Highest officials distrust, yet renew, police image
What is it with male drivers that they won’t ask for directions? They think stopping to inquire about routes is akin to saying “I am a moron,” but then end up missing exits, wasting gas, and getting ticketed.
Sometimes, worse. Take the case of U.S. Navy Lt. Comm. Mark A. Rice who, skippering the minesweeper USS Guardian, ran aground in the Tubbataha Reef early morning Tuesday. Its hull pierced, the Avenger- class vessel took in too much water that the 79 crewmen had to bail out. It was last reported to be sinking.
This is going to cost the U.S. Navy a pretty sum. The 1,300- ton, 224- foot Guardian contains hi-tech anti-mine gear and weaponry. A sister ship had to be dispatched to its rescue. More will be needed for salvage. The Philippines will fine the U.S. initially $3,000 for the gashing of 10 sqm of corals. This would rise if more corals are destroyed when the ship finally rests underwater, and if it spews oil. The Guardian was last at Subic Freeport for refueling (and shore-leave).
Commander Rice had not sought clearance from the Philippine Coast Guard to sail through the Unesco World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea. Lost due to faulty digital nautical charts, he plodded on like a drunken sailor from a Subic bar, until shipwrecked. He could have asked directions from Angelique Songco, head of the marine park for seven years now, who knows all 130,028 hectares like the back of her hand. But that would have been un-macho.
Rice faces relief and reprimand, according to Stars and Stripes. He will forever be branded as moronic as the Chinese frigate captain who, at the height of sea disputes last July, insolently thrice circled a Philippine shoal but got stuck in the rocks for days, needing many rescue vessels to extricate him.
* * * Philippine National Police spokesman, Chief Supt. Generoso Cerbo, disputes a recent Gotcha item (7 Jan. 2013). That is, citizens view the police as too inept and crooked to protect society, so they arm themselves to deter criminals. Cerbo counters that crime levels are manageable. Too, that “most registered gun owners are enthusiasts; not that many resort to gun ownership for security.”
Cerbo is just doing his job, albeit in vain. For, recent events bolster public perception of police incompetence and corruption:
• Firecrackers seriously injured 1,200 persons nationwide during the New Year revelry. Gunfire into the air hit 41, mostly in Metro Manila. Police have failed year after year to enforce the ban on firecrackers — that also mask shots fired mostly from 552,000 unregistered guns.
In Caloocan City a .45-caliber slug entered the pate of Stephanie Nicole Ella, 7, outside their front door. The police did not secure the crime scene or interview witnesses. Only after the girl died in hospital days later, triggering a media outcry, did they move. By then the come and go of condolers had obliterated potential evidence.
A colonel told reporters the stray bullet would be untraceable since cops weren’t there when it was fired. He is high-ranking enough to speak for the force, yet ignorant of forensics – and human nature. Criminals normally don’t commit crime in plain view of cops.
The PNP can’t miss the body language of President Aquino and Secretaries Roxas and De Lima. They intervene in crime investigation and case buildup for the police’s own good.
The fatal slug was brought to the PNP Crime Laboratory at GHQ for ballistics matching. It was learned that, of 939,827 registered firearms, only some 82,000 had ballistics files. The PNP charges P1,800 per firearm ballistic registry, so rakes in P1.7 billion a year. Yet it has recorded only less than a tenth of the test firing.
Trajectory showed the fatal bullet to have been fired within a 50-meter radius from the girl’s home. Still, the .45-pistols turned in by 37 registered owners didn’t match the slug’s scratch marks. President Noynoy Aquino had to step in with a P2-million reward to get the shooter, likely unlicensed. At last, the police were able to get leads.
• In Kawit, Cavite, a drug-crazed man shot 16 neighbors, seven fatally, before subdued. It turned out that the police had done nothing when, for two nights prior, neighbors reported gunfire from his house. Had the cops promptly responded there might have been no massacre. The guy had a drug record, yet the police didn’t confiscate his firearm with long-expired license. Purportedly he was friends with the Kawit police. Only when the miffed Commanderin-Chief Aquino and Interior Sec. Mar Roxas order the cops’ relief did people find reason to trust the PNP somewhat.
• Followed the killing in Atimonan, Quezon, of 13 armed men by 24 cops and 25 Army troopers. Allegedly the 13 members of a private army, in two SUVs, had run and fired at a checkpoint, sparking a gunfight. Yet among the slain were an environmentalist, three police and two Air Force officers, and two military intelligence men. The five others were supposedly jueteng illegal gambling lord-cousins. Instinctively Aquino ordered not the PNP or the Army but the National Bureau of Investigation to get to the bottom of things. This assured the public of a neutral inquiry.
Yet the police were uncooperative. The PNP-Region 4A intelligence deputy who had led the checkpoint snubbed the probers, while constantly giving press interviews. This, in spite of findings that one of the felled cousins had charged him with killing six other kin in nearby Laguna province only in November. As defiant were the Atimonan town and the Quezon provincial police chiefs.
As if all that weren’t enough, cops in another adjoining province, Batangas, killed an ex-associate of the cousins. Allegedly the man had shot it out with the 20 of them as they served an arrest warrant — at 1:30 in the morning. Irate, Aquino and Roxas sacked the PNP regional head. Four of the five provinces under the command — Cavite, Quezon, Laguna, Batangas (with the exception of Rizal) — were murder zones. The highest civilian officials had to stop it from becoming like the 2009 Ampatuan Massacre of 57 political kinfolk, lawyers, and journalists. Of the 196 massacrers then, 62 were policemen.
Info kept cropping up. Supposedly there was a third vehicle in the ill-fated convoy and a valise containing P100 million in jueteng take, that the 13 men had come from a gold mine in Bicol and were in vice rivalry with the PNP regional brass.
For clarity and solid case buildup, Justice Sec. Leila de Lima too had to step in. Presiding over a reenactment in Atimonan based on two eyewitnesses’ accounts, she declared there definitely was no shootout. After the first volley of gunfire by the cops at the first SUV, two of the 13 had alighted from the second with hands in the air, only to be gunned down. Pistols were then placed beside their bodies for photographing. It was a Mafia-style rubout.
De Lima’s observation, though still incomplete, served to assuage the public fear of cops too. The police are tasked to set up checkpoints nationwide during the six-month election period. They need assuring that the President and Cabinet are on guard against abusive cops. More so since the very men that PNP spokesman Cerbo claims to be keeping criminality at bay are the ones committing crimes.
One last thing, about Cerbo’s claim that most gun owners are enthusiasts. Some of the 939,827 licensed firearms truly are in the hands of collectors. Gun club membership is only a tenth: those who have the time and money to practice shooting regularly. If only all could join up, they would learn more about responsible and safe gun handling. Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).
E-mail: jariusbondoc@gmail.com