In this searing El Nino heat and the smoldering political stew that is obtaining in pre-poll Bohol, we see an oasis of good news.
For a remarkable drop in crime volume as against the skyrocketing crimes in other provinces in region 7, Bohol has been tagged by the regional police as the region’s safest.
We wish to tap the shoulders of our police officers for doing a splendid job.
Bringing Bohol’s crime volume by 8% in January and February is a testament of Col. Dennis Agustin’s leadership and motivational skills.
In times like this, we wish to recall the pre-Agustin time, when Bohol police stations reaped Region-wide accolades for lowered criminality. That was when every PPOC meeting had everyone grinning from ear to ear.
And while everyone was lazily lounging in easy swivels, oiling their guns and tending to their pot bellies, drugs silently crept to the threshold of Boholano homes.
Whether the reports coming out then were intended to deceive everyone or just plainly putting the police as intelligence as inept, we all know now the real score.
Of course, making a perfect impression of Bohol as a peaceful and safe place for business and leisure is a given, considering that the chief of police then was to bow out of service.
So while we heaped praises for the seemingly peaceful image that authorities painted over Bohol, and we handed all kinds of commendation to the officials, a different kind of rot was gnawing the very core of the society.
It was when Col Agustin took the helm when he, an anti-organized crime expert saw the tell-tale signs of a gangrene that was eating the flesh of the society, that he stirred a hornet’s nest.
Col Agustin exposed the well-entrenched network of drug industry in Bohol a few days after he came in.
The industry was so well hidden in plain sight that the police officer could not mention the root, certainly knowing he would be the first to be uprooted when he does.
Two years later and clearly after nearing his tour of duty deadline, we have this news.
All we pray is that this isn’t a repeat of the past.
For how indeed can we account for the crime decrease and the sudden formation of Capitol initiated Task Force Dagon when crime has indeed ebbed? Or when assassins bullets just weirdly find their way to drug personalities in dark streets or in their known dens?
Gov Edgar Chatto recently issued an executive order creating the Joint Task Force Dagon, to curb criminalities, drug abuse, and other threats and disturbances to peace and order, public safety and security. The news of Bohol being safest, is now rendered bland.
When we had this report of Bohol being safest, we were thinking otherwise.
When you have public officials going around the province in well-armed convoy of vehicles, when you have teeners caught making pension houses as base of shabu distribution and when you have mayors claiming their supporters are getting killed, is this that brand of peace that makes Bohol safest?
At this time when you have a police officer wielding his firearms and randomly chasing his fellow cops in a police station, the news came in at a moment so awkward.