Duterte’s credibility rests on Davao, says Jocelyn. “How could you have economic development when all that f***ing crime was going on? He cleaned up.” Over several chapters, Miller casts light on this savage clean-up process in Davao. It is thought that between 1998 and 2015, the Davao Death squads, vigilante killers Duterte was alleged to have bankrolled, murdered over 1,400 people. Corpses were turning up all over the city; bodies were chopped and scattered in quarries and caves, or fed to crocodiles, as recounted in one startling anecdote by a Death Squad member. Hit men were handsomely paid for assassinations; the Mayor’s office, alleged one former Death Squad member now in hiding, provided guns, ammo, food and money. Duterte issued both denials and startling admissions. “They say I am the Death Squad?” he said on TV. “True, that is true.”