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The more than 200 unsolved vigilante-style executions in Cebu City from 2004 to 2007 have frustrated policemen who still face a blank wall on the identities of the hooded and motorcycle-riding gunmen.

Most of the victims were involved in petty crimes, had criminal records or have been in and out of jail.

Senior Insp. Mario Monilar, the former Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Homicide Section chief who is now Guadalupe Police Station Chief, said the series of killings burdened him.

”We had to keep looking for suspects, and that was nothing to be happy about,” he said.

In those cases, the gunmen were usually masked, rode a motorcycle in tandem, and used a gun to kill their target persons. Most of their targets had criminal records.

Monilar said they solved some of the cases, but the majority remained a mystery.

He said the police could never have been the vigilantes, one of the theories that surfaced when none of the cases were cracked.

”We are a government of laws, not of men. We cannot act like judges,” he said.

The onslaught of the vigilante-style killings started on Dec. 22, 2004, after then Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmena expressed his concern on the increasing crime rate.

Former CCPO director Melvin Gayotin said the crime rate at the height of the vigilante-style killings decreased.

His successor Senior Supt. Patrocinio Comendador, said some crime groups used hired guns and imitated the “vigilantes” in killing their erring members.

”Out of revenge, some took the law into their own hands,” he said.

Osmena, now the congressional representative of Cebu City south district, had said: “I’m not exactly sad when a criminal gets shot.”

But during a mass for the feast of Senior Sto. Nino on Jan. 15, 2006, then Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal criticized the summary killings, saying it’s a big sin even if it’s meant for peace and order and whoever inspired it.

Osmena said he may have “inspired” the attacks on the convicted or suspected criminals.

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP)-Cebu City chapter had criticized Osmena for refusing to take a stand against the summary executions.

The right to life is one of the basic human rights guaranteed by the Constitution, they pointed out.

The killings started to wane in the middle of 2007, after the police identified and filed cases against some gunmen, said Comendador, who is now the officer-in-charge of the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO).

He also said the killings corresponded with a drop in petty crimes like theft, but the homicide rate rose.

Comendador said wanted to stop the killings when he assumed the CCPO’s top post because they were unlawful.

”Everybody deserves justice,” Comendador said of the victims. But, he said, the “slow wheels of justice system” must be made to go faster.

”No matter how swiftly the police force acts, if the case gets stuck at the fiscal’s level, our efforts will be proven futile,” he said.

Monilar said there is a dim chance for vigilantes’ victims to attain justice since most of their relatives accepted their fate.

”They have accepted the fact that most of those killed has caused the community some problems,” he said. (PNA)

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