Thursday, May 15, 2008 Seares: Cops as assassins? By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
THIS may seem useless exercise: police spinning theories as to who massacred three swindling suspects, two of whom had just been released from jail.
It's not idle work. Theorizing is part of police reporting to the public. They don't have anything solid, only ideas to appease restless natives and pushy reporters.
Thus, the theories as to who were the killers who ambushed the van some 200 meters from Kalunasan city jail, spewing out gunfire with no regard for cost of bullets:
One, the assassins were fellow gang members out to avenge lopsided division of loot.
Two, they were a rival group out to protect or expand turf.
Three, they were hired by people who lost money to the swindlers.
Unlikely
All plausible but unlikely, says a veteran cop.
Quarrel over the take? Swindlers honor agreed sharing, among themselves or with police partners. A rival syndicate? If it were over drugs, maybe, but not over the con game "budol-budol." No, the sun shines for every swindler. An outraged fraud victim? He who lost money that way would rather forget than take revenge.
But police has shut out one sound theory: that some cops were employed to "salvage" crime suspects.
Not a formal unit, which police concept and structure abhor. Just a few cops run by someone who thinks he has power of life and death and deems as crap the church plea to value human life.
Police assassins? That will explain access to data, weapons, skill, and chances of not being caught and punished.
A few bad cops won't poison PNP. What will is when its officials tolerate the impunity and tell us "Dirty Harry" killing is fiction.
