Practised (s)kill

NEVER SHALL I pass by the gates of the Clark Freeport again without some trepidation.

Aye, never shall I look at the Clark Development Corp. Security Police again without sensing sudden cold chills running down my spine.

Once the harmless, if clueless, sekyu boringly going through the motions of securing the Freeport, the CDC police have in one single instant morphed into trigger-happy killers. Going by the accounts rising out of the Christmas Eve shooting death of PO1 Jomar Batul at the parking lot of SM City Clark, that is.

“…[M]araming putok, Sir may nakadapa dito na SM guards, tapos may kasama ako na isa di ko alam kung gumanti ng putok (Because there’s a lot of gunfire, Sir the SM guards were lying on the stomachs and I also have a companion that I don’t know if he also fired back).” So was quoted Jake Machinal, Area 1 Commander of the CDC Public Safety Department (PSD), in the police spot report as pieced together by Ashley Manabat in his news story here last week.

More chillingly telling is CDC-PSD Manager and VP for Security Services Ricardo C. Banayat quoted thus: “Inabutan ko nung nagpuputukan pa sila … buti nalang praktisado ako (I was able to catch up with the exchange of gunfire…it’s a good thing I’m practicing).”

The blaze of glory at the thought of having neutralized a carnapper – what the ill-starred Batul was initially taken to be – turned to vehement denial when found he was a policeman.

Banayat: “Hindi e, hindi ako nakatama (No, I did not hit him).”
Machinal: Hindi rin, Sir, hindi namin alam kung sino nakatama doon (No I did not, we don’t know who was able to hit him).”

A “spot report” of PNP Station 4 said Batul sustained “two gunshot wounds on his head, one on his right shoulder, one on his left arm and one on his foot.” A policeman who asked for anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the case said the “entry points of the head wounds were at the back (of the head).”

Instantly, conjuring there the coup de grace in gangster movies.

That the gun Batul supposedly had in his possession, used to “hijack” the food catering van in going to SM City Clark, and fired at the CDC police, remained missing had all the markings of the usual police rub-out. In this case, the policeman in a role reversal as the victim rather than the perpetrator. Made moreso, with Batul having been found negative of powder burns.  

Further, the absence of an official autopsy report spills all the makings of a cover-up.       
Whatever. Per Ashley’s news story, police said four CDC police and security guards – including Machinal and Royal Security guard Wilson Laza who was assigned to the main gate – who figured in the incident refused to undergo paraffin tests reportedly upon the advice of the CDC Legal Department.

Which, though within their legal rights, further stoke the simmering rage in the police brotherhood, notably Central Luzon top cop Chief Supt. Rudy Lacadin who was reportedly contemplating of pushing murder charges against the CDC police, their boss Banayat not excluded.

Even as media eagerly await the next turn in the Batul case, the CDC police have already impacted a chilling effect on the general public going through the freeport, whether for fun or business. The mark of the killer now obtaining among  the officers and the rank and file of the CDC Security Police .

On perfect hindsight now, we could have seen that coming. Of the CDC security police being praktisado, in the words of their bossman Banayat: practiced in assault and terror tactics, as it has turned out.

Was it only last year that we read of the complaints of some Aeta tribesmen who were manhandled by CDC security police for refusing to cease and desist from their hollow block-making enterprise along the Sacobia River?

Then, there is the case of the Clark investor Steve Kim.

Last October, CDC security police in five vehicles and backed up by a CDC special weapons and tactics team swooped down on his rented house at Redwoods Villas to enforce a “persona non grata” order of the CDC Board.

It was providential for Kim to have had his lawyer at the time of the assault, else, he said, he could have been bodily removed or worst by the CDC security police.

Much earlier, the same Kim was successfully evicted from his Hollywood Park Development Corp. site by CDC executives “backed up by 30 heavily armed CDC security police” despite a temporary restraining order from the court.

Cannot help but see from here what the CDC security police practised with Kim, they put into deadly effect in Batul.

Yeah, they have the capacity to kill. Be scared.