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Criminals are not your ordinary type of bunglers.
They put their lives on the line, and the price for making a mistake
could be a life sentence. But they are desperate, stubborn and
stupid.
We have been brainwashed into
believing that crime does not pay. The police also keep telling us:
there is no perfect crime. But the bungling criminals just say, up
yours!
Criminals everywhere are the same
whether in high places in government looting the people’s money or
engaging in small-time robbery in jeepneys taking passengers’
wallets, jewelry and mobile phones. The stolen money can run into
millions of pesos or just a few hundreds. Most of the time, the
crook gets stupid and he is caught.
These bunglers are simply
amazing. Police should have a special “blotter” or record book
for their most spectacular bloopers.
It will be a rich source of
amusement for us all.
Consider the following: Two
criminals tried to rob five women in a jeepney in Malabon and
bungled what could have been a simple robbery. Police arrested one
of them, Rey Eugenio, while they were fleeing on foot.
Investigators said the two men
followed the women when they boarded a jeepney early one morning
last week. They soon announced a holdup and ordered the driver to
maintain a moderate cruising speed.
But the driver panicked and
screeched to a halt. The women screamed in panic and ran out of the
jeepney in different directions.
The two aspiring robbers suddenly
found themselves deserted.
They had only one option left and
made a run for it. One of them pulled out a gun and fired into the
air to avoid being mobbed by bystanders. But policemen in the area
heard the shot and went after them. Investigators later said Eugenio
was at a loss explaining the turn of events. He has plenty of time
thinking about it in jail.
Unscrupulous politicians and
corrupt government officials appear worse than the jeepney robbers.
They will rob the people blind unless we scream in anger and
desperation like the women in the jeepney robbery. But like the
other criminals they also get stupid and are caught. They could not
resist spending the stolen money and enjoying a lifestyle of the
rich and famous.
Some criminals are smart. They
run for public office and carve out a fake respectable public
persona. Remember the story about a wolf in sheep’s clothing? They
look and talk good, but at the back of their minds, they want to eat
us alive.
How are we going to fight them?
Let’s take a cue from the screaming women. The government should
put up an office of screamers, which will be composed of men and
women who will be deployed to hound suspected criminals. We should
recruit the best screamers in the country, starting with the five
women in the jeepney robbery.
The jeepney screamers have
experience, and they know what to do in case of an emergency:
scramble in different directions. The objective is to leave the
criminals abandoned like orphans. It would be a beautiful sight.
The screaming worked against the
jeepney robbers, there’s no reason it won’t work against other
criminals. You can imagine how it will rattle bank robbers,
kidnappers, and drug pushers, rapists and dirty old men ogling the
ladies in the park. And they have an added benefit: during
emergencies, the screamers can be used as sirens (replacing
battery-operated ones that conk out in crucial moments) to clear the
way of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.
Criminals are prone to mistakes.
We should help them fumble by screaming our heads off. Screaming
could be the latest and most economical anti-crime device ever
discovered in this generation.
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