PARADOXICAL

(A anti-travelogue of sorts that I wrote before I left Manila in 2016 based on unfiled police reports pieced together from my diary)

~1997: ‘Blonde’ Bystander Snatches Boy’s Red Cap

One of the earliest crimes I have ever witnessed face to face in Metro Manila is this little snatching incident.

Inside a jeep bound for home at 7 PM, I saw a teenage boy wearing a red cap on his head, one of those imported NBA baseball caps that must have cost Php1,000 apiece at American Boulevard. The boy looked clean-cut in that generic style preferred by the ‘rich kids’ residing in Paranaque’s exclusive villages.

We passengers were busily avoiding one another’s stolen stares because we were stuck in the area’s usual traffic, the red light at the nearest junction itself staring at all of us unblinkingly. Then the traffic light suddenly turned green.

In a flash, a boy in dirty shirt and blond-dyed hair emerge from the shadows in the street and, with a deft hand, grabbed the ‘rich kid’s’ red cap. Just in time, the jeepney driver revved up the engine and drove on as though in a car chase.

Mission accomplished for the thief.



2008: An Arresting MRT Story

It was the weirdest sentence ever constructed, and it boomed in the white noise of the afternoon: “Ikaw, ikaw, ikaw, ikaw, at ikaw, sumama kayo sa ‘kin!” ("You, you, you, you, and you, come with me!")

It was an order from a tall, muscular man in black, pointing at, tapping, and then commandeering five tambays (hangers-on) parked beside me one lazy afternoon, as I stood just outside the Pasay Taft MRT turnstiles waiting for a friend. The man in black appeared to be on his own, but knowing it’s his turf, he must have been surrounded by his men, also disguised in plain clothes. The tambays had unkempt wear and unruly hair.

“Me?” I thought, stunned and, of course, alarmed and incredulous. "What do you mean 'you,' you idiotic old piranha?" I thought. "If you would so much as round me up among the usual suspects, I'll be sure to embarrass your whole family including your ugly pet iguana."

Through the mercy of God, the bouncer-built policeman excluded me. I sighed, relieved after being nearly choked by breathlessness. I walked away fast from the persons being arrested, which included one woman who looked like she could use some nose pore strips. Exoneration by dissociation.

Then a little commotion ensued. This certainly called for some serious investigative journalism. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time, I just had to stick around. People from all walks, converging all of a sudden from the four corners of the wind, followed the arresting officer as he hauled off five people -- all by himself -- who were too shocked to respond. He didn't restrain them with handcuffs and ball chains. Not yet. There's no need. The ugly morons were caught pointblank. Human nature, I guess. It's the way hostage-takers are hostaged themselves into surrendering. Within a narrow window of a few seconds, as criminologists learn in class.

Soon a respectably sized crowd fenced in the arrest scene, which shortly led into the cramped police booth inside the MRT concourse area. Another similarly built police officer came in as reinforcement. But the woman was smart. All of a sudden, in the ensuing commotion, she managed to break away free. I don't know how she did it, but she vanished into thin air just like that. Split-second superpowers maybe, like Darna's. And no one bothered to catch her, maybe because everyone thought she's a woman who probably had a baby waiting to milk her malnourished self to death.

But the mob and the police were unforgiving to the men. I heard all sorts of premature judgments while accusations and denials were hurled in opposite directions.

"Own up to your crime now!"
"These people should just be killed!"
"Just dump them down the Pasig River!"

I thought, "Shut up you evil, judgmental fools! Look at yourselves in the mirror! Don't you cheat on your wives too, steal kisses from some other chick, or worse, steal a one-nighter with a Php100 slut after a pimp offered you with his familiar, ‘Sir, chicks? Kahit pangkape lang?’ Shut up, you pimps, or you're next to be creamed." Obviously I found the proceedings much too fascinating to just leave and mind my own business.

Then a hapless but furious-looking fellow in a muscle shirt burst into the scene. In contrast to the suspects and the gathering crowd, every single strand of his hair was combed and meticulously gelled in place. "Have they been caught yet?!" he asked aloud excitedly, addressing no one in particular.

