NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental (MindaNews/30 September) – Petty drug pushers and users are wasted regularly in dark streets and stinky alleys to paint a successful drug war. Amazingly, no major drug lords or their star-badged protectors known no less than to the verbally explosive tenant of Malacanang has ever been salvaged or thrown to jail. We could only wonder whether failure in this regard is deliberate or pure incompetence. At any rate, the commerce of illegal drugs continues to proliferate luxuriously. What when cops with checkered past are being recycled and put in command in the hell holes of illegal drugs and corruption.
Fifty-three cops, including the 13 high ranking officers that surfaced in the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, are in the business of recycling, reported PDEA Chief Aquino. And the counting is not yet, accordingly, over. The number is truly formidable to assure the continuity of the drug trade.
That the recycled Palace trustees had not dirtied their hands in the anomalies in their command is not enough reason to harness them again in the flagship program of the administration.
The sin of commission and the sin of omission are one and the same sin for those in command. They are accountable. They are responsible for their minions.
We are at edge waiting for the President to release the list from the Senate of the ninja cops. Why the delay? Are there ninjas close to his heart like Faeldon of the BOC and BuCor saga whose exposure may pain him? He is evidently in quandary.
The advocacy to recycle trash ought to apply only to plastic trash not to trash cops.
And what was done under PNP Chief Bato in recycling and in dumping rogue cops and their officers in Mindanao, Basilan and Sulu to cleanse the metropolis of them should not anymore repeat.
It insults the intelligence. Far from being a form of discipline or punishment, the move was actually protectionist. The transfer acquitted the rogue cops of their crimes without the benefits of investigation and trial. The act was derogatory in making Mindanao, Basilan and the Sulu archipelago a dumpsite of urban trash and undesirables.
We, in the South, were repelled by the monstrous insensitivity. It should not be allowed again.
So, whatever happened to the 300 + uniformed scalawags shipped some two or three years back to the southern islands? How did they perform there? Have their exile in the wilderness made them the salt of the earth like Rizal a century ago? Where are they now? It is interesting to know their plight. An assessment of the exile and its consequences might be incumbent.
Meanwhile, the ninja cops committed high crimes and should be locked in BuCor for the rest of their lives and should be barred access to GCTA sale.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental, Philippines)
