Crime: A many splendored thing?
1983. Deprived of the chance to let off some steam the past couple of days, I decided to spend the free hours after Neuroanatomy class to enjoy a beer or two with friends at the Triple A Shop, an old diner located right across the University of Santo Tomas campus.
We were nearing the mid-term exams and for a premed student like me, it was like having a stroll ‘round Mt. Mayon at the height of the 1990 explosion. I needed a night of cleansing from all the formalin that had thickened ‘round my lungs.
Sometime half-past eleven. We all called it a night. Tipsy and with the giggles, I flagged down a public utility jeepney for a ride to Quiapo, and from Quiapo to Baclaran. It would take me an hour and a half— four rides in total—to get home to a gated community south of the big city. But since it was nearing midnight, the whole jaunt would only take me roughly 45 minutes.
As was my custom during long rides, I lit up a cigarette and tried, as was humanly possible, to tap my feet to the driver’s Michael Jackson playlist. Roughly 20 meters from the old Shakey’s Pizza branch located along Taft Avenue, three men in smart business attire announced a hold-up. No guns, just a short metallic object which looked more like a fillet knife one can order for a discount from Home TV Shopping Guide.
The two men in front of me quickly rummaged for wallets, jewelry and other valuables inside women’s bags. Cell phones then were a figment of Star Trek’s imagination. As for the handful of males in the jeep, mostly students, wristwatches, gold college rings, and Ray-Ban sunglasses were the targets.
Jewelry wasn’t my thing, with the exception of a Chinese gold necklace I wore under my shirt. It was a gift from my mother after I graduated from high school. My deadpan expression hardly fooled the seasoned robbers. “Hand the necklace over to me,” said one of them, which I did, with a giggle on my face.
I was too tipsy to assess the risks. In fact, the alcohol had me so much in its grip that striking a conversation with the robbers seems to me then as the most sober thing to do.
“How would you know if that’s real gold?” I asked the man next to me. I can remember he smelled of Jovan Musk Oil, a favorite perfume of my father.
He stared at me like I was some lunatic. “Uhm, fake gold is shinier than the real one, like plated chrome. Real gold, especially Chinese gold, has a cloudy yellow sheen to it.”
“Street price?” I retorted. “Give or take a thousand, two thousand pesos. If you want to fence stolen jewelry, you should do it quick,” he replied, but with the addendum, “Our mother is in the hospital.”
The taller of the three robbers kicked the man beside me on the shin and gestured for him to quit the pillow talk. I let out a large smile and shook his hand. “Would you care to tell us
how you plan on getting away with this? I mean, after you leave, people will talk.”
The leader of the pack let out a grunt complete with the stereotype smugness thugs are known for: “I have good friends in the police department.”
This all happened within a span of about two minutes. After the heist, they divided the loot among themselves as they scuttled out the jeepney in three different directions. No officer was in sight. Worse, they left me to deal with speculations among the passengers that I was actually part of the robbery gang.
With that in mind, I rushed out the jeep to another PUJ just three vehicles away. I arrived home safe and sound half-an-hour later with some knowledge of the black market for stolen goods. No account of the robbery appeared in newspapers the next day. It hardly occurred to me that I could’ve been killed, or worse, stripped naked.
A word or two about crime. Apparently, I have never met an individual who was spared the cancer of victimization. From the day we leave the crib to the day we enter the crypt, we encounter crime in one form or the other. Consider the cost of burials these days. It makes high-stakes corruption look like child’s play. To quote the famous playwright John B. Keane, “Such is nature, gentle and advantageous one minute, and the next, savage and remorseless.”
“Savage,” of course, is relative. It depends on who you’re talking to. In a country long in the clutches of debilitating poverty, crime, particularly theft, can be a means to a noble end.
And what end would that be? If we were to go by Philippine action movies in the last 20 years, movies being reality’s reflection, it could be everything from a chance to pay off debts incurred while a sickly mother languishes in a hospital to indulging a daughter her list of requirements while in school. The list can be endless.
This got me thinking: Could this be the reason why Filipinos in general do not view criminality, particularly theft and corruption, with disdain? Our preference for the Robin Hoods of our day, over the need for law and order, is a very telling commentary of our situation. Whenever government refuses to get us out of a tight spot, we turn to the vigilante-hero to save the day.
Likewise, government officials whose idea of social responsibility and trickledown economics is to hurl crumbs from the table, even a P300 dole-out each week could mean worlds for families living by the hour.
Of the many social attitudes which paved the way for the spread of social ills, this, more than anything, is something we should seriously look into.
One of the tragedies reflective of the modern age is the people’s refusal to nip the problem in the bud. As long as the end result of a criminal activity is shaped in the guise of the people’s benefit, all is well at the end of the day.
But an amoeba’s cut of the lion’s share proves ever more debilitating in the long run. The average 30-percent of the national budget going to corruption each fiscal year is a lot. And going by the cost of a road project or a new bridge, even a schoolhouse — often left to rot midway through construction — very little is required compared to the amount which disappears directly into the pockets of some officials.
I am of the opinion that there are no hard and fast rules in the fight against criminality. Every crime, every situation merits a different strategy. What it does need is political will. The Philippines has more than enough laws to stave off every minor and major crime. Implementation is the key. This goes without saying that no less than a well-thought-of and wellfunded campaign against crime is needed to bring some order into the community.
Journalists can help by exposing the criminal gangs’ operations; the public, on the other hand, should go out of their way to safeguard their individual turfs.
However, I am also of the opinion that no crime, however small or big, can free itself from the hands of the law without collusion with the authorities. Impunity is such that for a criminal to run scot-free, authorities must betray the very laws they have sworn to uphold. Somehow, a campaign to reeducate our officers should be part of the list of reforms.
Crime can be a many splendored thing, and for some, a means to have a fighting chance at a life eased somehow by illgotten money. Nipping the problem in the bud is the public’s only way of stopping it altogether. We achieve this by mobilizing people to rise against corruption in public office, against corporate abuses, and against the mindset that views theft and corruption as a requirement to survive.
It’s a huge gamble, expensive for sure, even dangerous. But one worth taking.
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