EDITORIAL - A visit from the police

Suddenly policemen just showed up at the house of some Metro Manila journalists. The policemen said they were only checking the welfare of those journalists, inquiring if they somehow felt they were in danger following the killing of a broadcaster.

Of course, it has caused a furor among journalists and other sectors. Some lawmakers have gone as far as to say it was a violation of human rights and are now calling for a House probe into these incidents.

How did the police know their addresses in the first place? Does this mean somewhere out there is a police list that contains the addresses of journalists? Somehow it seems to say “we know where you live, we are watching you.”

And if the police somehow found out where some journalists lived, that means others can also easily do so. Others who may want to know where journalists live for different reasons.

Then there was the issue that some of those policemen made the visits in uniform while others didn’t. How would those journalists be able to tell if they were really cops, and if they were cops that they were there on “official business”?

While the majority of our policemen are honorable and honest, there are well-known cases of others hiring themselves out as personal bodyguards or even as hitmen. Some of them even served as private enforcers for people in power. So when a policeman claims to be carrying out official functions out of uniform, the ordinary civilian cannot help but have second guesses.

The intention of the police is good --if checking to see if journalists were safe was really the intention. But the execution was downright horrible. If the policemen wanted to reach out to journalists who they think might feel threatened or in danger then they should have contacted them discreetly first, and not show up unannounced at their doorstep.

If journalists didn’t feel like they were threatened, maybe some of them feel that way now.