The chief of the Philippine National Police wants us to believe that as long as one has good intentions and no ill intent, it is all right to be stupid.
Director General Ronald dela Rosa made these stupefying statements as he defended Mandaluyong cops who botched an operation last week. The blunder cost two lives.
He pitied them, he said. They were only doing their jobs.
“It is better to be stupid with a clean heart rather than be smart but with bad intentions, like shooting drug pushers with whom they used to do business. That I cannot accept,” Dela Rosa said in his usual emotive manner.
“But to shoot because they had wrong information, at least there was regularity in the performance of their duty.”
Regularity?
Where is the regularity, and the virtue, in acting on unverified information?
The Mandaluyong cops shot at a vehicle they believed were carrying suspects in a shooting incident. It turned out that the vehicle carried a shooting victim, instead, who was being rushed to hospital. She never stood a chance. Another individual, a construction worker who was helping assisting the victim, also died from gunshot wounds.
According to Dela Rosa, the cops’ mistake could be traced to faulty training. He hinted too that they could have been equally wrong if they had not believed the “intelligence.”
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” was the term he used, without elaborating how cops should already have the skills to ascertain information passed on to them.
Again, Mr. Dela Rosa wants to distract the public from the real issue at hand. Competence and good intentions are not mutually exclusive, and any attempt at diluting the accountability of erring policemen is just gross, criminal oversimplification—an insult to the mental faculties of the general public.
This soft spot for stupidity also sets a dangerous precedent: What if those with bad intentions, in an attempt to disguise their impunity, claim they committed an honest mistake? Will we be any less forgiving, then?
More ridiculous ideas are coming out of the PNP chief’s head. He really must be looking forward to his retirement.
