OOPS DID THEY DO IT AGAIN?

EARLY morning of August 11, police officers raided a house in Alangilan
village, Sta. Catalina in connection with allegations that the occupants
are involved in illegal drugs.

Myrlinda Baguio, wife of Rolly Baguio (the drug suspect), swore the
officers forced themselves into the house and planted evidence to
substantiate the allegation of the presence of illegal drugs in their house.

Worse, Myrlinda claimed, she was forced to urinate in front of her
apparently embarrassed husband and the allegedly laughing keepers of the
law because her bladder was filled to bursting out of tension and because
they refused to allow her to relieve herself in private.

Worst, as she was putting on her panty, the officers then frisked her, and
one officer had the effrontery to touch her breast. That, in the presence
of her husband.

Embarrassment could not suffice to describe what the couple might have felt
at that moment. But, they could not do otherwise because the officers of
the law were armed.

Too strange to believe Myrlinda's narrative?

As an old cliche says, truth is stranger than fiction.

It may be that the housewife was only relating something out of the figment
of her imagination to get back at the policemen.

On the other hand, some police officers are known to figure in people's
most frightening nightmares. They literally give life to the demons in the
mind.

In fact, the Commission on Human Rights disclosed that based on reports
received, police officers topped the list of human rights violators in
Central Visayas.

This is no idle data. It has long been observed that many police officers
have nothing better to do than spend their hours on duty inside the
confines of police stations, not on the streets where they are supposed to
do. And once given a harmless job like raiding a suspect's house, they take
to it like a duck to water, with the abnormal over zealousness to prove
that they are doing something.

That the raid was conducted without first informing the Baguio's of a
search warrant and the absence of village officials during the search speak
less for the team.

It does not matter if the occupants were indeed involved in illegal drug
trafficking or drugs use.

What matters is the process by which the officers conducted their job.