Dylan Jones
Article summary #2
FIL 185
September 6th, 2016
“Philippines President declares ‘state of lawlessness’ ”
The article I have read is about taking serious action in a country, specifically the
Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte declared the country in a ‘state of lawlessness’ after
a terrorist attack. 71 were injured and 14 were killed after an explosion, and this state of
lawlessness grants police and military personnel the right to frisk anyone and search their
cars.
The reason that I chose to write about this article is because I feel as though it breaks some
parts of ethics. To me, I was always told that police need either warrants or some sort of
reasonable doubt to search some ones car. If a police officer or military personnel were to
stop me, just because and for no reason, I would be fairly scared and question why I was
being searched.
I understand the action and the stand that the President is taking but to me it seems a little
extreme to search everybody all the time like the article is stating. If I were the President in
this situation, I would set up checkpoints instead and ask for ID’s rather than to take them
from their cars and search them. With checkpoints the officers can make sure that they are
from that area, and if something looks suspicious, that would then give them the
reasonable doubt police need to precede and search the vehicle. That is not unethical
because that is a law already, any police cannot search something or someone without a
search warrant or reasonable doubt.