Editorial - Vigilantes are back?

Amid the killings of notorious personalities in Cebu City the past week, city police office director Melvin Ramon Buenafe remained firm in his belief that they are not the handiwork of the vigilantes. He said there are various circumstances why those murders occurred.

Since last Sunday, at least five people were killed in vigilante fashion around the city. All victims were reported to have been involved in illegal activities such as drug peddling prior to their killing.

But the police were quick to react that those were just ordinary killings. Seemingly wanting to explain that the so-called vigilantes are now a thing of the past, Buenafe said there’s no reason for them to return and hunt down the “bad eggs” of society.

Given the manner in which the killings were executed, police just cannot avoid public perception that vigilantes were responsible. Besides, the victims were notorious personalities, the usual victims of the vigilantes who roamed around the city many years ago.

Maybe Cebu Provincial Police director Patrocinio Comendador was right in his observation that those extra-judicial killings could be the result ofslow justice. Well, in this country, it is not uncommon for many to use their own hands to exact revenge.

Of course, it has been a known fact that there are those who choose to dive beyond the rules of the law in their quest for justice. This is the result when people lost trust in the law enforcement, aside from the fact that what we have is a weak justice system.

But what triggered public observation about the return of the vigilantes is the failure of the police to present any clues as to who could be behind the killings. They failed to come up with any lead in their investigation, which is quite unusual.

There must be something strange up in the air. If the vigilantes are a thing of the past as what police want the public to believe, then why are they having a hard time unmasking the perpetrators in any of those killings?