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Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Carvajal: One murder too many
By Orlando P. Carvajal
The killing of Jojo de la Victoria puts the police in a very tight spot, whether they realize it or not. I hope they do but they probably won’t, unfortunately. I am not talking about how the killer flashed a police badge either. We can probably assume it was a fake because why would the killer do a stupid thing like flash a policeman’s badge, fake or not. But then again, our police have been known to do more stupid things.
Anyway, the police are in a bind because they cannot stand back and not solve this crime. The victim was a law-abiding citizen who, we could probably assume, was killed for his strict implementation of the law against dynamite fishing.
However, and here’s the rub, if the police solved de la Victoria’s murder, then they would be guilty of discrimination, to say the least, because how come they could not solve the 121 or so murders committed by the vigilantes? What happens to equality before the law as guaranteed in our constitution if vigilantes could kill petty criminals with impunity?
I said discrimination to say the least because a worst-case scenario could paint a police force that is unable to solve the murders of petty criminals because either they are the vigilantes themselves or they are protecting the vigilantes who do the killing. Which makes them guilty not just of discrimination and negligence of duty but also of the crime itself of murder.
On the other hand, if the police failed to solve de la Victoria’s murder, then they could be guilty of incompetence. In which case the chief of police should accept command responsibility and either resign or be fired. Surely, 121 unsolved murders must make for a solid case of incompetence at the very least or point to a possible connivance of the police with the vigilantes. In both cases, the police are placed in a very bad light.
So how come the mayor has not fired the chief of police? He seems to pride himself, arrogantly at that, with his competence. How can he tolerate a police force that has failed to solve 121 murders and still counting? Is it a case perhaps of a fully awake person being very hard or even impossible to rouse? We all know the answer to that, of course.
Meanwhile our children, whether we like it or not are soaking all this in. Our young ones’ minds and consciences are right now being inured to murder and programmed to accept all these killings of petty thieves as society’s practical and proper way of dealing with petty criminals. We are becoming a society of death-dealers. Death, by murder, is fast becoming our preferred solution to petty crimes like theft.
When will we see that there has been one murder too many?
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 19, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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