Hostage

(Photo by http://www.pnp.gov.ph )

     Normally, the police, which is supposed to be on top of any hostage-taking incident or kidnapping, should also “sequester”, all the witnesses, take their statements, and relay all the information to the “crisis committee”.

       Ideally, while the “crisis” is on-going, the police and all law-enforcers assigned to the operation are under the command of the “crisis committee”, including any military units that may be tactically assigned to any related operation (valid warrantless arrests and warrants of arrest can be enforced by the police and anybody it authorizes like military units and even civilians). Ideally, the mediator or emissary/ emissaries/ or “negotiator” is a member of the “crisis committee, with major decisions made by the “crisis committee” and sometimes, tactical ones by the “mediator”. (Ideally, the mediator is allowed to commit or to bind).

         Since ideally, the police, is under the command of the “crisis committee”, while the crisis is on-going , all information that it releases to the public must be cleared by the “crisis committee” . Since, presumably, the captors are also monitoring the statements coming from the government, ideally, the “crisis committee”, while the crisis is on-going, does not want any statements from the government side that would (1) unduly cause “alarm” among the captors; (2) unduly let them know what you know; (3) unduly let them know what you do not know; and any other information that would cause unnecessary movements.

         The media will always seek out interviews, that’s their job. On the other hand, the job of Sulu police chief Senior Supt. Julasirim Kasim is….to let the masterminds of the captors know.

        Here are the statements from his interviews: ….., I will not repeat them. Even if they were published in millions of copies. He spoke of a military agent. There’s plenty of time after the hostages are released to investigate; this requires professional investigators; but since we don’t have that in this country, we rely on the media to do the investigating. There’s a downside to that: Sulu police Senior Supt. Julasirim Kasim and ARMM Chief Supt. Joel Goltiao take chances with the lives of the hostages everytime they tell the captors what they know (or think they know) and do not know.

          ( i can just hear our friends from the media… i know. government investigators are not professional so the information might as well be released to the public so we will not forget to investigate…i know. But while the hostages’ lives hang on the balance, there’s a downside to that; let’s hope it’s never costly and i’m worrying unnecessarily. )

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 (the avatars of commenters on the left are computer-generated or program-generated; the WordPress design arbitrarily assigns avatars to commenters who don’t have avatars, hwag na kayo magalit, (except that i know Manolo has an avatar but the pingback from his blog doesn’t result in his avatar showing); it’s a new feature in WordPress that i tried because the generic one  looks like a grey street traffic sign.  Also, everytime i answer or acknowledge a commenter, which i do almost always, my avatar appears, sorry po; it’s the program. Also, my students need to see all my widgets (like the category cloud, etc.) for now because…some of them have never tried posting anything in the net. Thanks.)