Police not ready
It’s a candid reply but the admission by the Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7) that they don’t have the capability to track down cybersex crimes was a big letdown.
With backyard cybersex dens festering in Cordova and other Cebu towns, why can’t the public rely on law enforcers who have the mandate, firearms and commonsense to go after internal threats in a neighborhood?
We’re not talking about going up against syndicates who have guns, hush money in the millions and a taste for blood.
The perpetrators are ordinary citizens operating in homes, using public Internet sites, gossiping with each other about their dollar remittances from online customers.
In other words, there is no real secret about what they do and where they do it.
The arrest of parents in Cordova who exploited their six children in an online pornography racket was only the tip of a trend that had been active for at least five years. They learned the trade from neighbors.
If it was impossible for a low-tech police force to sniff out known porn operators, how did the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), after one month of surveillance, pull off the raid in that home of distorted family values in Cordova?
It was difficult, for sure. They had to observe at a distance, do some sleuthing and time their entry well. They also had help from Homeland Security of the United States in zeroing in on porn websites.
NBI agents are probably as Internet savvy as the next police officer, who uses Facebook to contact relatives and surfs naughty websites on the sly. (It helps, of course, that NBI agents are also lawyers who know the rules of evidence and what prosecutors need to clinch a case in court.) What they don’t know enough about, they made sure to ask help from experts.
What prevents the police from doing the same — the lack of 24/7 broadband service?
The Provincial Women’s Commission was not remiss in going through channels. Child welfare advocates had gone to the local police first for help. How frustrating indeed to be promised action, only to see nothing moving.
A volunteer told Cebu Daily News said she raised it to a Cordova police official, and wondered why he was footdragging only to learn from other residents that he had relatives involved in this dastardly pastime.
What is needed is a commitment to stop a livelihood that is a form of prostitution and destroys families.
This is the burden not just of the police, but also of elected officials, community leaders, the church, and citizens. An evil global enterprise must end where it started, in a village with a local solution.
