I just saw a portion of an old Audie Murphy movie on cable television. Despite the fact that I came upon it rather late, I stuck to it till the end. To me, the plot of Murphy’s pictures had been one of incessant though predictable action. Cowboy Audie was a quick draw and a dead shot with his six-shooter, even if shooting from the hips. However, they had some saving factor. Viewing them was like having a glimpse of some social issues.
Curiously, only few days earlier, I replayed the film of Rod Taylor and Jim Brown. I used the word “curiously” because I realized that time had its own way of stringing up otherwise broken segments of social behavior into solid lessons in sociology. Take, for example, the settings of both films. They were diverse in time and in place. The Murphy film was about the old American west. During the early years of federal America, their sheriffs needed the help of bounty hunters to catch criminals. The Taylor/Brown movie, on the other hand, focused on a saga of a fledgling African state taking place after the second world war where soldiers for hire, dubbed mercenaries were engaged.
Their difference notwithstanding, the two films had some commonality. Their plots involved money. Monetary reward was offered so that an undermanned and maybe, an inefficient sheriff’s office could apprehend felons. In the case of mercenaries, money was given to men who would fight the fight of the army.
Yesterday, there was news that carried the trappings of a Murphy/Taylor/Brown starrer only this time it was for sickeningly real. According to the news, the police might offer reward to catch a person suspected of having recently shot a policeman in our neighboring city of Talisay. The police would ask the non-police to do a police act!
That news was quite difficult to understand. The police claimed to have the identity of the alleged criminal. In fact they announced that they already retrieved the firearm belonging to the victim which was taken by the supposed culprit. To the ordinary, it meant that the police tracked this denizen. Yet, they could not apprehend the guy without bribing individuals to share information.
Anyway, the announcement of reward for anybody who could help in the arrest of a suspect, was not the first time in crime situations. We observed many times in the past that when we had problems of peace and order, especially when the victims were high profile personalities, we were quick to dangle monetary rewards for civilians in exchange of their supposedly helpful bits and pieces of information. Sadly, that recent act was not novel and its repetition had already long demolished our better appreciation of its implications.
It is about time we give it a second thought. Our authorities, by touching on the mercenary mentality of the citizenry, impliedly admit to the failure of their administration. What we had in that Talisay City incident was worse. The police forces had, in effect, given up the ghost of a chance to be able to apprehend a criminal who fell one of their own.
In our society, our leaders (and the police) think that we are all mercenaries. In their appraisal of our culture, we can all be bribed and our efforts only for hire. That we have become materialistic, that we have lost our sense of civic-mindedness. That we can no longer do any patriotic act like helping promote our peace unless handsomely paid to do so.
Perhaps, there are some in our midst who possess this diabolical and skewed mental frame. It does not mean though that our leadership should promote, even encourage, this. Certainly, something can be done to right this warped perception. Our authorities should acknowledge that policies have to be written and, better still faithfully implemented that achieving justice for some criminal victim is not dependent on the availability of reward money. Question, is this impossible to achieve?