Amid hostage fiasco, life goes on for cops

MANILA, Philippines - Even in the face of international embarrassment over the botched rescue attempt in the Manila bus hostage incident last month, policemen remain steadfast to their mission of protecting the people.

They burn rubber cruising the streets, pack lethal firearms and frequent some of the most criminal areas.

Far from being hoodlums, these are the good men and women tasked with the dangerous mission of protecting the city streets. The STAR took a day out and went along for a ride with the boys in blue from the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) mobile unit to experience what it was all about.

There are 12 police precincts within Quezon City, as well as the QCPD headquarters, with 174 police officers in total. Shifts are split into three to allow a mobile unit to patrol the streets round the clock.

From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., SPO4 Edilberto Obayan is in charge of the mobile unit troops. Obayan is a veteran police officer of 25 years, 22 of them with QCPD.

“The shifts are becoming worse,” Obayan remarked.

He said that hardly a day passes without a mugging or vehicle theft occurring somewhere on his turf.

The mobile unit burns 10 liters of gasoline every eight-hour shift, patrolling the streets to provide a visible presence for the community and respond to any emergency situation.

Obayan and his men are often the first to respond to the scene of a crime.

Residents will often report any crime occurring directly to the unit, or who among the police officers are closest to the scene.

The dangerous task is made more difficult because of a paucity of policemen patrolling the streets. There is currently one police officer for every 1,000 people.

Obayan said the ideal ratio should be one police officer for every 100 people. “That’s about manageable,” he said.

One foot in the grave

“When a policeman goes to work, one of his feet is already in the grave,” Obayan says.

He said being a police officer is the only profession where people gamble their lives to serve other people. “We are ready to die for the people,” he said.

Each day is as unpredictable as the last and police officers would never know what would happen during the course of their eight-hour patrol.

“We hope at the end of the day that we will be with our family,” Obayan said.

Because they are the first to respond, Obayan said this could be dangerous, especially in high-risk situations such as a bomb scare where specialized training and expertise are necessary.

“When the situation (is bad) you are already there and you have to make movements on how to survive,” he said.

Obayan said he had his survival skills tested to the limit.

Obayan recalled that 10 years ago, he was the first to respond to the scene of an ongoing robbery of an armored van.

Obayan said bullets started to fly and he was not able to return fire.

“That (was) the worst experience of my life, I almost lost my life,” he said.

All in a day’s work

A day of patrolling the streets, according to Obayan, would never be the same as the next.

On the day The STAR went with the police patrol, a mobile unit performed varied tasks such as escorting detainees to a court hearing, containing a rally of slum dwellers protesting the demolition of their shanties, and assisting a police checkpoint in the implementation of the gun ban.

In the late afternoon, there would be a changing of the guard with SPO3 James Bustinera getting behind the wheel of the patrol car.

Bustinera proceeds to San Roque, where the bloody demolition of squatter families took place.

“In this place there are so many, many hold-ups, snatches, every night there is a hold-up here. That’s why the government wanted to (empty) this place because the criminals always hide here,” he said.

Police often have to enter the lion’s den, where drugs, drinking and illegal gambling are rife, he says.

There had been numerous cases of murders in the area.

Bustinera, a father of three, admits fearing for his safety from time to time.

“The threat is always with us, but that’s all right. Sometimes I think about the fear, but that’s our job,” he said.