Three police officers in Quezon City allegedly threatened to nab four youth volunteers, including minors, for painting a mural which said "All Cops Are Bastards," a group fighting for urban poor's rights said Monday.
Save San Roque Alliance expressed alarm over the action committed by the police since, the group said, the mural is only "part of the clearing and designing of learning spaces" for a community-based school in the area.
"No specific violation was cited... Half of the four youth volunteers they tried to nab are minors," the group said in a Twitter message.
In a statement, the group said that their paralegal, Nanoy Rafael, immediately went to the scene upon learning of the incident, which happened around 2 p.m.
Rafael said, the police then asked them to come with them to the police station for legal charges although they "did not have any warrant of arrest."
"They asked for my personal background and ordered our group to stop taking photos and videos. They even threatened that they will come back every day to eradicate the youth organizations in the community," Rafael said in a statement.
"We were only asserting the community's right to these spaces for Eskuwela Maralita yet we were still met with harassment and red-tagging by state forces," he added.
The confrontation was eventually settled, according to Save San Roque, but the youth volunteers were allegedly "forced to erase the...mural in the end."
Manila Bulletin reached out to the Quezon City Police District for comment. It has yet to respond.