Be prepared

Tragedies strike. No country, region, province, city or individuals are immune from tragic events. Are we prepared to face a crisis situation that comes in any form, such as physical disasters, an accident, chemical leaks, fire, a suicide threat, a barricade situation  all stressful moments for law enforcement personnel who must respond? 

Barricades: That led me to recall that I’ve been on both sides of the barricade! In the 1980s against Marcos facing the barricades; during Cory and Gloria’s years behind the barricades. Another batch of usiseros trooped to Luneta after the bus siege and used the occasion as a photo opportunity, trampling on evidence.

With one voice now to speak on the matter  Department of Justice’s Leila de Lima  the true Filipino spirit moves onward, with a smile, a shrug, a whistle, a whimper to look at that event as a learning experience.

Crisis is a threat to family life and government departments and any bureau’s operations. Speaking from experience, being once a governor, a crisis can create three related threats. One to public safety, that’s your life and mine; a financial loss as administrators or as housewives being accountable for our expenditures; and the loss of reputation, which needs a manager who’s trusted. It’s a disaster not to be believed in a crisis, and a crisis manager divides his job into three phases: pre-crisis, crisis response, and post-crisis.

The pre-crisis phase is concerned with prevention and preparation. Even a housewife knows this: “Shut off the iron when not in use.” The policeman should know where the shabu factory is, which could be just behind the municipal hall in Pasig. The DSWD knows that a typhoon brings floods and the preparation for packed clothing and food and rubber boats for rescue on standby. The post-crisis phase looks for ways to better prepare for the next threat, and remember to fulfill commitments made during the crisis phase through persuasion. If Capt. Rolando Mendoza knew he would have been reinstated would he… would he have? So the traffic is to blame that his papers didn’t reach him on time. It’s as though from the very start the operation was meant to fail.

From what I’ve studied and what you know from common sense, cadavers on the bus needed to have been photographed or sketched or videoed and not removed immediately. Questions are raised: on the trajectory of the bullet, what was the position of the victims and the hostage taker, were the spent shells from Mendoza’s armalite on the aisle of the bus or the back of the vehicle? If his son arrived as planned, in a chopper, would he have been able to convince his dad to lay down his weapon? As it turned out, it all led to the end of many lives. The crowd entered the bus, picked up empty shells, participants left their shoe imprints in the vehicle. Contamination of the crime scene took place. Did you notice the Chinese investigators? They wore cloth booties over their shoes and gloves. Our policemen left their fingerprints everywhere.

Prevention is the pre-crisis phase to save situations. On a big scale, it’s having a risk management program through creating a management plan, a team, and conducting exercises to test the plan and team.  Remember our fire drills in school?

At Luneta, the site of numerous historical events, the bus driver ran out claiming “patay lahat.” It was taken as truth with no one really able to ascertain the level of disaster. At that point there wasn’t one spokesperson, a manager to ask the driver what he meant and really saw, to guide further action for one story. So everyone passed the word, all rumors, from TV to satellite, from province to country and to the whole world. And no one was prepared to address the audience.

I knew I needed to know there was someone in charge that I could see on TV or listen to. During the Bicutan siege, the public was aware Secretary Angelo Reyes was the boss with Usec. Marius Corpuz and General Art Lumibao. While Secretary Jesse Robredo hovered around in Luneta, we would have been at peace with other thousands, witnessing stability for our country, if Usec. Rico Puno of DILG was in the camera’s angle with General Jesus Verzosa.

Col. Filipina Papa, a blood splatter expert, commented, “A response focuses on three points:  be quick, be accurate and be consistent. Simple, but not quite easy. It’s hard to decide what to say in the first minutes and even an hour after the crisis. That puts a great deal of pressure on crisis managers. People want correct information. Inaccuracies make the bearer of information look inconsistent, incorrect and irrelevant. All told, the philosophy of speaking with one voice in a crisis is a way to maintain accuracy.”

Reputation repair. How do we confront the sudden and the negative to repair incorrect actions? Let’s wait for the investigation to be concluded. In the meantime, lady officer Papa commented, “Attribution theory believes that we try to explain why behavior and attitudes generate emotions. They make events happen all too suddenly.” 

In the post-crisis phase, the organization heaves a deep sigh and carries on. There’s no choice but to return to normalcy, business as usual. The crisis managers  they’re psychologists, too  explain actions, conclusions and all those resolutions to regain the public’s trust.  Finally, we integrate lessons learned to prevent, prepare, respond and improve. While crisis is such a negative aspect, we can emerge stronger. No organization is farthermost from any crisis. Let’s return to our Girl Scouts’ motto, “Be prepared.” Many things that cause us to act the way we do are consequences of our childhood.