Alma Doysabas, advocacy officer of Tambayan Center, a nongovernment group that runs a halfway house for juvenile delinquents, criticized the creation of the Anti-Hoodlum Unit, saying such a tough approach to crime and juvenile delinquency is hardly the solution. “What do they think of a shotgun? Good lord!” she said.
Calling minors “hoodlum” won’t help either, Doysabas said. “Labeling minor offenders as hoodlums has a negative effect on their persons. They would tend to see themselves the way authorities and society consider them,” Doysabas explained. “Instead of giving them hope, for them to see and believe that they can still reform their ways, change their lives and grow, they would tend to think they are hopeless cases as they are already discriminated.”
Doysabas said even requiring people to show their birth certificates to prove they are not minors is “unfair” as many Filipinos, especially in poor communities, do not keep records of birth certificates in their homes.
Already, she said, there have been reports of men prowling the city streets at night, targetting youths in the streets. These men are on board Lawin jeepneys, clad in fatigues, black long sleeves, leather bels, even gloves and bonnets, according to Doysabas. The men, she said, are usually armed with rattan whips and baseball bats. Incidents of harassment of minors by these men have happened in Bankerohan, Boulevard and Agdao, Doysabas told davaotoday.com.
Councilor Angela Librado-Trinidad, chairperson of the council’s committee on Women and Children and Family Relations, said gangsterism is a social problem, not a police problem and that these needs to be addressed comprehensively.
Doysabas said that instead of sending out armed men to crack down on young people in the streets, the city should implement the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Law, which provides for a so-called restorative, instead of punitive, system in dealing with children in conflict with the law. Duterte has time and again called this law “stupid” and that it gets in his way of keeping the city free of crime.
“What we are hoping is for authorities to dig deeper into the causes” of juvenile delinquency, Doysabas said. “We hope they would try to understand the problem.”
For one, Doysabas said her group has found out that, in most cases, children involved in gangs have histories of abuses in their very homes. “Their tendency is to get out of their homes and find solace somewhere,” she said. “They eventually find their way into the company of fellow youths. If no one would be able to guide their ways, and if what they could see around are adults in their communities who are also involved in wrongdoings and, worst, are abusive to them, they intend to follow what they see.”
And if government is “reactive” in trying to solve the problem — by enforcing means that are physical and confrontational that hardly instill respect for authorities — these minors are more likely to rebel, thus the vicious cycle,” Doysabas said.
But Duterte shot back at his critics. “What do you want me to call them if not criminals?” he asked in his television program last Sunday. He said he considers people who hurt, rob, and rape as criminals, regardless of age. “If not a criminal, if not a hoodlum, then what are they? Angels?” Duterte said.
Extrajudicial Killings