Soon he was inside the cramped room too, disputing all the blatant lies of the herded animals. A few irate men from the clearly thrilled onlookers lining the room stroke a mean blow to the bare-faced liars now and then. No one minded. The interrogation continued. The man in tight-fitting shirt furiously claimed that the backpack, the cell phone, and the wallet were all his, his, his. He provided incontrovertible proofs, like calling the number of his wife and the like.

"Aalis na lang ako eh, nanakawan nyo pa ko, ha?!" ("I was just about to leave, and here you are snatching my things, huh?!") He then slapped one of the guys' face, which surprisingly brooked no resistance.

All the accused were now as a flock of lambs. Yet they were nonetheless adamant. "Wala po akong kinalaman diyan," ("I am innocent until proven otherwise,") they all said.

"What?!" What asinine liars!" I thought. "I swear to God I'm gonna kill you myself with my own bare hands by crushing all your testicles! Why don't you just admit it and rationalize by tugging at telenovela heartstrings and say you needed the money because your mother is in the hospital nursing amoebiasis?"

The two policemen now kept on urging the four to admit their crime. "I believe in human rights and adamant about my position on capital punishment (anti, not pro), but you can torture these jerks later, off the record," I communicated to the officers telepathically. "You can just deny the violation later and falsely claim that everything was self-inflicted, nothing extra-judicial. Demand and extract honesty by whichever means, then be dishonest about it later." Right.

I was clearly enjoying all this. This happened for a mysterious reason or purpose, most likely to entertain the hell out of me and the captive audience.

The hooligans remained in denial up to the last minute. What did we expect? Isn't that the routine scene on the nightly news? People claiming they're innocent despite the hard evidence and pronouncing they were actually the victims?

But for a few long minutes, nothing like that was happening. Even the poor victim was getting impatient. "My flight is at 7," he kept on saying. The road to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport was certainly cramped at this hour. But the police wouldn't hear a word. They insisted on having everything put in black in white, in the police blotter.

There was no media person in sight to document the whole thing. I guess that would be me. Citizen journalist, yes? No choice. But too bad I had no portable digicam with me. And I lost the only cell phone with camera I could afford. Yes!... I lost it to scheming snatchers like these…these… ugly manimals! Argh!

Then I noticed the greenish luminous plastic rosary one of guys was wearing around his neck. A talisman for his holy adventures, no doubt. I didn’t know whether to snicker or cry “Profane!” Obviously, his talisman didn't work so far. 

There were nasty punches and verbal blows from the audience now and then. They were cheered on by the rest of the kibitzers in a restrained way, clearly a concretization of all the imagined revenge by anyone who ever figured helplessly in a snatching, mugging, or petty crime scene with this nasty band of perpetrators like this elsewhere in the big city. We were not the aggrieved party in this case, but who cares? We were all victims once.

And who cares if we are equally guilty of committing petty crimes ourselves from time to time, so long as we are not caught? That's what matters.

Everybody else was getting impatient. Even the crowd was thinning out.

But one man thought of something inspired before disengaging himself. He offered the guy within his reach a powerful one-two punch on his back for the last time. Ha-ha. Dramatic exit, you could say. "What a vengeful bastard!" I thought. Even the poor suspect, the recipient of the final blow, didn't expect that. I began to feel stirrings of pity for the alleged criminal. Alleged, because I suddenly remembered the legal rules: presumed innocent until proven guilty.

But neither did the arrested person signal the slightest desire to fight back. A-ha! I thought. People who are not guilty don't react that way: By instinct, they will fume mad at the wrong accusation.

But pitiful me smelled stirrings of Stockholm syndrome somewhere. For a minute there, I had to remind myself who the real victim was: It was the OFW (overseas contract worker) missing his flight, the Filipino who was about to leave everything behind only to be rudely pulled back to his country of origin at the last minute with one final assault, no less from five of his countrymen. All the more reason to leave, he must have thought.

"EVERYONE BACK OFF!" the first arresting officer suddenly shouted, apprehending all the shameless kibitzers. That included me, of course.

I couldn't honestly reply with "We're all citizen journalists here -- that's a crime too?"

We all did disperse like swatted flies.