The other afternoon, we witnessed a horrifying example of the breakdown of peace and order in our community. It was rather an unusual happening, but it happened just the same.
At the outset, the commotion that the incident generated was, because uncommon, difficult to figure out. We thought the scene was taken out of a blue movie depicting gang behavior of an inner part of a black American city. Yet, it was real. Right at the corner of Junquera and P. del Rosario Streets, at the heart of the city, a cabal of about 5 to 7 teenagers, showing physical manifestations of being high on drugs literally rampaged thru. I was told that they started somewhere and continued until they reached near our place. To highlight the horrible reality, my own son Byron, uninitiated to gang activities, and some friends in the neighborhood had to act, Walking Tall-like. He took hold of a truncheon made out of kamagong and stood by our locked door. Perhaps, it was a funny move, but our desperation made it necessary.
The rampaging teenagers asked money from passengers of jeepneys that stopped. The defenseless passengers realized it was more prudent to yield to the extortion than to fight for their right. In one instance, two of the boys approached a jeepney driver while two others came on the passenger side. The latter duo started to harass the passengers and caught the attention of the driver. At that instance, the first two, picked the money of the driver and walked away.
In another scene, a driver of a cargo truck, who must have observed what was going on, stopped his vehicle right in front of one of the boys standing near the side of the road. Immediately, his passengers jumped out of the truck and pummeled some sense into the teenager. We thought the boy was hurt but when the truck drove off, we saw him in an unusual condition. He was bloodied but his wicked smile seemed to indicate he enjoyed the beating.
After minutes of having commandeered our area, the teenagers, to our immeasurable amount of relief, disappeared. Earlier, we were gripped with terrible fear. At the same time, we were also busy adopting all kinds of unplanned protection. Between fear and hasty self-defense efforts, we did not notice where the boys went. True, the barangay tanod and the police, whom we called for assistance, came one after the other. But, they were late.
I highlight this story because few days earlier, my editor wrote about the vigilantes or more precisely about the apparent absence, in recent times, of vigilante type of summary execution. Have the vigilantes decided to stop their own rampage?
To recall, these vigilante murderers surfaced in December 2004. Their first kill was one Jimmy Duarte of Barangay San Roque, this city and the last count reached about 200. Duarte’s brutal and senseless murder was recorded just about two days after His Honor, Cebu City Mayor Tomas R. Osmena, revealed the formation of a Hunters’ Group that was designed to counter the upsurge of criminality. There had been no evidence though to link the Hunters’ Group with the vigilantes. But, the idea behind the activity of either or both, was to instill fear among criminals in the expectation that peace and order would reign.
Well, the teenagers who terrified us the other day were not afraid of the vigilantes. In fact, they proved that the theory behind the vigilante was an utterly misplaced proposition. How could murders, by themselves crime, prevent the commission of other crimes? Summary killing was, and still is, by all means wrong. There can never be justification for any vigilante killing.
Worse, the teenagers’ menace also shows to us the depths of the deterioration of the city’s peace and order condition in our city. There is an obvious failure of the city administration to protect its citizenry. In the last ten months or so of this administration, and before the mayor, after almost 2 decades of reigning supreme, bows out of office, it must be his duty to address this issue or be pilloried, for years to come, by a mass of unsavory criticisms.