The days of Pepe and Pilar are gone

The new head of the Philippine National Police, Director General Jesus Verzosa, made it his first order of business to scrap the practice of police officers of parading crime suspects before the media.

Verzosa may have been fired by the best of intentions in giving the order, and it has to be admitted that it has its laudable points, not the least of which is the protection of the rights of an accused who, by law, is deemed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

Whether the laudable points are valid enough to scrap the practice is another matter, however. For in fairness, it has to be likewise admitted that parading crime suspects has its own set of uses.

In fact, I have no objections to parading these crime suspects before the media, and hence to the public. These people may still be suspects, and the crimes imputed to them may still have to be proven in court. But chances are great they are the correct suspects.

Let us place things in proper context. It is not everytime that the police would parade crime suspects before the media. Indeed, more crime suspects are kept from public view than are those who get paraded.

It is, therefore, even unfair to call parading of suspects a practice because it is more of an exception than the rule. The police parade suspects only when they feel there is a need to show the public that they are doing their jobs, mostly in relation to "bigger" crimes.

And I can understand why the police do that. The police organization is not exactly among the more popular agencies of government, even if the role it plays is definitely one of the most important.

Almost always the butt of criticism and cruel jokes, the police are often hard-pressed to prove they do not deserve all the brickbats and negativism. Parading suspects is just one way of showing contravening proof, so why deny them such a simple pleasure.

Besides, even the police know that when they parade suspects, they have to be almost absolutely certain that they have the right parties to put on display. The moment they mess up and parade the wrong persons, there will be hell to pay.

So, it can be safely assumed that the "stars" of the parade are the real culprits, as I have yet to hear of anyone complaining of having his identity mistaken and that he was paraded wrongfully.

There is another good that can come from parading suspects. By having the public see what they look like, they can be recognized and their associates and friends identified. People will thus be forewarned, and a great preventive service shall have been accomplished.

Not only are crimes getting to be a very big problem in the Philippines, but the motives for their commission are increasingly getting harder to fathom. Killing a female student simply for her cellphone? What kind of evil is that? Good the suspect is paraded, not skinned.

Of course, there would be far greater damage to society if we all decend into anarchy and lawlessness. But parading suspects is not anarchy. Parading suspects does not even deprive them of their fair day in court. Dignity? Tell that to their victims.

We do not know if Verzosa will eventually change his mind. But we hope he does. For we no longer live in the time of Pepe and Pilar. We are in a society where priests molest girls at confession and fathers rape their own daughters. We cannot beat crime with a bunch of flowers.

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I would like to thank Mr. Chester Cokaliong for providing The FREEMAN with the t-shirts we used in the course of celebrating the 14th edition of Cebu Press Freedom Week, of which this paper was the lead convenor.