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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Editorials: Police Chief Gayotin can do that ‘fine job’ elsewhere
It looks like Cebu City acting police chief Melvin Gayotin is going to keep his job, at least for awhile.
The order to transfer him to Iloilo City has been rescinded reportedly because the region’s police chief, Silverio Alarcio Jr., interceded. Another report said power brokers in Cebu City asked President Arroyo’s help and presto! the relief order was recalled.
Official reason for the transfer was plain enough. A police superintendent, Gayotin does not fill Cebu City’s requirement for a senior superintendent. For about two years already, the city has been getting less than it needs for officer material.
Official reason for stopping the relief was something else. Mayor Tomas Osmeña was reportedly shocked because he was not consulted. Alarcio agreed with the need to consult the local leaders, although PNP rules merely require the mayor’s consent to the replacement by choosing one from a number of aspirants.
Kindred spirit
It was about doing a “fine job” on which Mayor Osmeña and the rest of the community may disagree.
Not everyone has seen a fine job from Gayotin under whose watch the police recorded more than 150 summary executions of crime suspects without solving any one of them.
The other day, when news of his exit broke out, three more people were extra-judicially killed. What was it, a reminder to the mayor he would be losing a kindred spirit in inspiring vigilantism?
The mayor, one can understand, appreciates Gayotin who has played deaf and dumb to the serial murders, which jibes with the perverse and grotesque idea that to stop the crimes government must allow crimes.
The idea, of course, stinks, legally and morally. It does not only inflict violence on the government’s concept of justice, mocks the processes of the law, imposes penalty grossly disproportionate to the offense, and plays God with faceless and unaccountable people choosing the people who will die — but worse: the freaking idea does not freaking work (otherwise, they would have long stopped the murders because the criminals in theory have already fled and are in hiding).
Tolerance or collusion
As to the other forms of criminality, such as illegal drugs and illegal gambling, how many times has the mayor himself got angry in public over the failure to curb them?
Why does he fume only at the barangay captains when it is common knowledge that without the tolerance or collusion of the police headed by their chief, the illegal acts could not have flourished.
Assigned elsewhere, Gayotin would be a fine officer and would probably do a fine job, as in really fine.
In Cebu City, where political chiefs have warped ideas about the justice system, he has not done well and may never do well. |
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