Enterprising journalists always insist on getting the so-called “spot reports” that cops responding to calls for police assistance immediately send to their superiors to inform them of actions taken.
While the grammar is usually horrendous, the 5W and 1H reports (Who, what, when, where, why, and how) are oftentimes good enough for breaking news despite being sketchy, as in lacking in details.
Then some reports are “sketchy” in the sense that the narrative appears dubious, and the storyline implausible because, just to cite one red flag, the actions cited by the cops run against normal human reactions.
But then again, when it comes to crimes, logic cannot always explain the violent tendencies of men and women experiencing a wide gamut of emotions — pain, anger, desperation, jealousy, etc. — that throw them off the edge of sanity.
For crimes of passion and even road rage, for example, we have a term for that, “Nagdilim ang paningin,” a phrase that roughly (not literally) translates to someone descending into the dark enough recesses of the human mind to commit a crime in an instant.
If one blinded by anger kills without premeditation, he or she is charged with homicide if successful, but if the killing was planned or was attended by treachery and the use of overwhelming force, then murder would be.
During olden times in the Philippines, a husband who stumbled upon his wife in bed with another man and killed one or both would have just merited the punishment of “destierro.”
A legal reference defined destierro as a “mere banishment, rather than a punishment, one that serves to protect the killer or attacker from retaliation from the family members of the deceased.” How about that: Protecting the killer or killers?
The intent of destierro, based on that definition, clearly elucidates the point that there are crimes that sometimes do not rise to the level of imputing criminal liability on the perpetrator. The same could be said of actions taken in self-defense.
The point here is that even before suspects in criminal cases are brought before the prosecutors for inquest, or before the courts for trial, the police have always exercised control over information pertaining to crimes that are imbued with public interest and so must be ventilated by the media.
Cops routinely release mug shots of those arrested in small-time drug busts, but their officials cry foul when members of the media report on incidents that may involve men in uniform, leading to the perception, right or wrong, of whitewashing or cover-up.
Take that fatal shooting of “Jemboy” in what the Navotas police claimed to be a case of mistaken identity and of a couple of the warning shots (fired by all six responding policemen, mind you) finding their way into the teen’s head and hand.
No spot report that contained the names of the cops that had since been restricted to quarters was released to reporters, while those few who had gotten the names from external sources were prevailed upon to withhold the names of the suspects.
A case of double standard, would you say? The sacked Navotas police chief had it coming when he decided to withhold the names of the six cops who, after all, had already been subjected to inquest.
Court reporters should have gotten the suspects’ names, too, but again the lid put on their identities was so tight in the few days after the shooting that the public started thinking something was being cooked.
More so since the six were only charged with “reckless imprudence resulting in homicide” instead of homicide, as suggested by forensic investigator Raquel Fortun; or murder, as this Contrarian raised in a previous column.
A lawyer of Jemboy’s family had said they are pushing for a charge of murder against the six cops. With what little we know of the case, that seems to be a fair enough course of action.
Again, the National Bureau of Investigation should step into the picture if we are going to have a credible investigation and prosecution of this case. Out with the sanitized narrative of how Jemboy wound up in the murky depths of a Navotas river, with blood oozing from his head.