THE police feel slighted; certain sectors of the media are miffed. And both are wondering publicly if there had been a rubout.

It seems that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) struck some raw nerves because of the way they carried out their operations against alleged members of a notorious robbery gang last week in the town of Compostela.

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The police feel insulted, if we believe a provincial police officer, because the NBI failed to coordinate with them when they raided the hideout of the suspects of the Rolex robbery in an upscale department store in Makati a few weeks ago. Media, on the other hand did not like being kept out of the scene until the bodies of those killed during the raid had been removed.

The police’s beef is in the implicit lack of trust in them by the NBI. But can you really blame the latter? This was an operation against a supposedly highly-organized gang whose members have successfully eluded the dragnet laid against them by authorities in the past.

The NBI team must have spent hundreds of man hours and traveled a thousand miles in tracking down their targets. At a time when contact with the suspects was imminent, why risk springing a leak that could jeopardize the entire operations just so they would not offend the sensibilities of the police?

In the case of the media, their misgivings stem from their having been prevented from discharging their self-declared mandate as champions of the public’s right to know. The how and when of getting access to the crime scene have been a perennial irritant in the relations between authorities and media. Sadly, attempts to establish protocols on coverage of developing police stories have not been successful.

I disagree, however, that the refusal to grant the media access to enter the crime scene while the bullets were flying or at least while the bodies of the fatalities were still warm can only lead to suggestions that there was a rubout instead of a shootout.

In the first place, if the NBI’s mission was to summarily execute the suspects, why did they allow one of them to live? Secondly, where are the relatives of the slain men? Shouldn’t they have been the first to cry against “salvaging” if such were the case?

In this era when criminals seem to always have their way, it is always heartwarming to see a case where the good guy wins. The raid in Compostela is one of those few instances where good triumphed over evil. The NBI should be praised instead of castigated.

I plan to gatecrash Gov. Gwen Garcia’s party honoring the NBI in order to personally extend my own thanks and congratulations for a job well done. I won’t mind being kept at the door for five hours.

***

Some candidates are in the elections just for fun. Others are on ego trips. Many others do it for the money.

Atan Guardo and Mary Ann de los Santos do not belong in any of the above categories. They’re running for public office because they want to serve. They also believe that they have at least a slight chance of winning.

It is therefore simply unthinkable that Guardo and de los Santos would drop their respective bids for the congressional seats in the south and north districts of the city and run for mayor and vice mayor instead. Whoever it was who advised them that they had a better chance of winning the two top posts of the city than in the congressional derby should be told to have his head examined.

Mary Ann is a friend and I have talked to Atan a few times on the phone. If the announcement of their tandem is a stunt and they’re both into it, they better back off. The joke is not even funny.

(frank.otherside@yahoo.com)