Total disgrace

First you bluster and threaten to make him “Santo Vicente” – as in sending him to the next life – after he ignored a couple of official summons from the police. Then when he finally shows up at police headquarters, you, the chief of police, give him a press conference – a press conference, not present him to media as a suspect in a crime, but as what? celebrity? complete with doting parents, a mother insisting he is really “mabait” and that he was just “rattled,” then the mother taking your hand and obsequiously making mano (or was she kissing your hand)? And you let that happen?

Excuse me, chief, while I puke.

I won’t argue the legal mumbo-jumbo offered up by the police spokesperson on why they let the hit-and-run driver go home after that PNP-sponsored press conference. OK, they have no legal grounds to hold him, but did they have to treat him like a K-pop star?

The guy hit a guard who was just directing traffic, did not stop and get down from his fancy SUV to see how the guard was like a decent person would, and then even ran over the victim and sped away. No if’s or but’s about what he did; it was captured on video and seen all over social media. And he gets to mouth his lame apology at a press conference arranged by the PNP?

Of course the guy (with his pathetic excuse of “magulo isip ko noon” and his more-than-lame “My apologies to the victim and his family”) and his parents will try to get the most lenient and convenient treatment they can despite his most despicable behavior. But that our police – the chief of police at that – should not only condone but be party to such treatment is beyond reprehensible.

As I said before, excuse me, chief, while I puke. – Mike D. Carpio, Novaliches, Quezon City