You’re on Candid Camera!

An extended version of the UNTV video which recorded the fatal shooting of the three suspected carjackers in Ortigas Center, Pasig City, illustrates the folly of taking hard positions before a full-dress investigation has established all the facts.

Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Angelo Reyes stuck his neck out in vigorous defense of the Traffic Management Group operatives who took part in that incident. He may turn out have been a genius in retrospect. Or he may prove to have been a reckless cheerleader for poorly-trained gunmen in uniform whose basic instinct was to kill immediately rather than go the considerably more difficult route of enforcing the law in a civilized society.

Let me reiterate at the outset that what is needed in this case is hard facts arrived at by independent and qualified investigators, not the self-serving accounts of subalterns and comrades whose motivations, competence and impartiality are questionable.

The early reinstatement of all the involved operatives after only one day of suspension, on the basis of their own unverified explanations, as well as the results of PNP lab paraffin tests which by their own terms were inconclusive, is a clear indication of an unseemly rush to exoneration.

There is a tendency to think, incorrectly, that since there was evidence that the suspects were really involved in car thefts, they had lost all their rights, including the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. But their actual roles in carnapping or carjacking cases still had to be ascertained, whether they had in fact harmed or killed their victims, how many crimes they had been involved in, their modus operandi.

Not all of them, if any, might have committed capital offenses. Even if they had, summary executions are not the way we dispense justice in this country, at least last time I checked.

Admittedly too, lawmen have been injured or killed while going after carnappers and carjackers. They have a right to protect themselves and to respond to attacks with reasonable force. But there are "rules of engagement" which govern such encounters. These rules provide criteria for distinguishing legitimate shootouts from rubouts or summary executions which renegade lawmen and latter-day Dirty Harry’s seem to find more convenient, in light of the perceived impotence of our court system.

Still, the government’s various anti-crime task forces are not vigilantes in uniform or white-hooded avenging night riders. The fact that lawlessness – whether petty crimes, sexual offenses, armed robbery, drug-dealing, murder, kidnapping with ransom, or car thefts–is a hard nut to crack does not give law enforcers an open license to kill.

Going after criminals may be a hard, perhaps impossible, task in this country. But that is the life that agents of the law have chosen. I know many complain they’re not paid enough. Well, they are free to go do something else. No one’s forcing them to stay. But for as long as they remain, they can’t use the ways of outlaws to enforce the law.

The whining of TMG head Chief Superintendent Augusto Angcanan, to the effect that his men may lose their "enthusiasm" if questioned every time they are involved in fatal encounters with suspects, is particularly disheartening. His gross misapprehension of the TMG’s mission is ground for his dismissal from office. It is reason enough for him to be demoted to foot patrol duty to further his re-education.

If TMG operatives lose enthusiasm simply because they have to justify their actions when lives have been lost in an operation, then the entire group should be abolished and its duties absorbed by the PNP as a whole. It is also perhaps time to look into dismantling all "task forces" and placing full responsibility on the entire police organization for all kinds of crime. All policemen, from SPO1s to the Director General, should be made answerable for uncontrolled crime in their particular areas of assignment.

Return all policemen to anti-crime duty. Dissolve that silly VIP protection group and recall all bodyguards and mounted escorts of government officials. Put them back on the streets where they’re really needed. Deploy Special Action Force squads to local police districts to serve as organic SWAT teams. Involve local governments more in law enforcement, and make sure "operational control" by LGUs is a reality, not mere theory.

Going back to the Ortigas incident, the UNTV extended video clip you saw exclusively on the Insider newscast was a real shocker. Although the video does not provide absolute certainty of that night’s events, it does raise the possibility that things didn’t quite happen the way official police reports say they did.

The suspects could have been alive, although disabled and helpless inside their car, at the time they were shot in the head at pointblank range by TMG operatives. The video seems to show the two suspects in the front seats still stirring. They may not have been armed and the handgun found on one of them could have been planted.

They may not have actually fired at the TMG agents because the windows of their car were closed. The license plates found in the back seat of the suspects’ car may have also been planted. The trajectory of the bullet holes in the unmarked police car were all outward, and could not have been caused by incoming fire.

The extended UNTV video clip raises these and other serious questions. Contrary to crime scene photos, the video shows suspect Brian Dulay without a gun under his hand before a coup d’grace was apparently delivered. An operative is later seen engaged in some activity around his lifeless body.

After the shooting, another operative opens a rear passenger door and seems to be busy placing something (license plates?) in the back seat. The person in the back, Francis Manzano, had only two bullet wounds, both of them to the head and shot at close range.

The UNTV video caught on tape the area behind the scene of the "encounter." Contrary to Secretary Reyes’s version, no marked police cars could be seen. Nor were those uniformed policemen, who Angie said flagged down the suspects’ vehicle and then joined the chase when that vehicle failed to stop, anywhere in sight.

I’m not saying the police car and uniformed cops weren’t there, only that the video doesn’t confirm it. Other credible evidence will have to back up that claim.

The investigation of the Ortigas incident, if it is being seriously conducted by people in earnest search of the truth, is far from over. Any premature action or statement by police and other government officials opens them to the suspicion that they are directing the investigation towards a pre-determined result. That is exactly what is meant by a whitewash, a synonym of cover-up.