Those OA jail raiders

The most enduring images of the Cebu Provincial Detention Center (CPDRC) inmates were from videos taken and posted on YouTube when Byron Garcia, brother of then governor Gwendolyn Garcia, was supervising the detention center’s operation. The videos showed the uniformed inmates on the CPRDC grounds dancing to the popular tunes at that time. They thus became known as “Cebu’s Dancing Inmates.”

Fast forward 2017 and those familiar with the dancing inmates must have found jarring the image of CPDRC inmates, sitting in rows naked and their backs to the camera. This happened dawn of February 28 during a “greyhound” operation conducted by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) 7 and the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO). They were responding to reports of contraband kept inside the jail.

Like in those “dancing inmates” videos, the photo of the naked CPDRC inmates also went viral, but for a different reason. The praises didn’t come. Instead, those who ordered the inmates to strip naked and those who took photos of the inmates and published it on mainstream media were flogged. Actually, when I saw the photo, my feeling was ambivalent. The memory of my stint in the old Bagong Bahuhay Rehabilitation Center (BBRC) flashed back in my mind.

The BBRC in the 1980s wasn’t as crowded. The cell where I was incarcerated, Brigada 5, was big enough for the 50 inmates that were to stay comfortably. Our building was rectangular with concrete roof and walls, except for the ones facing the lobby that had iron bars. On the lobby we often saw some inmates waiting for their turn for a bath walking around or jogging naked. We were, after all, males.

So I won’t be surprised if the inmates wouldn’t complain about having been ordered to strip naked during the raid. Shame wasn’t probably a problem. But since it was dawn, there must have been a good dose of discomfort there. We all know how cold our nights and dawns now because of the Siberian winds visiting our shores.

But I also thought that it was OA (overacting) as far as PDEA 7 and the CPPO are concerned. The talk about the raiders being outnumbered by the inmates and of them worrying that the inmates would attack them or break into a riot I think is a product of the raiders failure to study well their targets.

Those inmates aren’t convicts like those incarcerated at the New Bilibid Prisons. They are in CPDRC while waiting for the courts to render decisions on their cases—-meaning that under our judicial setup they can still be considered innocent until proven guilty. That’s precisely the reason they can be made to dance as “dancing inmates.” They aren’t hardened criminals.

I mean they are “soft” targets so there was no need to so worry about security they had to be stripped naked. I thus agree with a friend when he quipped: “pagka- OA baya sad anang mga pulisa.”