A repeated police failure

By CHITO DELA TORRE
December 19, 2009

Extreme justice is extreme injustice. – Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator and statesman. De Officiis

The regional leadership of the Philippine National Police must look into the reasons exactly what it’s taking so long for police officers in Samar to arrest persons wanted for criminal cases.  It’s always a big question mark, why police officers can’t execute arrest warrants even when such officers are strongly believed to know enough of the circumstances of the wanted persons, such as their birth places.  Such strong belief develops from a fact that most police officers assigned in a town are original natives and have long been, and still are, residing in that town.  This is worsened by the fact that some of those wanted are known to civilians to be present, alive and often visiting places within the town, after a short period of time of having gone outside of the town to hide and elude arrest, notably in Tacloban, Manila or Cebu.

Of course, this murmur is not overheard only in Samar island.  It is also true in Leyte, and in Tacloban.

According to a source, one tall but lanky person who committed a crime while working for the National Food Authority and became a fugitive from justice during the early martial law years, disguising sometimes as a bombay (wearing a turban and growing beard), returned only recently to Tacloban with a tall tale of having been free all the time.  Another source said that one who had long been suspected to be a big-time illegal drug trader and left his home had lately been visiting his expensive home in a barangay very the downtown section of Tacloban.

In Basey, there are those who were ordered by one court to be arrested more than eight years ago. Some of them were being made to pay for the damages caused upon one whom they forced to convey on a motorcycle late one rainy night and abandoned without paying for the ride when the motorcycle slid while climbing up an eely slope leading to the riders’ barrio.  The victim, up to now, feels a painful leg that was recommended for amputation due to a grave injury and continues taking in medicines and applying medications recommended by government and private doctors.  Two of the riders were often seen either in the town proper or in some barrios, unmolested by the police.

There are other unsolved crimes. Unsolved, because the police officers do not arrest the perpetrators.

A few years ago, a snatcher who lived in the slum area by the seaside at the northern section next to Tacloban’s old bus terminal, was brought on civilian arrest power to the police station.  An officer in the police station asked for the snatcher’s immediate release because the snatcher was “our asset”.  An “asset” is any civilian person whom the police authorities use to surveil operations of snatchers, holdup men, thieves and other criminals and to identify suspects of crimes.  That asset who was caught in flagrante delicto spent the mandatory detention hours in the station, but the officer who stood up in his defense suffered due embarrassment.

Not every police officer deserves his badge.  Among them are scalawags not so unlike the scalawags during the Elpidio Quirino presidency years up to the short-lived regime of a Estrada administration.  The worst scalawags among them are themselves the masterminds of crimes and criminal syndicates.  Some of them are willing (bad cops for hire) tools of politicians and those who behave as though they are somebody higher than the laws of the land – and there are deplorably many of them around the Philippines.  Unless they are removed and duly punished, there will be rebels.  They may not be existing members of the communist party of the Philippines or of the New People’s Army or of the armed national democratic front, or any extreme leftist organization.  They could be anybody who gets fed up with what can be observed among the bad eggs in the police.

And I say this emphatically.  There are more good police officers than the bad ones.  Yet, the civilians do not find it easy to haul them out of the police service.  Yet, too, fellow officers themselves know “according to the best of their knowledge and belief” who are those among their peers and seniors who are doing evil and criminal acts, except that they just don’t react.

That is why when I looked into the website of detained general Danny Lim, who filed his certificate of candidacy for senator, I firmed up my own personal belief that indeed there are those who are worthy of the police uniform who want to cleanse the police ranks of corrupt and abusive police officers.  Some of those who have thrown up their support for Danny are one with him in weeding out the corrupt and the abusive.  The only problem is visitors of Danny’s website would not yet know with certitude when will this happen and who will lead in the crusade at every police station level.

The “Kelguy” samarnews.com contributor that I featured in Insight last December 10 had many things to say about the good and the bad police officers.  His years of being an immigrant to the Philippines had enabled him to witness how the police work and behave.  I even surmise that, compared to any ordinary Filipino citizen presently living in our country, Kelguy has a much better frame of reference for his criticisms against the police, and his accolades (where due) likewise.

Yes, some police officers are suspiciously living in luxury.  Viewing how poverty is like in the world of the Ampatuans in Maguindanao and elsewhere in Mindanao, one become quizzical about how ordinary police officers have become richer than when they were during their first two years in active police service.  There are scanty rumors about a policeman winning in the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes lotteries, but there is more talk about some policemen winning in the illegal lotto, or the jueteng, or masiao, or getting hefty weekend bonuses from un-arrested illegal numbers games operators as they are either partners of the financiers if they are not themselves the operators, or they are the gambling protectors.

(By the way, the word scalawag, or scallywag is given this meaning: mischievous person: a rascal or scamp Scalawag is thought variously to derive from the name Scallaway of Scotland's Shetland Islands, or from an obsolete Scots word scallag, "a farm servant." Its first recorded appearance in the United States is understood to be 1848, with the spelling scalaway. In western New York State a scalaway meant "a mean rascal." During Reconstruction a scalawag referred to a Caucasian southern operative who assisted the federal government in implementing its policies throughout the South, often profiteering in the process. But its earlier political meaning, first recorded in 1862, was "an intriguer, especially in politics." - Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)