Figures - SKETCHES By Ana Marie Pamintuan

"Figures don’t lie," the Little President said yesterday. Probably not, but figures don’t always tell the whole story.

Crime statistics reflect felonies that are reported to the police. But cops themselves admit that many crimes go unreported, such as the abduction of Mary Grace Cheng-Regasa and previous attacks on her family, and kidnappings of Singaporeans. Many women are still embarrassed to file a complaint for rape or even sexual harassment. You call the cops when your car is stolen, but do you bother to file a complaint when the car’s side mirror or windshield wiper is filched? You just go to the fences of Banawe for a replacement.

* * *

How do cops solve crimes that aren’t reported? This is not a new dilemma for the police. Since Philippine crooks discovered many years ago how lucrative ransom kidnapping could be, getting the families of kidnap victims to seek police help has been a problem. You can understand the victims’ reluctance. Too many law enforcers have been found to be involved in criminal activities.

During the Marcos regime, the most notorious carnap ring was headed by a Philippine Constabulary brigadier general with a penchant for Mercedes Benzes. EDSA I didn’t end the career of uniformed crooks. Constabulary officers created the Red Scorpion Group and the Kuratong Baleleng gang, coddled drug lords and of course jueteng lords. A former PC-Integrated National Police general was widely believed to be behind kidnappings during Fidel Ramos’ presidency. Two PC-INP officials and a retired Marine officer (recently appointed, by the way, as board member of a government corporation) organized the Abu Sayyaf.

If there’s a major crime and communists and Muslim secessionists don’t take responsibility for it, you can be sure there’s a cop or soldier behind it. You don’t waylay an armored van, torch it and flee with $20 million without the blessing of cops or soldiers. You don’t kidnap and murder a high-profile publicist like Bubby Dacer without the involvement of cops.

Here’s a clue: if a criminal gang is wiped out in a purported encounter with cops or soldiers, you can be sure the gang was a creation of the execution team. Dead men tell no tales.

* * *

Which comes first: citizens’ trust or law enforcers’ performance?

If President Arroyo wants her peace and order program to succeed, she may have to set aside political debts from EDSA Dos and heed at least some of the concerns of the Filipino-Chinese community. She may have to shunt aside her police intelligence chief, Reynaldo Berroya, to a less conspicuous position. As the Tsinoys have pointed out over and over, Berroya was convicted of kidnapping a Chinese and was freed on a mere technicality.

Another source of mistrust in the Tsinoy community is Boogie Mendoza – no relation to Philippine National Police chief Leandro Mendoza, but close enough to the PNP chief to generate apprehension among kidnap victims.

This is not to say that we should discount destabilization plots reported to Malacañang by President Arroyo’s trusted officers. Cops identified with the Estrada administration are also experts at mischief. It has been written often enough that if they managed to keep the kidnappers at bay during Erap’s watch, it was because they had a quid pro quo with the kidnappers, allowing them to conduct other lucrative criminal activities such as smuggling elsewhere in the country.

But if there’s destabilization, it may be better for Malacañang to shut up about it and just get the perpetrators. Unfortunately, the administration has been hurling so many accusations since Day One without substantiating them that the charges are starting to ring hollow.

* * *

I see the creation of a Cabinet oversight committee and an anti-crime council as an indication of President Arroyo’s growing impatience with her law enforcement and security team. Even the National Bureau of Investigation has been a disappointment.

President GMA’s problem is how to find officers she can trust. After five months, she has had a chance to see the performance of her hand-picked officers. She should start cracking the whip. By the time she delivers her first State of the Nation Address next month, she should have something more to show to the public than an anti-crime council and a Cabinet oversight committee.

The peso is down, the stock market’s performance is lackluster, investors are fleeing and tourists are staying away. True, regional currencies are weak and there’s the specter of a global recession. But peace and order concerns have aggravated our problems. If President GMA wants speedier economic recovery, she will have to take a firmer hand in law enforcement.