The cellphone menace

At no other time in memory has there been a cultural “fad” as popular and wide-spread as the cellphone gadget. The cellphone is no longer a “luxury” affordable only by the opulent, or the “can afford” set, but has become the “It” and the “In” status symbol, especially for the youth, students or not.

Indeed, the fad has many uses, like, text messaging, direct phone calls, photo-taking, message saving and repository, mathematical computations, and foremost to the vain is its “pasikat” value. And so, it affords time in communication, spans distance, and saves transportation costs, and also cuts personal movements and efforts since absence and distance are brought to nil.

For the young users “addicted” to the gadget, they do their romantic fling via so-called “text mates” at first, then evolving into direct call as “cellphone-mates”. This eventually blossoms into personal contacts or dates, and the rest of the hot romantic passions may lead to the actual sex.

In some households, domestic helpers are also sold out to owning cellphones and spending their meager income to buy “loads. A young conservative domestic helper complained to her matron that she has been disturbed by the other very much older DH – in mid-fifties – who indulges in “cellphone sex” with her “sex-mate” in the dead of the night. Wow, doing the sexual “thing” by cellphone!

But then sexual congress by cellphone among the oversexed partners, could be the lesser evil. What is worst is the cellphone snatchings, nay, highway robbery committed by lawless elements victimizing the innocent. The sorrowful fatal victim, 14-year-old Carlo Mangitngit, has now become a typical example. Good that the heartless offenders have been apprehended.

Presently, commuters of PUJs and countless others are unsuspecting preys whose cellphones are robbed in broad daylight. For one, a lady neighbor had experienced such fearsome heist when a male co-passenger was divested of his unit inside his trousers without his knowledge. According to the PUJ driver and his wife, these snatchers work at least in pairs, or in fours, or as many as six who board the PUJs. What’s chilling revelation is that these shameless criminals seldom disembark without successful heist enroute.

Significantly thereafter, said neighbor’s daughter, then, a high school graduating student was later divested of her cellphone by two male passengers who “sandwiched” her between them. They could have had seen her transferring her gadget from her pocket to her school bag before boarding the PUJ. Thus, on the way all she shockingly realized was the tip of the ice pick pricking at her side without the perpetrator saying anything. Because of her fear and, guessing that the pair had been after her cellphone, she handed it over.

Now, the cellphone victims could be very many who are cowed from reporting to the authorities. Imagine the callousness of these bad elements who operate with impunity, such that, they are emboldened to commit robbery not just for cellphones, but also, the money and jewelry or trinkets of innocent victims. And, it’s happened already that these dirty denizens of society don’t have the hesitation or the twinge of conscience to kill their targets.

It’s thus imperative for the police and other authorities to operate conscientiously and decisively to nab these criminals. Saying that the election ban prevents them from carrying their issued sidearms, the police seem inutile. But an enterprising and dedicated law enforcer has to be resourceful how to nab these ubiquitous offenders, any way or the other. It’s a matter of guts, common sense, and utmost will to outwit and out-think through police assets and other “intel” surveillance, to track down these dastardly street criminals.

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