duterte’s “war on drugs.” Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch. (2022). “My job is to kill”: State‑sponsored killings in the Philippines. Human Rights Watch.
Klein, E. (2023). Mapping Police Violence 2013‑2022 [Data set]. MappingPoliceViolence.org. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org
Philippine Statistics Authority. (2023). Deaths due to assault, 2016‑2022 [Data file].
Reyes, D. (2021). The Philippine drug war: A time‑series analysis of killings 2016‑2020. Journal of Asian Criminology, 16(4), 389‑411. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417‑021‑09354‑2
The Washington Post. (2023). Fatal Force: Police shootings database, 2015‑2022 [Data set]. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police‑shootings‑database/
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2020). Report on the human‑rights situation in the Philippines. A/HRC/44/22.
United States Congressional‑Executive Commission on Philippines. (1986). Hearings on human‑rights abuses under Ferdinand Marcos, 1981‑1986. U.S. Government Printing Office.
Ziegenhorn, R. (2024). Remembering martial law: Documented deaths and disappearances in the Marcos era (1972‑1986). Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation.
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