Wanted: More police visibility!

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is “discreetly” looking into the source of the leak of information from the Asian Hospital and Medical Center in Alabang, Muntinlupa that got the ire of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) when a story came out that that her breast implants had leaked. So the NBI is looking for the person who leaked, the leaking story! 

This story also had my good friend Press Secretary Cerge Remonde denying that the President had breast implants, only to do an about-face that apparently she did have breast augmentation years ago. The NBI is wasting precious man hours that could be used for other cases. Malacañang ought to realize that telling the truth would set them free!

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It’s a sad day for Metro Cebu where there’s been two separate killings. One about that LBC employee who was shot in a morning robbery for a measly P2,000! Then there’s the sad plight of a priest, Fr. Jovencio Rabusa who was shot and killed by cellphone robbers at the Talisay side of the South Coastal Road. These robbers obviously didn’t know that he was a priest because Fr. Rabusa was clad only in a green shirt and shorts.

These two separate incidents remind us that there are just too many underworld characters lagging along unlicensed firearms, waiting for their next unlucky prey. This is a major public concern, that people are still being killed on this side of the world all for a lousy cellphone or for a few pesos more! Before you blame poverty for these senseless murders, let me tell you that poverty has nothing to do with it, because if the poor people would go out of the streets to kill for money, then we would have hundreds of thousands of killings every single day!

Call it an act of desperation that these robbers would steal even the priest’s old Nokia cellphone that doesn’t cost much to sell. If I were to risk my life on a crime spree, I’d make sure that it’s worth it! Take the case of Celso de los Angeles of the ill-fated Legacy scam, at least he gypped people by the millions of pesos, and he’s still out of jail!

This incident also brings to light the problems we are experiencing with priests in the Catholic Church today who no longer wear their clerical clothes or “sotanas” that differentiate them from the rest of humanity. Most secular priests wear clothing that make them melt into a crowd. Pardon me for being a very conservative Catholic, but in my day, priest wore their priestly clothes so they can easily be identified as priests. If only Fr. Rabusa wore his clerical suit, I doubt if those robbers would even dare poke a gun at him, much less pull the trigger at a holy man.

Finally, there’s that thing called Police Visibility. Whenever there are policemen on beat patrol it is a surefire guarantee that the criminal elements wouldn’t make their move. I have passed many times along the SRP and on the side of Cebu City at least there is a mobile patrol that is constantly on patrol there. Unfortunately, we cannot say this for Talisay City where the police there are for all intents and purposes, invisible.

Hence as the old saying goes, “When the cat is away, the mouse is in play.” So naturally criminal elements are enjoying a heyday in the areas were the police are absent! Again these separate incidents should be our alarm bells that the police once more have become too lax on the job. They are supposed to protect the citizenry, but how can they do that when they are nowhere around? Most of them are probably doing work in air-conditioned offices instead of field work. The job of our police is to prevent crime if that is at all possible, but now that the crimes have been committed, the least they can do is get those killers on the loose and bring them to justice.

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Well after so many wild rumors that was coming out of the coffeehouses and later printed as blind items in the local news, my good friend Councilor Edwin Jagmoc finally came out with his wife Gina beside him to formally deny that he was having an affair with Misty Magistrado of the Mayor’s Management Team.

I’m glad that Councilor Jagmoc came out openly and quite bravely to deny those rumors so that it won’t spill over to the other councilors, some of whom were already being alluded to. I really don’t want to dig deeper into this problem as this is a private matter between husband and wife. But then, this is the problem with employees at the City Hall or any government or private office for that matter. A sharp and loose tongue often gets more attention than the real truth. So now the cat is out of the bag, I hope Councilor Jagmoc’s move would put a stop to those rumor mills that always churn and spew their evil machinations.

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