GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star, November 21, 2007
There’s something odd about the exhumation of Mariannet Amper’s body a week after burial from suicide. It’s not the speed with which the NBI concluded from autopsy that the 12-year-old had been raped, as suspected. It’s that they did the autopsy only because Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte told them to.
Last time we heard, autopsy is SOP for every homicide, including suicide. It is because a homicide is foul play and needs investigation to prop up a case of the people versus whomever. Every suicide too must be verified, because it may turn out to not be as reported. In this case, the cops had to seek the permission of Mariannet’s parents to dig her up, when they should have done the autopsy as soon as her suicide was reported. Then they would have found out about the lacerations on the private parts.
Mariannet’s suicide due to extreme poverty turned out to be media sensationalism. Her family wasn’t dirt poor as reported, though needy. So it’s not a case here of the authorities neglecting to do their duty because the homicide victim was a person of little means. They neglected their duty, period. Had it not been for Duterte’s refusal to accept the story of suicide to escape poverty, the neglect would have gone uncorrected.
Apathy is a malady that the new National Police chief Avelino Razon needs to cure. Like the NBI of director Nestor Mantaring, his organization has been debased to the point that officers value political connection more than good work. Promotion to senior ranks has come to depend on sucking up the harder to recommending and approving politicos. And that currying of favor is done through illegal means, like highest payola offers from vice protection.
Junior and non-commissioned officers, seeing the dirty game of their colonels and generals, become demoralized and even join in as gofers. In very few police stations and specialized units do they still give premium to training and performance? Mostly it’s the cooperation of cops with the illicit acts of their superiors that matter. And the most obliging of them get the newer firearms, higher bonuses, and lighter assignments.
And so Mariannet’s story is repeated every day in all police stations around the country. Uninspired and shorthanded, cops ignore pressing investigations of killings and kidnappings, more so little thefts and threats. It’s not because victims are poor. Cops just aren’t up to the job anymore. That’s why people doubt the delayed conclusion of investigators that the Glorietta-2 explosion was caused not by a bomb but by ignited methane from a faulty septic vault. That’s why people can’t believe too that cops solved very quickly the Batasan bombing after a coincidental raid on a nearby house.
Razon of course knows that transforming sloppy “pulis patola” into accessible, attentive and able “mamang pulis” is easier said than done. Undoing the bad habits of bad cops needs not only re-indoctrination and retraining, but also higher pay and better equipment. But there never seems to be any money for it. A train of directors-general has been begging for funds for such activities and purchases for decades — to no avail. In 1983 then-deputy chief Hermilo Ahorro of the Constabulary had asked for patrol cars, firearms and batons, only to be lectured by legislators to do what he was already doing — making do with the little he had. Five years ago then-Metro Manila police chief Reynaldo Velasco had shown from surveys that majority of his men live in poverty — yet Congress still did not provide for at least police clinics and cemeteries. (In the ’60s federal auditors noted that
