No whitewash: That’s a promise

The shootout last Sunday at the checkpoint in Atimonan, Quezon — where several police and military officers were killed while in the company of a known gambling lord — again brought out a bitter truth.

The slain military and police officers were in the company of Southern Luzon’s reputed top jueteng lord, Victorino Siman, of Calamba, Laguna, who was among the 13 killed in that shootout in Atimonan. The purported shootout took place at the joint police-Army checkpoints.

Initial investigations point to reports that the military and police officers as well as the other fatalities were serving as Siman’s bodyguards, or partners perhaps, in transporting P100 million in cash earned from illegal gambling operations in Southern Tagalog and Bicol. The joint military and police teams that figured in the shootout encounter, however, did not report finding cash in the two Montero SUVs used by the slain suspects except allegedly retrieved high-powered firearms and handguns.

Notwithstanding the strong warning from President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III, no less their Commander-in-chief, the rogues among those in our police and military organizations are obviously undeterred. From the looks of it, the shootout in Atimonan indicated some men in uniform remain on the take of jueteng lords and other major illegal gambling operators.

In this particular case, such alleged involvement of men in uniform with illegal jueteng activities became strongly evident in the areas of their operations at the Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) region.

The latest bloody encounter in Atimonan came barely two days after the bloody shooting rampage in Kawit, Cavite where police came under fire for their alleged slow response to a crime incident reported to them. The crazed gunman, Ronald Bae, already killed seven people, including children, when responding policemen finally gunned him down in a purported shootout.

In the Kawit shooting spree, there was complaint about “slow response” by the police when you needed them most. In the case of Atimonan, you have the policemen right in the middle of the crime because they were among the perpetrators.

This reminded me of the wisecrack made by the late Interior and Local Government Secretary Robert Barbers before a political gathering I covered at the Hotel Intercon in Makati City where he and the rest of the Lakas-NUCD senatorial candidates for the May 1995 midterm elections were presented by former President Fidel Ramos.

Himself a former policeman, Barbers cracked a joke about a supposed police conference he attended abroad.

As per his joke, the police chiefs were each bragging about the speed of response time to a crime incident reported to their respective precincts. The Russian police commissioner told his fellow top cops that Russian policemen arrive at the scene of the crime within 15 to 20 minutes.

The Japanese police chief stood up and said policemen in Japan are faster as they arrive at the scene of the crime within ten minutes.

The police commissioner from the United States just shrugged off claims by his Japan and Russian counterparts. He said the American policemen respond much, much faster because they arrive at the scene of the crime in just five minutes.

Barbers said he told his fellow police chiefs their response times cannot beat the Filipino policemen — because they themselves are in the scene of the crime while it’s taking place — because they are the criminals.

Barbers’ self-deprecating joke, in his first ever campaign spiel as a senatorial candidate, brought the house down. It was funny but it was at the same time a sad indictment of our own policemen. Obviously, this has been the festering problem of our own Philippine National Police (PNP) ever since its creation.

Again, this problem is due to the bad deeds by the rotten eggs in the PNP that unfortunately erode the people’s trust in their policemen.

Amid suspicions of a possible “rubout,” newly installed PNP chief Director General Alan Purisima ordered the creation of a fact-finding team to look into this incident. The PNP fact-finding team would come from Camp Crame and be headed by Chief Superintendent Federico Castro, deputy director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).

From police sources, there were claims that after the death of former Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, Siman had coordinated with Tirso Lontoc to revive jueteng in Iriga City, Camarines Sur. Lontoc, publicly known as an environment advocate, was one of the fatalities in the shootout. He was said to have links with communist rebels and Siman’s group reportedly met with local leaders of the New People’s Army (NPA) to ensure security for the jueteng operations, the sources claimed. The group was allegedly returning from Bicol when the shootout took place.

The details of this incident are getting clearer and lurid. So much so that P-Noy ordered yesterday the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) “to be the sole investigative agency” that will conduct the probe into this case. 

The 24 policemen and 25 Army personnel who survived the supposed shootout — with only one of them injured — will have to answer disturbing questions that it was a case of an alleged “rubout” over rivalry in jueteng operations.

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) wants them investigated for “excessive use of force” while the National Police Commission (Napolcom) will look into administrative aspects of all the policemen involved in this case, including the three slain cops.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda disclosed the Commander-in-chief further directed the PNP to continue their own fact-finding on the Quezon incident, but they will submit all their findings to the NBI. The presidential directive though does not stop the other parallel investigations being conducted by the CHR and Napolcom. We have yet to hear from DILG Secretary Mar Roxas II on his actions regarding local politicians who are into jueteng operations in this case.

The Palace promised again there will be “no whitewash.” Previous cases investigated so far under the Aquino administration fell short of public expectations. Don’t promise anything, please. Just do it.