Credible probe

Let’s hope the next source of public dismay doesn’t turn out to be the investigation of the hostage incident.

In response to the reported wish of Beijing and Hong Kong authorities for a speedy probe, P-Noy has given government investigators three weeks to complete their task. Since the order was given at the end of the week that opened with the hostage crisis, that means it could take about a month from the incident for the full results to be known.

Why should the probe take so long? Probably because it could take more than a month for Manila’s Keystone Kops simply to reconstruct the scene of the crime, including determining the positions of the dead and wounded when they were fired upon and when the crisis ended.

Yesterday, amid suspicion that some of the eight fatalities from Hong Kong might have been killed by friendly fire, the Philippine National Police (PNP) announced that all eight were killed by hostage taker Rolando Mendoza.

I don’t know how this will jibe with the announcement yesterday that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) had taken the lead in the probe.

It shouldn’t be a cause for worry for the PNP. The NBI may still have to rely on the PNP for the results of forensic tests, since the PNP Crime Laboratory is much better equipped than the NBI’s. The names may be similar, but the NBI is no US Federal Bureau of Investigation. The NBI has only about 1,500 employees nationwide, with some 500 of them special investigators. Of those 500, only about 200 are lawyers. NBI agents are swamped with work; they are currently involved, among other things, in the probe on torture at a police station in Tondo, Manila, as well as investigations of corruption scandals. In the hostage crisis, the NBI will have to contend with a crime scene that was seriously disturbed after the hostage situation ended.

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We were told that the first thing the Manila cops did, when Mendoza finally lay slumped across the shattered bus door with his brain dribbling out, was to invite the press over for a photo op. And of course everyone obliged and swarmed into the bus and all over the crime scene, what with news desks screaming that it was absolute deadline time and wasn’t the whole mess over already?

The cops seemed to act on the presumption that Mendoza had done all the killing and mayhem, and since he was as dead as many of the victims, what did it matter if the crime scene was disturbed? The culprit had already received capital punishment.

There didn’t seem to be any police photographer or cameraman at the site to record the interior and surroundings of the bus in those first moments after the death of Mendoza ended the crisis. Maybe the cops intend to just borrow footage from the professionals in mass media. Bodies and survivors were simply removed quickly from the bus and rushed to hospitals, with no one even keeping track of where all the victims were taken. At that post-midnight press conference called hours later by P-Noy, his officials admitted that they were still verifying reports that one of the victims had been taken to a place somewhere in Binondo.

We still don’t know how one of the victims suffered a fractured skull but no gunshot wound. Was that from a rifle butt or from a sledgehammer that flew away from the grip of a nervous member of the Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT)? There’s no account so far of Mendoza smashing anyone’s head with his M-16, and anyway, can the plastic butt of an Armalite crack someone’s skull?

The scene immediately after one of the responding cops declared the crisis over was reminiscent of the way authorities mishandled the scene of the massacre in Maguindanao in November last year. In that case, at least, someone appeared to have been tasked to make an official video recording of the crime scene – with DVD copies, incidentally, quickly spreading in film piracy centers all over the country.

Apart from a retraining for SWAT teams nationwide, our cops also need serious training in evidence preservation and gathering.

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Over in Hong Kong yesterday, tens of thousands marched to demand justice for the victims.

Since Mendoza is dead and buried, it’s safe to assume that the Hong Kong residents want some ranking Philippine official’s head on a plate, and not just those of four SWAT members and a publicity-hungry police saling-pusa. The buzz in the Tsinoy community is that this is also what Beijing is waiting for.

Not even the leave (which looks more permanent with each passing day) of the Manila police chief at the time of the crisis can seem to appease the people of Hong Kong.

The most vulnerable to a backlash, if any, are the Filipinos in Hong Kong, most of them working as maids. So far there has been no complaint of serious maltreatment of any Pinoy, or a return of those signs banning dogs and Filipinos from elevators in some high-rises.

You can’t blame an entire nation for the stupidity of its cops and some public officials. The diplomat who speaks for Hong Kong in the Philippines, Chinese Ambassador Liu Jianchao, is a sensible man who should be able to help ratchet down tension between Manila and Beijing.

A reliable and thorough report, completed quickly, on what really happened would help Liu in his task. The credibility and thoroughness are uncertain at this point.