Switch on your TV each morning and “patay!” is the word you would hear the most. Either to refer to victims of alleged shootouts with police officers or to victims of unidentified hooded individuals “riding in tandem” on motorcycles or on SUVs or cars. Nobody is being caught and there appears not to be any earnest effort to apprehend the perpetrators. What appears is the attitude that killing the victims is saving the government a lot of money having to prosecute them or to maintain them in jails or rehab centers.
The victims are always presumed to be drug dealers or pushers. So people are now just shrugging their shoulders. And therein lies the spine tingling problem.
For up to now we have yet to hear of any measure from the police on how to prevent or avoid abuses within its ranks. With their big egos—which they must have in order to have the confidence to shoot it out with criminals—it won’t be long before they will start thinking they are God who could take anybody else’s life and get away with it. Blaming anybody’s death on illegal drug dealing will become so convenient and with our attitude of not asking for proof would put innocent people’s lives on the line. How easy it is to put a sachet of shabu into a dead man’s pocket or to throw it into an open car window before the driver or passenger is shot.
The public should be shown proof the victims of shootouts indeed took their chances with their guns instead of submitting themselves to arresting officers. The proof we had been reading or watching is just the word of police officers. Their word against common sense? It is the latter which is often the obvious.
Yet the more comforting assurance to the public against abuses are honest to goodness ways to debug or “debrief” police officers of the effects of thinking about or having to deal with crimes and criminals every day. Dealing with crimes all the time is like meditating on crime. It has a brainwashing effect. Soon, the policemen are thinking that crime or being a criminal is normal.
The best way to counter-act such effect is by meditating or praying to God. Sadly, a prayer or meditation room or even a chapel or altar is the last thing one would expect to see in any police headquarter.
Thus policemen going crazy or becoming criminals are now a common sight. Many of them have even started thinking they are God with the right to take another person’s life, whether innocent or guilty of a crime.**
