I am beginning to be ashamed of our police

I watched two recent serious breaches of peace in London taking place two weeks apart. The first incident ended with many deaths, but the second, for the unexplained failure of the bombs to detonate, resulted only in the disruption of regular traffic. As the news unfolded, the police, though admirably quick in their response, did not rush into relating the first and the second attacks to a common terrorist culprit. Eventually though, after a tremendous amount of professional work, they seemed to have closed their investigation successfully.

I recall those criminal incidents in London against the continuing murders committed allegedly by "vigilantes" in our city. By making specific points of comparison, I am beginning to be ashamed of our police.

1. There were reportedly six crime scenes in the two days of simultaneous violent attacks in London where investigations had to focus. Those different scenes of crimes offered a limited number of possible witnesses for a successful investigation or could have yielded a smaller cache of evidence. I use the words "limited" and "smaller cache" as I consider the fact that in our city, there had been, by some accounts, roughly 80 vigilante killings. Those murders, committed in such a whooping number of crime scenes must have been seen by more witnesses. And especially that they were of similar profiles, they could have yielded more pieces of evidence. Ah, could have . . .

2. The crimes in London occurred in July 2005. Counting by days, it has not been one month since the first set of attacks happened and barely two weeks since the second set and yet London police solved said crimes. In contrast, the murders in Cebu City, commenced in December 2004, shortly after His Honor, Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña, announced his plan of organizing a so-called Hunters Team for the same purpose which the vigilante seemed to accomplish. Seven long months have gone by and still our police have not solved even one vigilante murder.

3. British policemen converged on the crime scenes doing specific tasks. Some picked up fragments of probable evidence and had them carefully analyzed while, others, rather than wait for witnesses to present themselves, sought everyone who might have seen what took place. After careful documentation, they searched, with good results, even less suspicious looking homes. In contrast, our policemen, upon reports that someone was murdered, went through the motion of investigating the crime scene. I observed them routinely gathering spent bullet shells. To my disbelief, they announced the names of the victims and revealed derogatory information about them as if saying "mirisi". I could not understand why they would be uninterested to get the affidavits of witnesses for what they might have seen.

4. In London, the moment those crimes happened, there were speculations that they were acts of terrorists. In all appearances, they, obviously, were. But, English police, rather than attributing the authorship of the crimes as many speculated, assumed no one particular criminal or group of criminals. They built their case from the kind of evidence they gathered. Only when they pieced things together, did they announce the names of suspects and published certain photographs of persons possibly involved. In Cebu City, our police seemed to have no cue on what to do with the murders. Worse, as if to cover their inefficiency, they theorized the killings to have been done by vigilantes, who being unidentified, could not be prosecuted!

Our comparison, admittedly incomprehensive, is inevitable. Both terrorists and the vigilantes are murderers. Yet, the criminals in London know that the British police do not sit on their job. Each crime in England is thoroughly investigated that escape from the long arms of the law is rare. In the case of the vigilante murders in Cebu City, and judging from the insincere response by our police, where their investigation appears half-hearted and their pursuit against felons is nil, our criminals believe they can go on with a sense of impunity. It's horrifying to imagine that there will come a time when vigilantes will have no more qualms killing even the innocent.