Both victims were totally helpless when summarily killed, their bodies left on roadside by armed, motorcycle-riding assassins. Crime-scene police documented, filed, and efficiently forgot.
Worse than hanging or lethal injection, summary execution gives the victim no time to mutter prayer or good-by. Penalty is too huge for the offense and, if we forgot, even legal executions are banned.
Police chief Pat doesn't think vigilante killings are back. The crime index is down: no need for vigilantes to go berserk again, or so his logic runs.
New threat
Whoever did the new killings, there's again the danger of impunity tearing justice system's fabric and cheapening human life.
In its last season, serial murders took away more than 170 people, not a single case solved.
Orchestrated or random, these murders lead to breakdown of law and order. Whoever the culprits, the same freedom from punishment for crime poisons our way of life.
Police chief Pat can solve each murder, so as not to repeat what the first wave of killings did, which earned for Cebu City the tag of Murder City and for police chiefs a shameful legacy.
Police chief Pat said last Feb. 26 that "as far as the city police is concerned, there are no vigilantes."
At least, the police chief knows what the word means. To acknowledge vigilante presence is to admit the police don't exist or are inefficient.
