Breakdown of law and order spreads

“There is no crime wave in Metro Manila.” So declared the National Police last March, amid reports of brazen robberies, including inside a shopping mall where a security guard was killed. It was very wrong. Two more mall heists were pulled off since then. Not only that. Thieves also tunneled their way into banks, money exchanges and pawnshops from rented houses across the street. Two Chinoy youths, a Burmese child, and a Filipino engineer also were kidnapped. Assassinations by motorcycling gunmen went on unabated, targeting not just prominent citizens, but even a menial butcher, a rival suitor, and two mothers picking up children from school. Rape-murders increased. Dozens of college students reported injuries by snatchers of mobile phones and laptops. Middle-class subdivisions suffered a rash of night burglaries. Why, even a military colonel’s SUV was stolen inside Camp Aguinaldo general headquarters.

Not only the national capital region fell into big crimes. Robberies were frequent too in off-city tourist resorts. So were kidnappings for ransom and carjacking even in small towns. Drug trafficking surged anew in recent months, masterminded by Chinese syndicates, according to the US State department. Given the rise in shootings, gun running apparently thrived. Fortunately the police got wind of and raided a huge arsenal in a house in Maguindanao. In that wretched province, six witnesses to the 2009 massacre of 57 journalists and a politician’s female lawyers and kin have been silenced with bullets or chainsaws. Yet the NBI has not begun to solve any of the murders; prosecutors under their common Department of Justice are crying to the press.

The spate of crime cannot be blamed on the police alone. Other regulatory agencies have let ordinary citizens get away with big offenses, like running over pedestrians, dynamite fishing, and hillside quarrying. Shop owners illegally but routinely forbid return or exchange of faulty dry goods. Canteen operators disobey sanitation laws. Builders ignore fire codes. Manufacturers leave workers unprotected from health and job hazards. Office bosses and homeowners steal electricity and water. Ordinances against littering, drunk driving, public smoking, noise pollution, or road excavating are violated with impunity because no one cares. There seems to be a breakdown of law and order.

Why? Because hardly anyone gets punished. Filipinos do not demand better living conditions by plain law enforcement. And leaders do not bother to offer it, busy as they are with cheap grandstanding for reelection.

There’s no rule of law, only of man — particularly the influential. Invoking presumption of innocence, national politicians press for house arrest for indicted peers. They ignore the real issue: subhuman conditions in ordinary jails. Invoking compassion for the unschooled, local politicos demand custody of illegal woodcutters or petty criminals. All forget that crime left unpunished breeds recidivism. –Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)