EDITORIAL — Obedience and maximum tolerance

A video gone viral on social media shows personnel of Cebu City’s Prevention, Restoration, Order, Beautification, and Enhancement (PROBE) team stopping a vendor from selling water and chicharon in Plaza Sugbo.

In the video taken last December 16 yet, we can see PROBE personnel stopping a vendor from going around the plaza, then later forcefully taking his crate with water bottles in it.

This is different from another video showing PROBE team members violently subduing another water vendor in the same plaza.

In the December 16 incident it’s easy to immediately say the PROBE personnel were being oppressive and it’s obvious who the victim was. But it’s more complicated than that.

The PROBE personnel were merely enforcing Cebu City Ordinance No. 2686, the Anti-Road Obstruction Ordinance, which prohibits vending and other obstructions in plazas and public spaces, including the City Hall complex. According to reports, that vendor had already been warned repeatedly for violating the ordinance.

We cannot blame the vendor for trying to eke out a living and go where he saw there would be many customers. But he shouldn’t have vended where he did, after having been warned against doing so several times already.

On the other hand, we also cannot blame the PROBE personnel for accosting the vendor of violating the city ordinance. But they need not have confiscated his items or resulted to the level of forcefulness we saw. They should have followed maximum tolerance in the case of this vendor and the vendor in that other video being arrested like he was some violent criminal.

So what’s to be done here to prevent more incidents like these?

Remember that viral altercation between the security guard of a mall and a 22-year-old posing as a high-school sampaguita vendor in Manila early last year? We said then that both sides could have done things to prevent that incident from blowing out of proportion.

The same applies here. Vendors ought to be aware of where they can and can’t sell. Yes, they must earn a living but the law must be followed. On the other hand, PROBE personnel must be more tolerant of people just trying to earn a livelihood. It didn’t have to happen the way it did.