Another Oplan Tambay worry

Cebu City Police (CCPO) Chief Joel Doria is determined to show he can lead his men well in implementing Oplan Tambay, which has become a nationwide police operation despite President Duterte’s denial he ordered such an action. It’s not Oplan Tambay, he is saying, but is merely the implementation of minor and forgotten—because they are minor—ordinances.

After apparently a thorough research, CCPO personnel are now empowered to arrest people not because they are loitering, but if they do, among others, the following: violate the curfew ordinance (for minors), drinking, smoking, dispatching, urinating, spitting, littering, defecating, causing trouble, stoning, joining riots and gang war, etc. By the way, the CCPO research found out there is no ordinance here against being shirtless—so the shirtless will not be jailed but will only be asked to put shirts on (and if they don’t?).

By the way, the police in Quezon City supposedly arrested one Genesis Argoncillo because he was shirtless and the local government unit there has such an obscure ordinance (to be fair, the police contradicted the claim of Argoncillo’s family and insisted he was nabbed not for being half-naked but for alarm and scandal). Argoncillo died while detained in a police station.

Which brings us to our point about the CCPO and other Cebu police units’ intention to implement their own version of Oplan Tambay. Precisely because what they are using to arrest the loiterers are ordinances penalizing minor offenses, they should not be harsh on those nabbed and should not jail them together with hardened criminals. (The Quezon City police pointed to hardened criminals as the ones who mauled Argoncillo to death.)

The police should be careful not only in their patrols and their pursuit of loiterers but should be careful as well in detaining the supposed violators. We surely don’t want to see a person arrested for spitting ending up traumatized because they are mixed with hardened criminals, or worse, getting killed there.