A question for the acting mayor

One day, I talked with a group of law students while they were waiting for their class to start. When I learned that there were many policemen in that batch hoping to become lawyers someday and trying to understand the rule of law that they would become better law enforcement agents, I was extremely delighted. There could indeed, be no better way to preserve peace and order than having police officers with a good grasp of the statutes.

In the course of that brief conversation, I threw the question that, while apparently addressed to everyone present, was really intended for the policemen listening. I asked for a comment on the competence of our police organization in general. Naturally, they were almost in unison in claiming that, like any other organization, the police force was as good and competent as their leader. To them, they had no doubt on the able leadership of the chief of the city police and so they gave more than a passing rating to him.

I remembered that talk when His Honor, acting Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama, in a news report, was quoted recommending to our police to study how the Mandaue City force solved the major crimes that happened there. The way the news was written, it appeared that in the mind of the acting mayor, the policemen in Mandaue were doing a better job compared to our own men. If the city's chief executive did not know it, his statement was actually a reckless insult aimed at the corps he was theoretically heading.

Perhaps, the acting mayor got frustrated that the murder of City Prosecutor Patrick Osorio remained, after about a month, unsolved. The killers, believed to be guns-for-hire, continued to roam freely and worse the master-mind, whoever he was, has succeeded to elude identification. Or the acting mayor could just have been really impressed by the success of the police forces of our neighboring city in finding the probable culprits of two murders committed recently in their jurisdiction. Whatever it was that prompted acting Mayor Rama to make such a wayward comment must have been waiting for a chance to be expressed. Oh, the tenets of his legal upbringing must have been suppressed!

There must be no other way our policemen should take the acting mayor's advisory but as a direct order to run after the criminals and restore order in our city streets. That is good for us. For so long a time, killings have become more frequent here in Cebu City with fewer killers apprehended and jailed. The denizens of the underworld must not anymore be allowed to rob helpless women, (like a girl also surnamed Osorio), of mobile phones and shoot those refusing to yield their precious belongings.

But, our policemen will have a very hard campaign ahead of them. This is not a difficulty borne out of perceived incompetence. In fairness to the many men in uniform I am acquainted with, they know what it takes to accomplish their tasks. They are not incompetent, rather they are made ineffective in many facets of their functions by wrong signals emanating from sources that are impossible to ignore.

It will be difficult for our policemen to follow the mayor's directive because to do so, they had to start with the victims of vigilantes. It is good to bring the murderers of Prosecutor Osorio to the bar of justice but the police can not just continue to feign inability to pin point the persons who pulled the triggers that snuffed the lives out of the almost 200 victims dating from December 2004.

There is, however, a creeping feeling among few of my friends that the vigilante killers are well connected. By all indications, these summary executioners are not unknown to the seat of power. Therefore, they cannot be exposed. Now, if the acting mayor's directive is to pursue the criminals, it is a marching order to run after the vigilantes. Is that possible? Let Acting Mayor Rama answer this question.