A lesser tagline is that there's no such thing as a perfect crime, no matter how assiduously conceived and cautiously executed. Somehow, to cite an old saw, the seams will always show.
Apropos to the first proposition, the hitherto unsolved vigilante killings in Cebu City which have salvaged 165 as of the last tally, ought to have been already solved, or at least, some few or some of them, a long, long, time ago. The rationale is that crime doesn't pay, so the vigilantes who are acting as cops, prosecutors, judges, and executioners rolled into one, ought to have paid for their crimes.
Conversely though, the still scot-free vigilantes may reason out that, indeed, crime doesn't pay for the criminals they have executed. For, after all, most if not all of the victims had criminal records for all sorts of felonies and, had been in the habit of getting in and out of prison. And so, it's to these felled criminals that the .45 caliber bullets meted the sentence of crime doesn't pay.
There are other adages of wisdom that speak verity in life, including some provable geometric theorems and immutable laws of physics. But then, some actual realities and/or ironies of fate do happen that seem to defy or belie what is uniformly and universally accepted truth, say, that crime doesn't pay.
Perhaps, to cushion one's disappointment over such irony may be to listen to the witticisms among the neighborhood barbershop patrons... While the English phrase, "law of averages" may be Greek to them, they have its more telling equivalent wisdom, like, "Ang tanan dunay kinutoban ilabi na ang dautan", or "Pabayron ka gyud sa imong utang", or "Ang gipugas sa hangin, mamunga ug bagyo".
Basically, the practical minds of the men on the street, regardless of no high EQ or paucity of wealth, have that universal discernment that the good deserve the reward, while the bad get punished.
Coming back to the vigilante killings that have blighted the honor of Cebu City as the queen city of the south into a shameful notoriety, even the many who at the inception seemed to favor, are now getting the jitters.
Reckoned from the first vigilante victim a couple of days before last Christmas, it's barely a little over six months, and yet, there have already been 165 summarily executed with, yes, unceasing impunity. And no indication that the killing spree is likely to stop, or any of the killings be solved.
Cebu City could now claim for the Guinness Book of World Records as tops in vigilantism in the world. Not even in the days of the wild, wild West in, say, Tombstone, or Laredo, or in the Yukon wilds when six-shooters were the law could approximate Cebu City's feat in this modern age.
To quote a simple village jester: "Grabeng swerteha, kon sa hantak o sa todas-todas pa, giharian ug 165, way patay-patay ang antugon... Sobra ra nang debuynasa nga ika-165, labaw pa na sa hantak ginamit ang pulos hari nga antugon".
Well, such comment in jest speaks volumes... For one, it enforces the common belief that the vigilantes are government law enforcers themselves. For another, the group has the backing of and/or inspired, by public functionaries with clout. And finally, the police and other law enforcers are either in cahoots with the vigilantes or are so professionally inept and inutile not to have solved even one or two of the street salvagings.
With such given actual crime scenario backed by irrefutable statistics of felled victims, and not one being solved, is there no more law of averages working in our midst?