MOCKERY

THE local police, adopting the strategy of former police general
Alfredo Lim, on Tuesday painted houses of illegal drug suspects either
to scare them into leaving the city or to inform them that they are
being watched. Armed with red ink and other trappings, the authorities
led by Sr. Supt. Conrado Laza and PDEA regional director Wilkens
Villanueva with several other precinct commanders in tow, painted the
houses one by one to the amusement of the bystanders.

But the immediate drawback in the spray-painting spree was that some
of the houses identified and painted with red ink were not the houses
of people who were in the police list but of citizens who got the
shock of their lives after seeing policemen carrying red tins of
paints and brushes marking their houses.

Previous to this, a series of vigilante killings of suspected drug
pushers rocked the city. The guns are strangely silent now. Could it
be that the anti-drug campaign is working?

If we go by Mayor Rodrigo Duterte's take on the issue - that members
of drug syndicates were killing each other, what we are experiencing
now could just be a respite and no amount of spray painting could stop
it.

First, the killings of suspected drug pushers, next, the spray
painting. Many would say these mechanisms, for whatever they're worth,
have served their purpose. After all, throngs of illegal drugs users
trooped to the Almendras gym on Tuesday afternoon to voluntarily
surrender than be assassinated.

But aren't all these a mockery of the law? No matter how effective
these mechanisms may be in solving the drug menace, an ugly shape is
forming: the judicial system is not needed to curb a crime.