NINE POLICEMEN, including seven assigned to the La Loma police station of the Quezon City Police District have been tagged in that daring abduction and robbery on EDSA on Sept. 1 that went viral on social media.
Non-viral now but as much terrifying is the number of cases involving policemen in practically every nook and corner of the country. A case in point is Pampanga. Per media reports now:
A police chief Inspector of Sta. Rosa, Laguna was caught red-handed with five sachets of shabu in a drug buy-bust operation in Mawaque, Mabalacat City on Sept. 7. Six members of the Mobile Patrol Unit in Angeles City were accused of alleged robbery and extortion by two Holy Angel University teachers on Sept. 2. This, after being caught in an entrapment operation set by their own peers.
Two members of the Angeles City police were arrested on July 28 in the act of robbing an employee remitting cash at Barangay Ninoy Aquino. Their two civilian cohorts were killed in a shootout.
A member of the Regional Public Safety Battalion was arrested on July 11 after he and three accomplices robbed a British national and took the latter’s car in Porac town.
Last March, the head and 11 members of the Pampanga Provincial Anti-Illegal Drugs Operation Task Group faced summary dismissal proceedings for taking two luggage with shabu and not reporting these in the inventory of items seized in November last year from a Chinese trader in an upscale subdivision in Mexico town.
This amid allegations of tens of millions pesos also taken pay-off On top of these, there is a marked spike in crime in the province, notably homicides and murder, brigandage and rape. Not to mention drug-dealing.
That Pampanga – despite the all-out support in equipment and resources, as well as moral values, of the administration of Gov. Lilia G. Pineda – is deeply mired in crime is a direct indictment of the national police character.
At the installation of Director General Alan Purisima as chief of the Philippine National Police, President BS Aquino III declared: “We cannot have uniformed police officers driving without helmets or even licenses; we cannot have policemen who perpetuate the culture of impunity that impedes the reforms we have sown.
If you are a policeman who accepts bribes at the cost of the environment, if you are a policeman who uses or even sells illegal drugs, if you are involved in bribery or in corruption, if you are a policeman who turns a blind eye to illegal logging—your days are numbered.”
Turns out now: It’s the number of those very cops the President sternly warned that exponentially increased. And their happy days never end. Pure BS, Aquino said there.
Nothing personal, Sir. It’s just the police in character. Kaya nga pulis, eh. Which renders eternal relevance the kanto philosophy written and rewritten here at nauseous regularity, to wit:
MAY pulis, may pulis sa ilalim ng tulay… The ditty is a satirical flick of the finger at the uniformed sneak preying on unwary motorists for two Osmeñas or a Roxas in exchange of their being let go off some trumped-up traffic infraction.
Pulis, pulis, pulis matulis. Ah, double entendre here: the sharpness of the cop at filching the last Quezon off a hapless victim, and the put-on machismo obtaining in a force whose members purportedly have not just one, but two or more paramours.
Flash Report: The Philippine National Police holds the record for the quickest response in crime situations, beating such elite police forces as the New York Police Department which registered eight minutes, and Great Britain’s Scotland Yard at five minutes.
The PNP registered zero minutes. Impossible? No, they are in the scene, themselves committing the crime. Truly, that is a most painful joke – to the national police – that has circled the globe via internet. And just how are the police caricatured?
Uniformly: pot-bellied, palm outstretched. Tawagin mo na akong demonyo, huwag lang pulis. Ah, the unkindest cut of all inflicted on the PNP in the Inquirer comic strip Pugad Baboy where the comparison to the police provided the final straw that broke the patience of the henpecked Air Force Sgt. Sabaybunot giving him the rage to snarl at his domineering wife.
Better be called a devil than a policeman, can anything get lower than this? Object of ridicule and derision, the police may be the rich lode of all that humor, but the joke is on all of us: victims of the very things we draw laughter from.
Doesn’t it hurt to laugh?
