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Thursday, November 03, 2005
Wenceslao: Why pick on Poro and Tudela?
By Bong O. Wenceslao
I agree that the three Minglanilla cops who failed to respond immediately to the shooting alarm that killed a barangay councilor and a tanod in Barangay Tunghaan should be punished. And if it was true that a red alert was on at that time, then the police chief should answer why only three people were inside the police station that night.
Quick response, like police visibility, is an important aspect of police work. In fact, a bulk of the crimes committed in the past would have been solved and the culprits arrested had concerned policemen not been slow to react. Thus, there is a need to instill this point on law enforcers---and penalizing the Minglanilla cops may help do the trick.
Apparently, the laxity of one of the three policemen, SPO1 Jorge Yap, was worse, if the claim of a barangay tanod who went to the police station to report the shooting incident Sunday dawn was true. Yap was allegedly entertaining a female guest that time. That shows the extent of the breakdown of discipline in that particular police station.
But I have some objections to the announced decision of Acting Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) Chief Vicente Loot to transfer Yap, PO3 Sherwin Abellari and SPO4 Domenciano Sevillano to either Poro or Tudela town in the Camotes group of islands. Coincidentally, my mother is from Poro and my late father from Tudela.
In the current scheme of things, the farther a place is from the main urban center, the more that place gets neglected. The same is true with the Philippine National Police or the CPPO and the relationship between the urban-based and rural-based police stations. Visit the police stations of Poro and Tudela and you will easily get my drift.
In this sense, Loot’s plan is clearly meant to perpetuate instead of change this unfair setup. Instead of assigning to Poro and Tudela the better policemen, they are being targeted as repository of the so-called “bad eggs” in CPPO. And I doubt if my fellow Porohanons and Tudelanhons would consider Loot’s plan as flattering to us.
Besides, the announced punishment could be rather harsh to the three policemen considering the nature of the supposed violation. Surely, there are other ways to instill in the three cops the needed discipline without wrenching them away from their families.
TEXTREAX. Texter Jin, who is 23 years old and from Leyte, has been spending kalag-kalag in Cebu for almost three years now. Here’s Jin: “I agree with your article yesterday, Bong. Yes, many Filipinos have lost track of the real meaning of kalag-kalag. I also missed the way my province has been celebrating it. And you have not grown old, it’s just that Filipinos are now adopting the western way of remembering the dead.”
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ 0927-2055064)
(November 3, 2005 issue)
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