“Define lawlessness.”
--Police regional chief Debold Sinas, in SunStar on Facebook Live, Oct. 15, 2018
IF THOSE assessing the peace and order situation in Cebu and the police they assess do not agree on meaning of the words and phrases used, the question can hardly be settled.
They also need to agree on the area of the killings: Cebu City alone or Metro Cebu? Is the rest of the province included in the count? And if Cebu City is “the timeline,” as Gen. Debold Sinas, PNP Central Visayas commander, puts it, the figures do not reflect the state in a specific area.
And what kind of murders: Illegal or extrajudicial deaths by police or vigilantes or self-defense killings in legitimate police operations? Drug-related executions or violence from passion, business or political rivalry?
Escape hatch
Police tend to look for escape hatch or seek refuge behind undefined meanings of prose or exaggerated language used in the conversation.
Hyperbole used by accusers may provide temporary defense. Cebu Business Club president Gordon Alan Joseph reportedly “expressed alarm over the continued spate of killings in Cebu over the past weeks,” saying they “indicate a growing state of lawlessness.” Was he bloating things up? He was being careful. Yet General Sinas seized the story’s headline “state of lawlessness” to answer a press-con question Monday (Oct. 15) with a dare: define “state of lawlessness.”
A state of lawlessness would mean near-total breakdown of law and order, which would justify the President to send troops. “A criminal city,” as a Cebu City councilor calls his city? With what numbers does he prop up the charge?
Police as suspects
What is happening, if the police must be told in its face, is that persons apparently selected for liquidation are being gunned down at will by the police or other persons supported or encouraged by the police. Most of the victims were linked to drugs – suspected, accused, or convicted – with bystanders at times included in the execution by accident or negligence. The problem is: “Where’s your evidence?” Critics are not the investigators; the police are.
Not strangely, many people see nothing wrong with this manner of enforcing the law and even justify the use of crime to fight crime. Police conveniently use that as support to what they’ve been doing, or what they’ve been accused of doing.
They have not spoken up yet though in this manner: “Look, this is what you want the police to do. You’re not complaining, so you must find it acceptable.”
Limit of tolerance
If that is the situation, we could only wait for the time when the “state of lawlessness” becomes unacceptable. For now, we cannot prove the “state of lawlessness.”
SunStar reported a total of 180 killings in four months plus days. The number of Cebu victims already breached the 200 mark, according to a Cebu Daily News tally. Would we start complaining only when the figure soars to 500, a thousand, 5,000, or maybe 10,000?
What is the limit of our tolerance to the pile-up of bodies? How could the impunity – not being punished for a crime – not spill over to other killings not related to drugs?