The Police Must Keep Its Mouth Shut

Trina, 45, Ted Failon’s wife is dead. Doctors at New Era Hospital in Quezon City pronounced her dead at 8:50 p.m. Thursday. It is tragic but the drama that unfolds after the shooting was even more tragic.  The day that Ms. Trina was shot, police elements and media people were swarming like bees that descended upon the elegant home of the Failons in one plush subdivision in Quezon and mistaking it for a moment for a shrubbery of highly pollinated nectar that matches only the stature of the ABS-CBN TV-anchor, Mr. Ted Failon.

Government officials, politicians and even the chief lawyer of a government office mandated to aid the “indigents” had tried to compete for the inebriating appeal of the tubes and the airwaves. In the latter case, you can ask in disbelief if Mr. Failon is an indigent.

The effort to get into the hub of the orchard they thought rich of enervating syrup that could last them one summer had spilled over into the police precinct and hospital premises. Not content with the initial investigation of Mr. Failon at the police precinct after the shooting, operatives swarmed back at house and arrested his household helps and his driver, and then made one swoop at the hospital to arrest Trina’s brother.

There is nothing wrong with the effort to arrest persons the police had suspected to be obstructing justice but these law enforcers must do so with the least possible pomp and rudeness in the light of the request of the Failons to respect their grief and in the case of the hospital arrest, to be considerate over a brother anguish at his sister’s fate. However, the police could care less on the sensitivity of the grieving family; it must discharge its “duty” regardless of the person’s stature, may he be a TV personality of nationwide renowned, or a the quintessential “grease man“ on the street. Does it really want the public to believe in this?

Badgered by the media which wanted a minute-by-minute account of the ongoing investigation, the police had willingly obliged by announcing that Mr. Failon was negative of nitrate reactant, ( no gunpowder residue found on his arms), and so was Trina. But the police had continued to highlight its own suspicion of Mr. Failon by announcing that the findings do not indicate that he did not fire any firearm but it would not highlight the same observation in the case Trina.

If you parse the police announcement, it is possible that Trina had fired the gun and yet no gunpowder residue was found. The next malice was the eagerness of the police to announce that there was no “tattooing” on Trina’s skin. Tattooing is the markings on the skin surrounding the bullet’s entry point to indicate that the nozzle of the gun was fired about few inches from the head to sustain the “suicide theory”, but the police did not account for the fact that the deceased was a woman with thick bundle of hair that could effectively have prevented the smudging on her skin. And the “sorry note” by the victim was not actually a “suicide note”. You can already sense the bias of the investigation.

The police had continued entertaining the public with another angle to sustain a “foul-play” theory. The rounding-up of the household help and the driver, (despite their lawyer’s plea for a warrant and a need of her assistance, and the arrest of Trina’s sister, Pamela Arteche, was premised for their having “conspiratorially tampered with the “crime scene”. The announcement that it was a “crime scene is conclusionary. It gives you an idea already that a crime was committed and the people they had arrested had tampered with the evidence of the crime.

The innocent explanation of the household was that the clean-up was made to shelter the 12 year old daughter of Trina and Ted of a possible trauma of finding blood all over the bathroom. The clean-up of the vehicle was almost natural to even ascribe ill motive over such action. The blood in the car was in no way determinative of who could have shot Trina and therefore no longer part of the scenario that could sustain a theory of “evidence tampering”, but you would be amazed to note that the clean-up of the blood in the bathroom and the car were being drum-beaten as consistent acts to tamper with the evidence.

The police may entertain various theories on the tragic shooting to death of Trina on April 15, or it may even implicate Mr. Failon, but it must do so only after a careful sleuthing of the bits and pieces of information and physical evidence that are logical and sensible. It being badgered by the media to come up with some conclusion on the case does not entitle it “ to shoot from the hip”, for one’s liberty hinges upon it, it is horrible that the police is playing with it.

My take is that the police must continue to investigate but it must keep its mouth shut.

Contributing Writer: JOSE C. CAMANO, aka, JCC, 19 years practicing lawyer, suspended by the Supreme Court for one year for professional misconduct, censured back the SC by writing a book, he considers a political commentary that the SC had lost its moral authority to censure him because the institution is more corrupt than him. Excerpts from his book may be read at his blog at: http://jcc34.wordpress.com

Editor’s Note: The Original Article was submitted on April 17th

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