Only the young can(not) run

ARTICLE: NAIAH MENDOZA | FEBRUARY 08, 2024

Disappointment resounds every time a shot is fired without thinking about the consequences. It is easy to say that not every police in the country uses their firearms to unjustly shoot innocent people but to prove it without disrespecting the lives of the wrongly executed people is utterly impossible.

In a span of four weeks, two teenagers were shot and killed by the police. The victims were not just falsely accused, but were “mistakenly” killed—as if the life taken away has no weight or meaning.

Jerhode Jemboy Baltazar was “mistakenly” shot dead on August 2, 2023, in Navotas after being misidentified as a suspect in a shooting incident. Just days after his death by the hands of the police, a 15-year-old John Frances Ompad was also “accidentally” shot dead on August 20, 2023, after stepping out of their home in Rizal.

What the police did was against two of the rules in the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) operations manual.

Rule 6.2 in the manual recommends the use of megaphones or other similar instruments in police operations “to warn or influence the offender/s or suspect/s to stop and/or peacefully give up.” Rule 6.3 clearly states that the use of warning shots is prohibited.

In contrast to these rules, no warning or humane course of action was made. Before any verification was made to ensure that they arrested the correct suspect, Baltazar had already been killed by the Navotas police.

Less than two weeks later, John Frances Ompad, who dreamed of being a police officer, was also killed by the police. These incidents in Navotas and Rizal were not the first time and, sadly, seem to not be the last of many acts of policemen showing no respect for human lives, most particularly for young people.

If proper investigations and procedures are observed every time a crime arises, mistakes can be avoided, and most definitely would not lead to deaths of innocent people. But the fact is that the police do not shoot their guns to “serve and protect,” but to kill and exert their dominance.

Are we really ever safe from the harm of criminals if the people who are supposed to catch them are the ones who kill us and justify what they did?

The deaths at the hands of the police that happened to Baltazar and Ompad had already happened multiple times before. During former President Rodrigo Duterte’s term, Kian delos Santos and Joshua Laxamana were 17-year-old victims of the administration’s war on drugs campaign.

The two teenagers were said to have illegal drugs with them and both “retaliated,” which “prompted” the police to shoot. But are these really true when it is obvious that multiple lies after lies were made and lives after lives were taken away because the police “protected” themselves from teenagers?

All these horrendous cases are only some of the ones we know of. Beyond the lenses of the media and under the rug of police operations, it is hard not to assume that more of these incidents have happened before and will continue to happen.

The people who robbed these teenagers of their future deserve not only their crimes to come to light but more. The police are never permitted to shoot and bury the young with their own hands.

Yet, after everything, is there any way these victims can be brought back to life? None. And it is the hardest part for all of the families who lost their loved ones at the bloody hands of these policemen.

No kind of explanation, punishment, or re-training that the police would do can bring back the lives and futures of Jerhode Jemboy Baltazar, John Frances Ompad, Kian delos Santos, Joshua Laxamana, and many others.

No matter what realigning is done by the police after these incidents, it can never justify all that they did. After all, the police are not who we run to anymore; instead, they are who we run from now.