What is happening to Davao City?
Many Davaoenos are asking this question to our local civilian and police officials. Yes, what is happening to Davao City these days? During the past 12 months or so a number of heinous crimes were committed in different parts of the supposed to be “almost crimeless” metropolis in southern Mindanao.
Earlier last year, a teenager was shot dead in the vicinity of a local bar in the presence of several people. And the perpetrator belongs to a well-known family in Davao City and is a medical practitioner working as a non-uniformed personnel in the Philippine National Police Regional Office XI.
Then as the year 2022 was about to close a young business woman working as a model on the side was shot dead by motorcycle riding gunmen in front of her residence in a subdivision in Mintal, Davao City. The subsequent investigation conducted by a composite special probe body later led to the identity of the alleged mastermind, a general in the Philippine Army, the alleged lover of the slain lady.
And sometime in May this year, a lady architect from Calinan was abducted by tricycle riding men and later raped and killed. Her body was dumped in a canal of a banana plantation a few kilometers away from Calinan proper.
Allegedly as consequence, one person who later was claimed by the police as one of the suspects, was abducted by still unknown armed men and later tortured. He was able to escape from his abductors and sought refuge in a house in Matina Pangi. He was later turned over to the barangay captain of the place who subsequently turned over the tortured man to the Talomo police.
The next day the tortured youth was reported to have died on the way to the hospital for treatment of his injuries.
Another suspect was also abducted and is never seen until now. Much earlier after the rape-slay of the lady architect a man was nabbed by the NBI allegedly in a drug buy-bust operation. He too was later identified as a primary suspect
In August also of this year there was that grenade throwing incident also in Calinan that caused the death of one. Later there was that bombing of a vehicle parked along the street at Ecoland. The vehicle was owned by a lawyer. Another special investigation task group was organized to probe the bombing. But it’s been months since and still we have not heard of the result of the probe.
Sometime also last August a lady house help of a police official was reported by her parents to have gone missing since she was allegedly sent home in the wee hours of the night by her employers. Until this time there is no trace of the missing young house help.
And sadly just the other day, a former mayor of Cateel, Davao Oriental, the home town of the late governor Corazon Malanyaon, was shot dead in broad day light in populous Buhangin, Davao City, only a kilometer or two from the Regional Police Office XI headquarters. The motorcycle-riding gunmen just vanished in the crowd and in the maze of vehicles in the crime scene.
Whatever are the motives of the perpetrators are of no importance to the people in the city. The motive/s could either be personal or job-related. Perhaps it could even be simply the ‘urge’ of the suspect/s criminal minds.
What matters most to the people of Davao City is their possible perception of laxity of those who are charged to protect the population or anyone of them from harm. This laxity could be the reason of the criminals why they are even getting bolder to execute their evil designs against anyone who gets their wrath or that of their patrons.
So, we cannot blame if many city residents will be entertaining the idea of asking the question “What is happening to our beloved city?”
Yes, our civilian and police officials, what do you think is happening in our city? While we agree to the argument that criminality is attendant in any functioning society, we are not ready to agree that there is no way to deter the commission of crimes. There must be ways to do it and that while we believe that the people of the city have certain responsibilities to do if they want to enjoy a high degree of safety and security, primarily it is the city officials and the police sworn duty to lead the way.
Unfortunately, we have yet to hear of the city’s civilian authorities conducting consultative or coordination meeting with the police officialdom to craft more responsive actions to deter criminalities in this metropolitan society.
