EDITORIAL - Another jailbreak at Camp Crame

We wouldn’t be surprised if one day communist rebels dressed in barong Tagalog swooped down on Camp Crame, raided the armory and freed all detainees, with the cops finding out only after the raiders have returned to their mountain strongholds. At the rate detainees are escaping from the headquarters of the Philippine National Police, you wonder if any cop ever stays awake long enough to keep watch at Camp Crame.

Only a few months ago, three detainees led by Faisal Marohombsar, founder of the Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang, escaped from what was supposed to be the maximum security detention center of an elite presidential anti-kidnapping task force, again inside Camp Crame. It must be emphasized that Marohombsar and one of his fellow escapees have since been shot dead by cops — not while trying to escape, of course, but in alleged firefights with lawmen.

The killings, however, do not erase the fact that three men – one of them among the most notorious crime suspects in the country – escaped from a detention center at the PNP headquarters. You’d think the cops would have been more careful after that jailbreak. Instead we’ve learned that yet another detainee has bolted, this time from the detention facility of the newly formed Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency at Camp Crame.

Henry Tan, a Chinese held without bail on charges of drug trafficking, escaped over the weekend from the detention cell of what used to be the Narcotics Group’s Operational Support Service Office. Television footage showed the grills on a small window at the detention cell sawed off. Tan, we are told, managed to saw off those grills without anyone getting the wiser, then scale a perimeter fence 12 feet high. He disappeared in the densely populated Barangay West Crame.

Were the jail guards watching Mexican telenovelas around the clock? Aren’t regular checks made on the window grills of detention cells? Yesterday some PNP officials were saying the sawed off grills were merely meant to mislead, that Tan might have simply been escorted out of the detention cell and allowed to escape. Several cops have been relieved of guard duty and are under investigation for the jailbreak. Whatever the reason, this is yet another blot on the PNP. Cops can’t arrest criminals, and those arrested manage to escape. How can the PNP regain public trust?