A police general friend, now retired, once advised me to watch my back and to stop all routines that would make anyone an easy target in this part of the world where journalists are routinely killed.
This was after fair reporting of a particularly deadly shootout between the police and a separate anti-drug law enforcement agency earned for me, as Metro Manila news editor of Daily Tribune, veiled threats via texts and calls.
It would be cavalier and escapist to brush aside the journalistic risks to life and limb, especially when police officers themselves reek with skepticism, as many of them have also fallen victim to contract hits.
Anyone — a policeman, politician, journalist, businessman, and even an ordinary citizen — can be at the receiving end of the unwanted attention of those who make a living by killing. Anything, too, no matter how trivial, can trigger the dregs of society to put out a contract on you.
The police assigning a protective officer merely adds a level of target-hardening to those under threat, but none that would deter determined assassins. There are too many examples of this to even bother to cite one. Just read your news feeds.
Going back to that friend, his point was basically “buntot mo, hila mo” or you are primarily in charge of your protection. In most cases, the police, he said, come in after the fact, mostly to investigate a crime already committed.
This is not to say that police visibility or people taking care not to become easy prey to criminals cannot deter crimes from being committed. There are what we call in criminology “crimes of opportunity.”
You remove that “opportunity” for petty criminals like pickpockets to victimize you and they march on to easier targets, or those they profile would offer the least resistance to their “apple-picking” enterprises.
Think of teens walking along darkened alleys with their heads buried in their smartphones; think of people leaving their garage gates open, serving “salisi” gang members invitations to come in and loot their houses. These are folks waiting to be victimized.
It is against this backdrop that a contrary position may be offered on the brouhaha raised by some members of the media against the police conducting threat assessment checks on those of them who may be at risk because of their reporting.
Any journalist who has covered law enforcement would know that plainclothes police officers asking questions in the neighborhood of those being assessed for security reasons is the standard operating procedure.
This manner of conducting an investigation or background checks in the barangays applies to all or most people, journalists included, seeking police threat assessment or protection.
This is the same process applied by intelligence operatives to those who want to become police officers or soldiers, or those seeking to be allowed to carry firearms after passing drug and neuro-psychiatric tests.
Police investigators almost always start any threat assessment in the neighborhood of those they want to protect before proceeding to other areas of concern like their work. And they talk, too, to those in need of protection, whether in uniform or out of it.
I have no doubt that any sane, sober, prudent police officer, even in civilian attire, would introduce himself or herself to people whose doors or gates he or she is knocking on. This routine has been blown out so way out of proportion that unnecessary apologies had to be offered.
All kinds of people knock on our gates and doors, many of them to deliver goods bought online. The precautions we need to take when dealing with all of them should be the same — high, very high for those whose jobs are inherently risky.
We always watch our six o’clock, also our 12, our three and our nine. Remember, we are always the first responders to everything happening within our bubble.