The good news is that the special forces of the PNP has caught upon a dreaded criminal syndicate said to be responsible in bank heists in recent memory at a Paranaque subdivision in what was a running gun battle – if official PNP claim were to be believed. The bad news is that in the ensuing exchange of fire, some innocent civilians were killed even suspected of being part of the armed group out to rob a warehouse. There have been convincing evidence that at least a father and a daughter ought not to have been involved but were to be the collateral damage of a shooting that must have been undertaken with frantic adrenalin rush.
The maroon revo is testament that the PNP riddled it with more than sufficient number of ammunitions from their assault weapons in what was to be a simple case of – guesswork. There is simply no showing that the PNP forces aiming fire at the suspected vehicle have actually seen the faces or heads or bodies of the targets they are supposed to shoot. Nor did it become clear that passengers of said vehicle must have had the first opportunity to fire at the arresting PNP team since all windows were closed and peppered with bullets. The case of the white revo is practically the same.
Since dead men tell no tales, no one can advance a contrary view except that the Commission on Human Rights can technically make an initial assessment that there must have been violations in the rules of engagement. Senator Enrile is heard to have defended the PNP arguing that the rule of necessity took precedence in the unfortunate incident. Another senator instead proposed that only the PNP should be authorized to carry guns in a stricter and new gun control policy to be legislated. It will be recalled that this is not the first time that innocent civilians are being killed on mere suspicion by the PNP – perhaps, a typical feature of police operations.
By PNP’s own admission, at least three more members were able to flee and it is yet to be ascertained that they get arrested in follow up operations. Meantime, some laboratory testing or forensic work has to be done if only to show whether or not those killed and suspected to be part of this criminal syndicate actually fired their guns, reason that the PNP elements have retaliated by killing all of them in one systematic way. Some testimonies of those who have seen the event already tell us that the helpless father and daughter were fired at without mercy with no thought whatsoever whether or not they are supposed to have been killed.
We have been used to hearing versions given by the PNP that always fail the scientific test or as soon as video footages from some source are volunteered to the victims such as the rob-out in Pasig in the past killing sons of middle class families. And the cases can go on and on. Why must the PNP elements have to kill each and every one they suspected as part of the gang if they can be in a position to simply debilitate at least one remaining member – in aid of investigation? Why this mindset of having to terminate all living species? If this is not a crime against humanity, I don’t know what is?
There ought to be something chronically ill with the PNP psyche that must now be addressed. What happened in this Paranaque shootout is the indicative fact that it is the PNP that seems to have run amuck – killing everyone they see moving and on the ground at some frantic if mad frenzy. The arresting team – all of them – are into a kind of trigger happy mood unmindful of the crime they are about to commit – killing with more than superior force – unarmed and innocent individuals and child. There ought to have been serious aggravating circumstances attendant to their having fired at certain other individuals who are clearly not involved in the scheduled hold up of a warehouse in a subdivision.
Will the Civil Service Commission please see what intervention it can take to remodel the PNP psyche before it drifts to a really full-blown psychosis? Let us spare the innocent from this shooting spree making everything in the subdivision like some toys in a shooting gallery. Let us stop this kind of police work – it is revolting. Isn’t it sometimes said that the life you save may be your own? Obliquely, there must be a new gun control policy banning PNP from carrying M16s, M14s, Uzis or any like high-powered guns since it becomes mathematically safe to do so – given the present contemporary mindset or psyche obtaining in the PNP officialdom.
The right to live is at all times inviolable. Collateral damage, whoever invented that, must be a madman!
Contributing Writer: PRIMER C. PAGUNURAN
UP Diliman, Quezon City Email: nielsky_2003@yahoo.com
Popularity: 1% [?]
Law of supply-and-demand.
The outcome of over-supply is a devaluation of said supply.
In a country where overpopulation has been an issue for the last three decades, life is cheap. And the way our society regards it reflects this reality.
