Know when to stop

A policeman is now the suspect in the robbery of the LAMAC Cooperative in Luray II, Toledo City, where ₱200,000 was taken by a lone robbery last January Friday.

Investigators say the policeman was assigned to be augmented in Cebu City to help secure the Fiesta Señor and Sinulog 2024 activities, but actually absented himself from duty to commit the crime.

He has been named in mainstream media, but because his guilt has yet to be proven in court, we will no longer name him here. Suffice to say he is of patrolman rank, quite a young “law enforcer”, and assigned to the Toledo City Police Station.

This time this editorial isn’t about the policeman’s actions, although that’s worthy of revisiting at another time, considering how some policemen these days are acting like criminals or participating in criminal enterprises. What we want to call attention to is what led to his desperate actions.

As alleged by investigators, it was his gambling debts that led him to commit the robbery. The suspect was allegedly fond of engaging in online sabong and racked up quite a huge debt as a result.

We have always pushed for limiting access to gambling whether actual or online. While indeed a viable source of income for the government --at least those gambling companies that pay their taxes are-- there is always a price to pay like the development of an addiction, acquiring of a huge debt, a change in behavior toward priorities and people, among others.

Because limiting access to online gambling is hard to do, the next best thing is for those who engage in it to know when enough bets have been made.

Of course, not everyone ends up the same way when engaging in online gambling. There are others who just do it for fun. There are others who know when enough is enough. But then again there are others who don’t, so in the end it all boils down to an individual knowing when to stop.