In a shoot-out, how can you tell when your opponents are no longer armed and dangerous?

This column has attacked policemen for wrongful arrests, and stupid or malicious blunders, as you know. This time, however, I’ll have to put in a good word for the two cops who were "relieved" from duty – in a manner unfortunately which smacks of disgrace – for possibly having shot "almost dying" carnappers during the exchange of gunfire with the "suspects" in Pasig Monday night.

It’s fine for the incident in which three youths belonging to prominent families were slain while allegedly in the act of stealing a car on Garnet street in Ortigas. The Commission on Human Rights will undertake an investigation of the "shoot-out", and the inquiry acquires more immediacy because of the unusual circumstance of a four-minute video having been taken by a news team which happened to be there because the encounter transpired right in front of their office along Ortigas avenue. Did the cops keep on firing at the occupants when they were already slumped and presumably grievously wounded or dying?

This type of video footage, if you’ll recall, had years ago sent thousands of blacks …er, African-Americans, rioting in a rampage of outrage and resentment in Los Angeles. The Traffic Management Group policemen, I guess, will have to explain what was shown on the video footage. But having covered t he police beat, local rebellions and foreign wars before, this old reporter must impose a caveat. When people are involved in an exchange of fire, the protagonists don’t know when to stop shooting. You can never tell, in the heat of "combat" when the enemy is already rendered helpless, badly hurt and thus neutralized, or even dying. One moment of carelessness, or relaxation, and the "winner" finds himself gut-shot or slain instead by a supposedly "helpless" opponent, who’s lethal even to his last dying breath.

By all means, the investigation must be thorough – so justice can be done. One wonders, inevitably, whether such an inquiry would be prosecuted if the slain "suspects" had not come from well-off or influential families.

One thing is sure: a carjack gang, terrorizing motorists from New Manila to the entire Ortigas area, has been operating with cruelty and impunity for months. Are these young men the entire gang, or part of that syndicate which has made the area jittery and unsafe for the past year?

Aside from vehicles being grabbed at gunpoint, or being carjacked when parked, armed men have barged into eateries and robbed both customers and proprietors with fearless ease. In sum, our policemen have been made to look stupid and powerless, and a miasma of fear has enveloped entire neighborhoods owing to the depredations of these gunmen and hoodlums.

By all means, cops must be investigated if they shoot down the helpless – or the wrong persons. In this case, on the other hand, there appears to have been an exchange of gunfire. The last bullets were fired by the police. Civil rights, surely, have to be protected – but the right of the general public to police protection must also be respected. What would happen if, badgered by lawyers and investigators, the next time there’s an encounter with armed men the police are afraid to shoot?

Remember what happened in flooded New Orleans at the height of the hurricane’s fury only a month ago. Armed looters ranged about, ransacking at will – and the police, in fear, ran away. This sort of gave a shock to Americans whose Constitution enforces "the right to bear arms" for every citizen. In a society where everybody’s armed and dangerous, when there’s an emergency, is the law of the gun, not law and order, which prevails.

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Of course President GMA and her officials didn’t attend to so-called "Citizens Congress for Truth and Accountability" being held at the University of the Philippines Theater. Sus, what’s that "citizens congress" all about, and who chose the "citizens" to sit in judgement on GMA, et al. Sanamagan, here we have former Vice-President Teofisto Guingona convening a "People’s Court" to try GMA for her…crimes? Looking at the members of this strange People’s Court (who selected them?) I see the usual Leftists, particularly a nun who converted to Marxism and the Far Left while in the Order’s headquarters convent in Bavaria and inflicted her radical ideas on her school and congregation. Remember Hamlet’s harsh words to his girl friend Ophelia in Shakespeare’s tragedy about the Melancholy Dane? "Get thee to a nunnery!" He had told the heart-stricken girl – she drowned herself instead. Gee whiz. Even nunneries are no longer safe, for in them it seems ferment radical and revolutionary ideas.

For that matter, even the Jesuits formulated radical leftwing "Liberation Theology" in South America.

In sum, the People’s Court has already convicted GMA before any evidence of her election "cheating" and other alleged malfeasances have been brought before it. Ditto for the Citizens’ congress.

Aba, I even saw one wiseguy on television sanctimoniously declaring on television that "they" were giving Vice-President Noli de Castro up to November 30 to join in the move to oust GMA, or else his resignation would also be demanded. An amazed TV commentator was moved to ask the guy who had empowered him to make that demand, since, after all, Vice-President de Castro had been elected by millions of voters. (The question meant, quite clearly: Who elected you?) I’m afraid there are too many persons who, in the name of "justice", are eager to take the law into their own hands.

Indeed, who elected them? The people? What people, and how many people? And those poll surveys – who were asked when the pollsters took the survey?

Democracy in the Philippines? If this is democracy, then we’d better look for another alternative. We might have to draft somebody more sensible from the National Mental Hospital.

There was even that ridiculous text-campaign (instigated in the follow-up by one of our competitors apparently) to "boycott The STAR". Instead, our circulation went up. Oh well. Telling the truth, apologizing when one is remiss or is wrong, and trying one’s level best, is what counts, not just circulation. But when you’re credible and your faithful readership believes you – and more join them in giving their trust, it makes everyone who labors in the frontlines and trenches of journalism both happy and proud.

THE ROVING EYE . . . Ilocos Norte Governor Ferdinand "Bong-Bong" Marcos declared during the big celebration in Laoag City that he wants to become President someday. Like dad, of course. In a democracy like ours, Bonget’s ambition cannot be denied. But wow! Are the Marcoses coming – again? Coming? They’re already back.