Before we point our highly-politicised fingers at trigger-happy cops consider these other gems we routinely tolerate with efficient banality:
:o Men, women and children living off mounds of garbage
:o Shipping companies that continue to profitably operate with impunity for decades after being consistently involved in “accidents” that cost tens of thousands of lives over the last 25 years.
:o Mudslides that bury scores alive that occur in one out of c. 1.5 wet seasons.
And many many more!
I find any expression of shock about things like this quite quaint and even contrived. To be shocked about stuff that pretty much already DEFINES us as a people is quite amusing.
benign0. It’s not the practical value of those innocent souls but the act of killing them that is hair-raising. An OFW on vacation to see her daughter on her birthday. They were just passing through and a little more training by the police could’ve prevented the tragedy.
Mr. Pagunaran. it’s the training. They put up check points to insure that no other vehicles except theirs and the perps are on tht stretch of road, but then some incompetent checkpoint cop let that OFW’s vehicle in. There ws an assumption, then, that it’s one of the perps. They didn’t even try to see who was inside before they started shooting. It’s crazy. they should have the most basic surveillance equipments handy, like binoculars.
Precisely my point. A refinement of the safety around the way cops engage suspects was never seen as a priority, just as safety IN GENERAL is never seen as a priority in our society.
benig0, glad to know you still remember that landslide in Aurora. Very few do. St. Bernard, was it? It will remain in my memory and will influence my thoughts for the rest of my life.
Not only that, BrianB. I also remember the one at Ormoc in 1991 (8000+ dead) and a few others (minor by Pinoy standards, but all in double and triple digit casualty stats just the same). And yes, people seem to reserve the better part of their memory (and their writing faculties) for political intrigue and useless speculation about it than on stuff that directly impacts lives.
you guys are terrible. You always remind me of my province. you just lift the angry side of me. :)
solution: seminars to all local police on rules and regulations of engagement. This requires a law of Continuing education requirements to all police officers. A 24 hour course must be taken every year. grabe hindi pa rin nila maintindihan.. duh?
I am really hoping that the media will focus on “Follow Ups” of all of our laws and Regulations.
I’m just wondering if the media are also knowledgeable of all of our laws. :)
This is becoming obvious that the Senate , who are supposed to check and Balance, has no other resistant. This is again another example of ocho-ocho fiesta in the part of the senate and the Media. The people will do the ocho ocho revolution. It’s not fair.
This is a very sad news. Seminars are easy to implement in our country and its probably the cheapest to implement. I cannot believe that one accident in the past, no one has done a thing to implement our laws with positive result. This is management and leadership in the part of the Executives and the Senate.
while there’s definitely tragic things that happened in this incident, its always the armchair quarterbacking that gets me. Most here do not have first hand information on what happened and to the most just speculation. Its always easy to say, they should have done this or done that but no one seems to be mentioning how brutal, sophisticated and organized the suspects (waray-waray gang) are and what the PNP was expecting when the raid occurred.
Yes, let’s do away with trigger-happy cops toting high-powered weapons. So what if the bandits have even higher-powered weapons thanks to some rich politico and are willing to shoot indiscriminately. So what if terrorists have learned in Mumbai that commando-style attacks can actually be very effective against an entire city. We’re not them. We respect human rights. And against such terroristic banditry, we will die upholding that human rights.
And finally, FV has addressed the issue of the Paranaque Mayhem, though not from its regular pundits by a contributing commenter.
The rules of engagement is very simple. Right to life is superior to right to property. If these bandits have robbed and about to flee, policemen are not allowed to engaged them in a public place knowing that civilians would be caught in a crossfire. They may pursue these criminals but cannot engaged them in a shootout even if they are fired upon.
The philosophy is that whatever they have taken is way below the cost of any civilian life, though as Benign0 had said, life in the Philippines is cheap by the principle of supply and demand, yet such fact should not be made to override the universal concept that a human being is priceless. If you happened to be the mother of the 7 year old girl who was caught in the gun-battle between these trigger-happy cops and hoodlums you will understand the meaning of the sanctity and priceless value of life.
