WITH persons riding-in-tandem on motorcycles committing over 3,000 crimes in 2013 alone and almost 34,000 crimes since 2010, plus thousands more killed by other perpetrators that have yet to be solved by law enforcers, Senator Richard Gordon has slammed the nation’s continuing complacency and law enforcers lack of urgency to solve crimes and file charges against perpetrators.
During the deliberation in the Senate on the 2017 budget of the Department of Justice, Gordon was dismayed there was no continuity in investigation once administrations changed hands.
“It’s sad that just because there is a change of administration, and it is almost five months into the current administration, up to now they [those in the new administration] do not know what is going on in those cases. That is a disappointment…There should be continuity,” the senator said, citing as example the killings last year of Trial Court Judges Erwin Alaba and Wilfredo Nieves.
“…There is an awful lot of killings. We call them extra-legal, extrajudicial. We call them salvaging. We call them riding-in-tandem. And the only thing that does not surprise me but does dismay and shock me is the continuing complacency and the continuing lack of sense of urgency by all elements involved in law enforcement to solve all these cases and file charges to achieve closure,” he added.
Gordon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which is investigating recent and rampant killings, noted that one of the conclusions the committee arrived at based on the investigation in aid of legislation was that there have been many killings in the country, with all kinds of people killed including judges and members of the media.
Records showed 26 judges have been killed from 1999 to August 2016, including Alaba and Nieves. Since 2010, there had been 33,567 cases of motorcycle-riding crimes.
He noted these killings struck at the very heart of justice because it showed the temerity and the impunity of criminals that they could defy the magistrates of the land by having them killed.
“I would imagine that when 26 judges were killed, it would have been a wake-up call for any administration to have the National Bureau of Investigation, the premier law enforcement organization to investigate these cases,” Gordon said.
He added it was very clear that if there was a complaint, the jurisdiction of the NBI could extend to investigations of killings against ordinary citizens, media practitioners and activists, and members of the Judiciary such as justices and judges.