For two police officials keeping watch over a portion of Edsa in Makati City, constant vigilance is a must.
Chief Inspectors Celerino Sacro and McVernon Manera of the Makati Police Station conceded that if their men were to let down their guard, there would be more cases of children who rob people whose vehicles are caught in heavy traffic on the busy thoroughfare—incidents which have led to calls for a review of the juvenile justice law.
“With that law, it seems the hands of the police are tied,” Sacro told the Inquirer in a recent interview.
Sacro is the commander of the city’s police precinct 2 which is based in Guadalupe Nuevo, the area where most of the robberies involving minors occurred.
Just a few days before, they “rescued” five boys who were involved in the thefts during an operation, he said.
Sacro prefers the word rescue instead of apprehension or arrest because in the strictest sense, minors classified as children in conflict with the law (CICL) cannot be arrested. According to Republic Act 9344, youngsters aged 15 and below are “exempt from criminal liability.”
“As much as possible, we clear the streets of children because it’s dangerous for them,” he said.
Manera expressed the same sentiment and said that rescuing the children was the most that the police could do.
He noted that the “rescue operations” were wreaking havoc on the deployment of his men as these were interfering with their drive against hardened, more mature criminals.
“The children are also a priority as much as criminals,” Manera said. “But there are times our officers get pulled out of their posts to rescue these children.”
For Makati City social welfare chief Marjorie de Veyra, the solution is simple: The law ought to be amended to reflect the times.
“Some of the parents we counsel are at their wits’ end. They don’t know how to approach the situation with their children,” she said over the phone.
Senior Insp. Shirley Bao, the head of the Women and Children Protection Unit of the Southern Police District, acknowledged the problem faced by their personnel.
She said that she had gone to the Department of the Interior and Local Government with other concerned police officers to push for amendments to the law.
“The department wanted data to support our [request] …,” she said over the phone. “Right now, our hands [are] tied.”
Sacro, meanwhile, said that until the law is amended, the police should remain vigilant in conducting rescue operations targeting minors involved in crimes.
“To these children, what they do is a game for them. If they become associated with other criminals, we may have a bigger problem on our hands.”