Kidnapping is on the rise: Let’s stop kidding ourselves about that

The twaddle emanating from Malacañang and the police claiming that kidnapping has been curbed in Metro Manila is pure hogwash. Moreover, it’s a dangerous and stupid attempt to deceive the public into believing the metropolis is safe. It is not.

Victimized families, it’s apparent, no longer report incidents of kidnapping, fearful that disclosure to the police would be harmful – worse, fatal to their loved ones. Technically, the Palace and the police may be telling part of the truth: Perhaps there are no "reported" kidnappings. But our authorities can – and certainly do know better. They’re aware that kidnappings continue to occur. "Zero reports" don’t mean that the kidnapping menace has vanished. It means that our lawmen are trusted even less than before about being able to solve cases of abduction and rescue the hostages.

The new modus operandi is for kidnap gangs to seize a targeted victim, preferably a child or teenager between five to 15 years of age, from one of the exclusive schools in Metro Manila. A hostage is rushed to a hideaway in a nearby province, where the child can be held for three to four days while ransom is being negotiated.

The operation is conducted with clocklike precision. As the getaway vehicle speeds away, a convoy of other cars and vehicles falls in, visibly without pattern, behind it. This is, however, not ordinary traffic. This is a blocking maneuver. The column of vehicles is deliberately placed on the road to hamper, hinder, and confuse any pursuing police cars. By the time the pursuers, if any, overtake the "convoy", the escaping vehicle will have vanished. Clever, di ba? But it’s a simple strategem that works.

This should be a cue for the President, her police planners, and our PNP to acquire, train, and put into action a fleet of quick-response police helicopters. If you can’t get past the "blockers" on the ground, then overfly them.

One thing our government seems unable to do: Outwit the kidnap syndicates. What we need is more get-tough, law-and-order gung-ho leadership.

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Kidnappers nowadays go for the quick turnover. When they snatch a kid, they demand a ransom of from P5 million to P30 million, depending on the financial status of the family. The sum is not the product of guesswork. The kidnappers do a background check on each family’s assets before they "move in". If the family pleads it cannot pay the ransom demanded, it is advised to sell its possessions from cars and other valuables to real estate.

The insolent gangs are not cowed, my sources say, by the prominence of the families they pick. Middle and upper-income families are being victimized.

And don’t think they bother to wait for the cover of night. The gangs prefer to do their thing in broad daylight. It’s easier for them to get "lost" in the daytime hustle and bustle.

The psychological trauma through which they put their targeted families is well-calculated. The abductors directly ring up the child’s parents to threaten that they will kill the hostage "the same day" if they don’t get the money. Usually, they put the child on the phone to "plead" to be saved.

The gangs run their activities like a business. They "schedule" at least one child a week to achieve a "regular income" goal of P20 to P30 million weekly. This is more than many companies net in one year.

What’s worrisome is that before they release a victim after the payment of ransom, they compel the victim to divulge the names (and, if possible, the addresses) of their classmates who are considered well-to-do or wealthy. Naturally, under such duress, the helpless child blurts out what he or she knows. Having been provided a "tip" as to who should be next, the kidnappers begin to do background checks on their next "assignments". This revelation ought to alert the parents or guardians of the classmates and friends of anybody kidnapped to take extra precautions.

According to my informants, there is a belief expressed by many of the victimized families that these crimes are not being conducted by run-of-the-mill criminal gangs. The feeling is that the "godfathers" and protectors of these gangs are political big shots. Raising campaign funds, perhaps? On the other hand, a hundred hunches or guesses still don’t add up to a single fact.

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Incidentally, the victimized families are distinctly warned not to tell anybody about the incident. One family we know was warned by the abductors never to go to the police, or "reveal" what occurred to anyone in authority; otherwise, harm would befall them. The threat is that the gang would kill all of them. The implication is that the gangsters have "informants" inside the police organization.

I can’t be more specific with regard to either the identities of victims or the schools they go to, without endangering them, so a word to the wise. Just be careful.