The other disturbing aspect of the incident is the fact that these bandits used to be policemen and therefore know how police operate.
Some of our pundits here may point out the greater malady in our society as the root cause of all these problems. I can agree with that if these hoodlums are desperate poor people of our society, but they were ex-policemen who can earn a decent living doing their duties honestly but instead they went out of their way in pursuit for easy life and greater reward through brigandage. So the problem is greed.
The desperate members of our society could hardly afford sophisticated armory to shoot it out with the real cops, and when they engaged in this kind of a career, they ended up mostly dead and without the fanfare of the Paranaque shoot-out, and without civilians casualties.
benign0,
So you did not even care to make an issue over this shoot-out because complaining about it appears contrived and quaint? – Put yourself in the shoes of a mother who lost her 7 year old daughter, or the father of a “pahinante” of the gas tanker who died, then may be your contrived feelings may acquire some human dimension.
jcc, you missed the point in the way I put it in my comment.
The point I make is that here we are being so “shocked” about all this when we so routinely exhibit such a no-care attitude towards preventive measures to ensure unnecessary loss of life and limb.
It’s like playing Russian roulette and and being “shocked” when you end up with a bullet in your head.
I’ve got kids of my own jcc. So I constantly (even if I dont want to) put myself in the shoes of the families of such victims whenever I read about stuff like this.
When you’ve got kids, you tend to put staying in a country such as the Philippines for the sake of being “nationalistic” in its right perspective.
benigs,
how can you put preventive measures over greed? your solution should be to overhaul human avarice and covetousness.
observer,
Then why engage them in a populated area and why have they failed to completely cordon off the area of engagement?
No you can’t.
But what you can do is build systems that take into account human nature (such as greed).
Compare that approach with most hollowheaded approaches where people try to demand the eradication of greed. As if that was actually possible.
Systems should be designed for resiliency rather than built under some presumed code of morality that participants in said system will follow.
Take the implementation of “democracy” in a basketcase society like the Philippines. The big ASSumption that underpinned this implementation was that the popular vote of Da Pinoy is necessarily the right vote.
The thing that made ASSes out of all us us was this flawed assumption:
POPULAR = RIGHT
Not true.
benign0,
I don’t know why you have to postulate that people routinely disregard preventive measures and yet they were so shocked over this recent mayhem.
any mayhem, past or present deserve our righteous indignation for we have not, despite your claim, disregarded preventative measures that would have prevented this recent bloodbath.
It was a simple case of irresponsibility and total disregards of the “rules of engagement” by the police and we should be shocked by that irresponsibility, and you should not preach that we should be callous about it because we brought it upon ourselves anyway. No sir, the police brought it upon ourselves. ! ! !
give it up benigs, our hearts are still bleeding too much to care about your preachings of safety.
after undergoing a police or military training…the one thing they put into your head is ¨YOU ARE NOW A MUCH BETTER PERSON and MUCH MORE POWERFUL THAN A CIVILIAN¨!!!!
this explains why men in uniforms think they can just do anything and get away with it.
benigno,
ur not ninoy, are u?
he said, the Filipinos are worth dying for.
obliquely though, u think that because of your rather amusing theory that the law of supply and demand applies in the case of over population in RP, that therefore made human life cheap. That includes urs, doesn’t it?
no sir, human life is never devalued with an overpopulation or call it oversupply. that is totally quaint if amusing or contrived. where did you read that?
second, the three examples you have given are rather off the track nor were it incumbent upon you to assume that in any case, we do tolerate them with efficient banality. you err and hardly would it be mere motherhood statement raised by one possibly too politicized just as badly.
the piece is not intended to be an expression of shock as it did already in fact affirm antecedent event.
with an AFP huge enough, we can even boldly propose to abolish the PNP once and for all. you know very little about the PNP and such kind knowledge inspires the damned and doomed institution to live on.