Thursday, August 30, 2007 Editorials: Bohol’s law enforcement triumph
THAT Casimero “Meloy” Garcia and the rest of his gang, formerly called the Bohol Robbery Group, were arrested in Tagbilaran City and neighboring Panglao town the other day can be considered poetic justice.
The robbery group gained a certain degree of notoriety that, because police and the media attached the word Bohol to the gang’s label, rubbed off a bit, rather unfairly we should say, on the home province of its members.
But the fall of the gang, now called the Casimero “Meloy” Garcia robbery group, made dramatic by the heroic act of the security guards of a bank in Tagbilaran and the help provided by informants, was vindication for Bohol.
Heroic act
Compared with the sloppy manner the police and other sectors reacted to the robberies perpetrated by the group in Cebu and Mandaue cities, the success of the Boholanos easily stood out.
Unlike in the heists in Cebu, security guards of the Bank of Commerce fought it out with the robbers and wounded two of them, making it easier for the police to track down the group’s whereabouts.
(In the process, one security guard was killed and two others wounded.)
Of course, in law enforcement as in everything else, one should not distinguish a unit, a province or a group of people from another, meaning, there should only be unity in fighting criminality.
Last laugh
Comparison, however, is difficult to brush aside in this case considering the origin of the Meloy Garcia gang and the kind of operation the police attributed to them.
By shifting their operation from Bohol to Cebu and back, the group conjured images of Cebu being assaulted by outsiders, reinforcing their erroneous tag as the Bohol Robbery Group.
That resurrected almost buried perceptions of Cebuanos about Boholanos, as shown by the digging up of old jokes that are not flattering to the latter.
In the end, though, Boholanos had the last laugh.
Lessons
One can argue that Tagbilaran and Panglao are not Metro Cebu considering the differences in population and the level of urban development that are factors in assessing the quality of law enforcement in these areas.
But it is difficult to quarrel with success, thus Cebu should learn from Bohol’s recent law enforcement triumph.