Officials in foreign embassies and consulates are reticent as well, but there is a rise in the number of Filipino families urgently applying to emigrate to certain countries. As recent poll surveys have already confirmed, many of those leaving the country belong to the middle-class. Have they given up? Do they think, with crime so rampant, that the situation is hopeless?

In the waning months of her Presidency, GMA would do well to address this rampant lawlessness. I won’t advise her to take short-cuts, but aksyon agad in the most ruthless manner possible seems to be the only answer. Since Chinese New Year is looming, and begins on the eve of next Friday (actually the day would be Saturday, February 1), may I commend an old Chinese proverb: "You kill the chicken to scare the monkey."

As it is, neither chickens nor monkeys are scared of GMA, her police, her military, or her government. The kidnappers aren’t scared either.

It’s time she put the fear of God and Gloria in them.

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It’s not just children who are being abducted. Adults, too, continue to be at risk. In Southern Luzon, a few weeks ago, a businessman in his 40s was kidnapped. The family has already paid the ransom, but the man still hasn’t been set free.

If you ask me, kidnappers and killers are not afraid of the law because they can twist it for their own benefit. They operate as outlaws, but when caught, they get off the hook utilizing the "protection" of the law and yelling for their "human rights", whereas they thrashed both the human rights and human lives of their victims when they had the upper hand. This has got to stop. There can be no such things as a "strong Republic" when the criminal elements seem to be stronger in our society than the good and decent.

I’m glad that Interior and Local Government Secretary Jose D. Lina Jr. is striving with every ounce of authority at his command to bring to book a Quezon City judge whose court decision last November 15, 2002, resulted in the amazing release of seven undocumented Chinese nationals and three Filipino suspects who were nabbed during a police raid on an underground shabu laboratory last July.

Lina accused Quezon City RTC Judge Emilio L. Leachon of Branch 224, in the Supreme Court of having quashed search warrants issued by Executive Judge Enrico Lanzanes of RTC Manila (Branch 7), and even dismissed the information against the 11 detainees – thus enabling those arrested to get freed on "bail".

Sanamagan! Those suspects were being held on charges of heinous crime yet, although the next Judge, Jaime N. Salazar, Jr. of QC RTC Branch 103 – to whom the cases were passed – wisely ordered their re-arrest on December 11, some of them may already have skipped the country.

We’ll leave it to the High Court to decide on the matter, but here’s what happened. Last July 12, 2002, when Police Regional Intelligence Service Office (RISO) raided the lab in question in Varsity Hills, Quezon City, the PNP team found 40,584.82 grams of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) and 949,772.65 grams of ephedrine and other precursors and equipment used in the manufacture of shabu. The drug haul came to an estimated P89.1 million! Those arrested were seven Chinese – namely, Jimmy Chua, Man Chuck Li, Willy Ang, Tom Chua, Lai Nar, Sally Ong and Sam Li Chua. The Filipinos were Jessielyn Lamosa, Concepcion Andohan, and Jamil Maranay.

Wasn’t that stockpile of dangerous drugs in itself horrifying enough? What if those narcotics had made it to the street and into the hands of pushers and users? Yet, those rats making and peddling this form of "death" almost got away – the legal way.

How many times have we captured illegal Chinese in such a manner, only to have them slip through our fingers? What about the drug lord Henry Tan (from Xiamen, China?) who escaped from his prison cell inside Camp Crame last September 29? Has he ever been seen again?

Tan, together with two other Chinese, his townmates (Edwin and William Chua) were caught in San Narciso, Zambales, transporting a whopping 350 kilos of metamphe-tamine (shabu), with a street value of P700 million. This involved a heinous crime punishable with a death sentence. (Sus, the mere possession of 50 or more grams of shabu already merits capital punishment.)

Yet, Tan blithely waltzed through the bars of his "prison" – to freedom. We haven’t heard from him since.

This is a land where, even if the police get their man, he gets away. How can we stop crime?