EDITORIA - Something wrong in cat and mouse

Police officials in Cebu were shown on TV recently, smashing video game machines operated illegally. How many times the same scene has been repeated, no one knows exactly. Only the names of the officials, and the places where the machines were seized, seem to change regularly.

And that is precisely the point — how come the same scene is being repeated endlessly. Something has got to be wrong here. Either the police just cannot seem to stamp the illegal games out completely, or their operators just cannot seem to fear the police completely.

To be sure, there are far more important matters that the police need to attend to more vigorously than illegally operated video games. The illegal gambling that goes with these video games certainly rate lower than the priority demanded by other crimes like murder and robbery.

But it cannot be helped that each time a raid is conducted and video game machines are confiscated, they are also pompously destroyed, the ceremony videotaped and broadcast, thereby reminding people yet again that such a pernicious problem continues to exist.

By reminding the people, they are forced to look at the scene on TV in two ways. Either they see the repeated scene as one more feather on the cap of the police for another successful raid, or one more blackeye because the evidence suggests the problem is still there.

There is a very clear game of cat and mouse being played out here, and the longer it is played out, the more it appears that the mouse is winning. If it is the cat winning, that would have been the end of the game, right?

So, either the police stop reminding the public about a nagging failure by continually parading themselves in the act of smashing video machines, or they eliminate the problem once and for all so there would be no need for all those smashing episodes.

By the way, as if to underscore some implied inefficiency, the police are always seen smashing video machines without protective gear like gloves or eyeglasses. Shards of glass flying from all those smashing can visually disable a policeman. Or do we need to still remind anyone?