You’re busted! (Or not)

MUCH of last week’s news was taken up with the ongoing push against drug suppliers in the “thickly populated slum areas” of Mini-Forest and Isla Verde and the Davao City Police’s idea of spray painting large red crosses on suspected drug pusher’s front doors.

Mini-forest barangay captain Amilbangsa Manding, amidst great publicity, led the way by spray painting the front door of his own boarding house (Think; how could he possibly NOT have started with his own property) but then the drive fizzled out - someone whispered ‘human rights’ and the spray cans, like graffiti artists, disappeared.

I think it’s a great idea spraying red crosses on doors all over town and while we’re about it why not go the whole hog - a purple cross for ‘last two’ agents, a billious yellow cross for the neighbors who every dawn and dusk light up bonfires stinking out the subdivision? Or how about a shocking-pink cross for the folks who let their dogs roam the subdivision crapping in the road and running wild at night, barking and scrapping ? There’s a city bye-law or ordinance prohibiting all of the above and yet who gives a hoot? Why don’t Dabawenyos observe the rules and regs? Because they know that although Davao has a list of ordinances as long as your arm no-one from the barangay hall or the authorities can be bothered to enforce them.

No? Look again at Mini-forest. The drug trade has been going on there for years and years if not tens of years. Have the local officials taken any action? As usual it takes the vice-mayor to speak up and then it’s all hands on deck, everybody rushes into action trailed by TV crews and reporters and we know what a five-minute wonder that’ll be. Come a couple of months, probably less, and the Mini-forest will be back to its usual drug peddling self.

On Tuesday - ‘Confessions of a drug dealer’, a woman who sells a million peso’s-worth of shabu every month but makes ‘only’ P60, 000 on the deal. Columnists should have a field day with that one but not me - it’s a waste of time.

For close on two weeks now we’ve watched Davao’s drug-busters, cops and Swats, trailing around various barangays pointing fingers and looking hard. But how many suspected pushers have been arrested? How many are behind bars? How many have been ‘presented’ wearing those jazzy orange jumpsuits? How many responsible barangay officials have been dismissed? I’m not privy to official numbers but I’d guess a big fat zero was near the mark.

True, the specter of human rights has been hovering, eager to pounce, and they’ll carry right on (And draw a nice salary) until one of their own kids or grandkids dies of an overdose or is stabbed to death by some shabu fuelled crazy. Human rights for drug pushers? Knock it on the head.

Lastly lastly and all this previous week’s talk of crocodiles and wildlife got me to rocking in my rocking chair - wonderful invention - recalling past adventures. Oldies do this: we’d like to adventure still, I’d love to scramble up Mt. Apo, but it’s physically beyond us and we know it. Still, in those days of yore when I was fleet of foot and had hair and teeth and stuff, I learnt two things about crocodiles: One -- that a gray, knobbly and motionless crocodile on a riverside pebble beach is invisible, and two -- that when they want to move they can REALLY move.