Vigilante victim Number 87?

While Camp Sotero Cabahug on Gorodo Avenue was teeming with policemen and activities for the Annual General Inspection with visiting Camp Crame officials, a man was gunned down in downtown Colon Street at past 2pm yesterday. The sudden bloody incident, about two to three kilometers away from the city police headquarters at the camp, disrupted the city policemen who were undergoing then their Operational Readiness Security Inspection Test and Evaluation. Scene of the Crime Operation members rushed out of the camp to the crime scene where they found the dead man, later identified as Richard Abalo, bathed in blood and lying prostrate like a frog hugging the pavement.

Abalo died on the spot with a gunshot wound on the head, believed to be from a .45-caliber pistol, but when investigators later found him a former inmate of the city jail, the killing and the yet unidentified gunman may be conveniently linked to the trite theory of vigilantes.

A relative of Abalo, who refused to be identified, told reporters that Abalo has been in and out of jail for various crimes. As proof, he had on his buttocks a "BC- 45" tattoo, which is a mark of membership with a group of prisoners at the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center.

Homicide investigator Alex Dacua said the motive could not be ascertained yet because the investigation is going on but he admitted that the manner of killing showed some semblance to vigilantism, which had rocked the city in over eight months.

Once the police confirm Abalo fell to vigilantes, he would be the 87th victim since the last week of December last year when the rash of killings started with 13 people gunned down in that nine-day span alone. There were no available witnesses yet, as of press time, but Dacua said initial investigation showed Abalo, working as a jeep dispatcher before he met his fate, first sat along the sidewalk when a lone gunman approached and shot him at close range.

Abalo just bowed his head, turned his body away and sprawled to the ground. The gunman, whose description was not immediately available, casually walked to a waiting man in a motorcycle and sped off. Back at the camp, City Police acting director Melvin Gayotin told the AGI team from Crame that the city has been generally peaceful despite the robberies, thievery, and gambling. "This city enjoys a better peace and order condition compared to other cities in the country," he said.

The number of vigilante-linked killings may have contributed to the rise of murder cases in the city but Gayotin said the police found hindrances in their investigation because not one wanted to cooperate so far.

But he said innovative anti-crime programs of the city government and the police, like the Oplan Pakigsandurot, Ugnayans or Pakighinabi sa Kapulisan to the community have contributed much to the stability of peace and order situation in the city.

Records from July 2004 to June 2005 showed that the crime volume in the city fell to 5,924 cases from 6,142 cases registered in the July 2003-June 2004 period. Noticeably however the number of murder cases rose from 58 in the preceding period to 165 in the later term.

But robbery cases declined from 1,203 incidents within the 2003 to 2004 period to only 1,028 in the following span of time. Theft cases rose to 2,021 in the later period from only 1,992 previously. The police further reported solving a total of 4,149 cases for the later term, up from only 3,847 solved cases in the preceding period.

AGI is conducted every August in Central Visayas where its main purpose is to correct administrative, operational and logistical deficiencies of the organization by coming up with recommendations after the inspection.