EDITORIAL – Haste makes waste

The decision of the Regional Trial Court last week to quash a search warrant it earlier issued the NBI and paved the way for its agents to raid a rice warehouse in Mandaue City is not simply about freeing up the rice and shoring up the short supply in the market.

It is also about the danger posed by government law enforcement agencies such as the NBI each time they make the mistake of shooting from the hip instead of proceeding on their jobs with efficiency and tact.

As the court decision clearly showed, the NBI applied for a search warrant solely on the basis of shallow information and did not bother to check and cross-check its facts, thus leading to an erroneous operation, to say the least.

The NBI moved on the basis of information that one Mariano Martinez was importing rice without any license and was keeping them in a warehouse in Mandaue City without authority from the NFA.

As things turned out, it was not Martinez who imported the rice but Regan King. And while Martinez owned the warehouse, he had leased the same to King, who not only had a license to import rice, but also had the warehouse registered with the NFA.

Moreover, the raid was conducted on the presumption that the rice was either smuggled or hoarded. As the facts would later show, the rice was neither. King actually paid Customs half the duties and his rice was in the warehouse for inventory to determine the full duties.

In other words, everything was on the level. And while initial NBI info tended to show otherwise, it was data that needed to be validated. Had the NBI done so, it would have realized how wrong the info was, and a lot of red faces could have been avoided.

Sometimes there is merit in acting with dispatch. But dispatch should not be synonymous with haste. When it comes to law enforcement, where action can sometimes put lives, liberties and proprietary rights at risk, there is always the need to couple dispatch with prudence.