KILLINGS START TO BE SCARY WHEN THEY HAPPEN NEAR US, TO PEOPLE WE KNOW OR CAN RELATE TO.

In the last two weeks, Cebuanos got some fright in their lives: a 4-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet in a police operation, a barangay councilor was shot dead while driving his car on SRP highway, three jail detainees were ambushed in a city jail van on way to court, and three men, including a father and his son, were gunned down in an internet shop in Lapu-Lapu City. Ten people killed in two weeks, nine of them in three consecutive days.

THEY gave us different numbers: 12,000 people killed since President Duterte assumed office until last May, according to the international NGO Human Rights Watch; 20, 322 people, claimed opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes; only 4,251 for the same period, said the Philippine National Police.

Even as the figures were not uniform, what the nation is sure about is that the killings have been going on almost daily, with more casualties on some days than on other days.

They begin to horrify us though when the executions occur right in our community. Somehow, the impersonal numbers and the strange names of victims assume a force that tells us: (1) the atrocity is real; (2) the impunity has spread to victimize not just suspected drug traffickers but others -- priests, prosecutors, and politicians -- whose enemies use violence to eliminate them; and (3) it’s happening here.

On the same day, Friday ( July 20), in separate incidents, the news went out that a barangay councilor, son of a barangay captain, was shot dead on the SRP highway, and three drug suspects ferried to court in a Talisay City jail van, were gunned down. The guards and the driver were spared. Killers on seven motorcycles guaranteed the execution’s success.

The brazenness, with the ambush staged less than 300 meters from the Talisay City jail, nourishes the culture of impunity. If the government or vigilantes could do it and escape prosecution, others with different targets would also not be deterred. Not tagged as police operation they would merely pad the figures of 16,355 DUIs (as of the last count).

But expect some people to cheer when the president will cite in his 2018 Sona the unabated and unsolved killings as among the achievements of government.