Cops’s brutal death strengthens anti-crime resolve

At a small ramshackle home in Manila’s tough Sta. Ana district, a thick crowd gathered to pay their last respects to a model policeman slain by robbers on his wedding anniversary.

Oliver Benedicto, 32, was the first police officer killed in action since President Arroyo ordered an intensified campaign last month to arrest a rash of crimes that has given the country’s image a black eye.

The death of the young policeman, savagely killed trying to stop a gang of robbers who hijacked a bus, has evoked sympathy among his peers and the public and strengthened society’s resolve to fight criminality, police officers say.

Mrs. Arroyo, who visited Benedicto’s wake, promised his family swift justice and ordered a massive manhunt for the suspects.

Crime and corruption have become the most urgent concerns of investors and the public in the Philippines, and Mrs. Arroyo has vowed to fight them to help her create more jobs to tame poverty in this nation of 80 million people.

Benedicto, a 11-year veteran, was a model policeman who dreamt of ridding Manila of criminals so his three young children could grow up without fear of being assaulted while going to school, friends say.

That dream abruptly ended on Aug. 7 when the five-man robbery gang stabbed him14 times in his head and body before finally taking his life with his own gun.

Instead of using his car, Benedicto had chosen to take the three-hour bus ride from his assigned post in Pampanga to surprise his wife on their 13th wedding anniversary.

Even though outnumbered, Benedicto managed to wound four of the robbers before he was murdered in a pool of blood.

"It was a brutal, painful death for my son and when I saw his body, my manhood left me," his father, Benjamin Benedicto, himself a decorated retired police sergeant, said while fighting off tears.

"I wished it had been me.

"Oliver was a gentle officer who was only tough on criminals and suspects who roam the streets, and my only consolation is that it was an honorable death, a hero’s death," the father said, gesturing toward his son’s flag-draped white metal coffin in a tiny garage.

Indeed, neighborhood toughs sporting colorful tattoos, women and young grimy children, village officials and the top police brass in Manila trooped to Oliver’s wake, vowing to give the hero "swift justice."

"Never mind human rights for the criminals, we need to get them. They killed one of Manila’s finest," a police official said.

Retired police Col. Florenio Angeles recalled that Benedicto had begged him to convince his father to let him join the force because he wanted "to leave his mark" in the profession.

"Maybe now he has found that mark, even in death. He would be a rallying call against criminality," the elder Benedicto said as he advised human rights advocates and detractors of the government’s anti-crime drive that sometimes "swift justice means swift death" for criminals. — AFP