Public Unsafety

For the sons of rich, prominent Filipinos, impulsive lawbreaking is nothing to worry about. Even in cases of assault or murder, the police are apt to stall, witnesses to forget, and prosecutors to drop charges. Thus, Manila barely blinked recently when two well-dressed bucks shot and killed a man outside a brothel, and fled in their car. Then, surprise. Under Secretary of Justice Claudio Teehankee almost immediately produced one of the suspects -- his own son, Roberto, 24. "I've been urging prosecutors to let the chips fall where they may," explained the intense, crusading Teehankee. "I simply had to practice what I preached."

Such rectitude is long overdue in the violent Philippines, where the crime rate jumped 51% last year. Conservative predictions of 1966 crime statistics foresee 9,000 murders, 5,000 rapes, 7,000 armed robberies, 20,000 thefts and 25,000 cases of assault. This, in a country with a population of 33.5 million, works out to one murder per 3,720 people; in Japan, the ratio is one murder per 44,190. Legally, Filipinos own more firearms (at least 300,000) than the entire military and police forces. Illegally, they pack 300,000 "loose" or unlicensed weapons, ranging from zip guns to submachine guns and antiaircraft cannon. The situation, says the Manila New Evening News, is "a stupefying travesty of what is supposed to be the majesty of the law."

Immune Pros. Naturally, the Philippine crime rate has stubborn social origins, including the trauma of Japanese occupation, serious unemployment, an average annual income of $140 and the growing pains of a very young nation. In addition the Philippine legal system is appallingly weak. At the top, the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is so all-embracing that the court has an ever-mounting backlog (now three years), and some decisions are reached only after six years. The country's lower courts are so swamped (243,200 cases) that even Manila's generally hardworking judges cannot get around to trying criminal cases for two years. As one result, a professional criminal is almost as immune as a rich man's son. After the five minutes it takes to raise bail, complains Manila's Police Chief Ricardo Papa, the pro has "anything from one to two years to go right on practicing his trade before he ever appears in court -- if he gets there at all."

Or, indeed, if he ever gets caught. To police a city of 2,500,000 residents and 500,000 transients, Chief Papa has only 2,600 men working in three shifts --one cop per 3,450 civilians, or one-sixth the needed force. Papa's men are lucky to get 15 prowl cars on the streets at any one time. Half of the cars are wheezy World War II Jeeps without radios. Manila has only about 24 police call boxes; and even if the city had street pay telephones, which it has not, Papa says that his $80-a-month patrolmen "couldn't afford to use them."

Concerned Public. Outside Manila, the country's 26,000 local police earn as little as $12.80 a month, forcing some cops to pay loan sharks as much as 40%-a-month interest just to meet household expenses. Dishonest cops mulct the public. As for federal police, General Segundo Velasco's 16,000-member Philippine constabulary patrols a 7,000-island beat 1,000 miles long, and he himself can reach only four zone commanders by radio; in turn, he says, they reach their men by such means as "mule train."

What to do? Velasco wants a $2,000,000 radio system to communicate with his provincial commanders, but he "can only hope" that the government will lay out the cash. He and Chief Papa also yearn to collect the citizenry's loose weapons and arm themselves with more and better-paid policemen. Beyond that, says Velasco, "the essence of good law enforcement is a public that cares."

Things are improving -- slightly. The case of Under Secretary Teehankee and his son shook the country's cynicism, and the hard-pressed Supreme Court recently found time to force out one lower-court judge and blast another for springing criminal defendants with suspicious speed. To unclog the judicial system, President Ferdinand E. Marcos aims to transfer much of the Supreme Court's surplus jurisdiction and increase the number of lower courts. For such legal improvements, Marcos will ask the next Congress to spend $2,800,000 a year. Though sizable by Philippine standards, he says, that sum is "a very small price to pay for justice."

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