Damnable firefight
How can we now all feel safe?
How can we civilians feel safe in public spaces when law enforcers can suddenly draw their guns and engage each other in a deadly shootout? To the likely possibility we innocent civilians end up either injured or dead?
If left unanswered, these larger questions make all other questions about last week’s reckless and deadly firefight in Quezon City involving policemen and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) agents eerily inconsequential.
Inconsequential because not answering these first and foremost questions, we are left faced with just one crucial issue — are we now left at the mercy of law enforcers who have lost all self- discipline?
By any account the Quezon City incident has again shown this massive breakdown in discipline of law enforcers.
For how else are we to account for the fact law enforcers could freely engage themselves in a nearly hour-long firefight even while innocent civilians are scampering for safety or cowering in fear under tables as bullets are flying all around them?
It is this naked display of massive breakdown in gun discipline, even as a full and impartial investigation of the incident is still ongoing, which makes us summarily judge all those involved as guilty.
No matter who are found out to be the guilty parties, putting civilians in harm’s way during a law enforcement operation cannot and must not be absolved.
All must be indicted and made to answer, including even high officials who are even remotely unconnected to the incident.
The Commonwealth incident too is also a massive failure of command responsibility. It is a massive failure by concerned officials to instill discipline among law enforcers.
Far too often we have swept under the rug this issue concerning civilian safety during law enforcement operations. It is as if civilians do not matter. We have to stop this nonsense.
Nameless civilians cannot and should not be mere background figures in any violent incident involving law enforcers.
The civilian must always play the crucial role.
In this latest incident involving civilians, merely noting that the firefight happened near the Ever Gotesco mall in Quezon City is damnable.
It is not enough to note in passing that thousands of people go to that particular mall every day nor that the mall is located along a major thoroughfare, Commonwealth Avenue, in Quezon City.
We cannot make those facts as merely coincidental matters of fact. Those are major matters of fact.
As for any of us dismissing those major matters of fact, it is damnable to do so. Dismissal only makes anyone a criminal accessory in the major crime of setting aside the welfare and safety of innocent civilians.
All other facts a forthright investigation may cough up are but minor details. It only gives us the circumstances, which still leads us to the same damning conclusion civilians were put in harm’s way.
It also won’t do to excuse those involved by saying that in the heat of the moment, where personal survival was at stake, those involved were forced to act like the way they did.
If we allow such an excuse, then we are refusing to acknowledge the crucial duty and obligation of all law enforcers — to exercise self-discipline at all times.
If we continue to make such excuses, we might as well ban all law enforcers from carrying guns.
We cannot freely allow ourselves to continually live in fear that law enforcers cannot safely handle weapons, to the detriment of our safety and our lives.
By so doing, we might as well henceforth live in the hellish perdition of being counted forever as mere collateral damage.
So, the Quezon City incident is not a matter of cursing or castigating a few erring law enforcers.
It has put all law enforcers, including even the upright ones, under a dark cloud of distrust.
It is also useless to keep quiet about the incident on the pain it embarrasses senior officials, including Mr. Duterte himself.
For how can we keep quiet when no senior law enforcement official even took it upon himself to express regret or profoundly apologize that a Quezon City police incident, which risked civilian lives, could even happen?
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How can we keep quiet when no senior law enforcement official even took it upon himself to express regret or profoundly apologize that a Quezon City police incident… could even happen?
“No matter who are found out to be the guilty parties, putting civilians in harm’s way during a law enforcement operation cannot and must not be absolved.