EDITORIAL - Riot in a pandemic

Two hand guns, two 12-gauge pipe guns, an improvised shotgun and 16 bladed weapons were reportedly confiscated following a riot last Sunday night at the New Bilibid Prison that left three inmates dead and 14 others injured.

The bladed weapons can be fashioned out of ordinary items that are used in prisons. Even pipe guns and shotguns can be improvised from readily available materials. But where did the ammunition come from, as well as the hand guns?

Then again, the past years have shown contraband being brought freely into the NBP for prisoners, including not just weapons but also a sauna facility and a well-equipped music recording studio. Allowed to use mobile phones, certain inmates turned the NBP into drug trafficking central, running the illegal drug trade outside the prison from the safety of their cells.

COVID is supposed to have led to stringent mobility restrictions for inmates at all detention facilities in the country. Since the start of the pandemic, several high-value inmates in facilities under the Bureau of Corrections, among them kidnapper and carjacker Jaybee Sebastian in the NBP and drug trafficker Yu Yuk Lai at the Correctional Institution for Women, have died reportedly of COVID. With the highly transmissible Omicron variant entering the country, the BuCor should have further tightened restrictions.

Instead the inmates even found the opportunity to stage a deadly riot a day after New Year’s Day. BuCor officials said the riot started merely with heckling. If verbal insults can leave three inmates dead and over a dozen injured, think of what more provocative acts can do.

The Department of Justice, which has supervision over the BuCor, says it is waiting for the final report on what happened. Whether the riot and ensuing probe will lead to better prison management remains to be seen.