learned that the people in the whole of the Davao Region have a high trust on the police organization in
this part of the country.
In an interview with the spokesperson of the Police Regional Office (PRO) XI, the exceptional feat was
known from the result of a survey conducted on some 1,200 respondents all over the Southern
Philippines
It was not clear in that interview with the spokesperson whether the survey was undertaken by an
organic team from the police office itself, or by one professional survey firm that was commissioned by
the police or whoever interested persons or entity.
Whatever, the result of the survey is one cause for celebration by the police Regional Command.
After all, with what is happening now in the law enforcers’ organization especially the involvement of
some from the policemen’s ranks, in a number of high profile crimes in the country, the erosion of the
people’s confidence in the police is as certain as the sun rising in the east. Therefore, it is no mean feat
for the RPO XI to get such perception from a highly critical public.
We have to admit though that we have no idea when the survey was conducted. It may be recalled
that only recently, a member of the Davao City Police Organization was arrested in General Santos City
for his alleged involvement in a heist of a local businessman.
And we even suspect that such accomplishment of the police Regional organization in this part of the
country will negatively be altered by the police’s double talk in the case of the recent development in
the ambush-slay of broadcaster Percy (Lapid) Mabasa in the Capital region.
It really is very hard to imagine the level of credibility the police organization has when a senior police
officer tells the public through the media that the middleman in the deal to kill the broadcaster is not
inside the Bilibid prison but locked up in an unidentified detention center because he is not yet
convicted. Meaning his case is still deliberated in court. The top police official even refused to tell a
woman anchor of a television program the specific jail because the police need to secure the inmate.
And then came the Justice Secretary himself last Thursday confirming loose talks about the sudden
death of the alleged middleman reportedly on the very day the self-confessed triggerman surrendered
to the police.
What followed thereafter was an awkward police statement that claims there are two, not one,
middlemen in the broadcaster’s kill transaction and the one who reportedly died of “hard-to-believe”
cause was the one inside the Bilibid penitentiary.
Of course we know that in certain situation police work in solving particular crimes has to have
“strategic manipulation” of scenarios as one necessary evil in order to either ferret our perpetrators or
veer away the attention of those who are unnecessarily interfering the investigation.
But any which way the muddling of issues or scenarios is intended to lead to, one thing is certain: the
casualties are the police credibility and the people’s trust on the people who are mandated to be their
protectors.
Now will the major police inconsistencies in the Mabasa case in Metro Manila negatively impact on
the accolade accorded the police in the Davao Region? Certainly it will, more so if nothing positive will
happen in some of the high profile cases where some of its uniformed and non-uniformed personnel
were involved like the policeman alleged to have been involved in the hold-up of a businessman in
General Santos City, and the PRO XI doctor who is facing a homicide case for the shooting to death of a
19-year old student a few month back.
Of course the Police in the region can easily invoke that the mentioned cases are already beyond
them as these are already in the proper courts.
Nonetheless, we still believe that their constant pushing the prosecution to move the case faster
may have substantial influence in the pace of the cases’ deliberation.
It is our take that by doing this “extra mile” of police efforts in finally putting the cases to a close will
assure the non-erosion the Davaoenos’ trust on their police organization as what the survey revealed.
