Quirino Grandstand Hostage Tragedy

I purposely muzzled myself for a day after the tragic hostage-taking incident that gripped the nation and the whole world for a chilling eleven hours on Sunday August 23, 2010. I was thinking maybe I'd write about it when sobriety would have been restored in me.

First off, I would like to extend my sincerest personal condolences to the victims and their families. To those who, by the grace of God, have survived I commiserate as well for having had to go through a protracted ordeal. We all know that being subjected to a period of uncertainty and anxiety of losing one's life at any moment, or having to watch somebody's life taken or expire, could be as stressful as death itself, and could have lasting debilitating effect. My God, just watching on TV as the drama unfolded was stressful enough.

Now, off to the point why I delayed my reaction. I wanted to give as much fair take on this as possible. Meaning I was fuming as I was watching for reasons I now realize I share with so many. Our news channels have been inundated with messages expressing the public's dismay, frustration, criticism, anger, and it's all an understatement.

The whole time after the incident, the Police, as expected, had to parry all the questions, comments, reactions with defensive explanations. Damn! No amount of excuses, no matter how you term that, can extricate the Police from this mess. They had better admitted to such glaring shortcomings and resolved to send all back to training to insure that this doesn't happen again. That could have tamed the furor faster.

It's not so much the fact that this tragedy took place that infuriates the public, here and abroad. We can't really control everything, I mean the State has no reign in everyone going loon for whatever reasons. But the State has to be ready and able to enforce and maintain order when called upon. The State cannot and should not be at the mercy of its inhabitants' sanity, obedience to, or amity with its laws.

The Police just screwed up BIG TIME! They did all wrong right from the get-go. I don't care if they'd say, everybody had suddenly turned into overnight security experts. No! You don't need to be an expert to see what is obvious. Here's what I thought went wrong.

Complacency. Strangely, the Police were so upbeat in the prospect that the crisis would end peacefully. I don't know if there's any principle in hostage crisis management that suggests the authority charged with the resolution make presumption of its peaceful resolution. Instead, common sense dictates that you approach every aspect with utmost caution, with bias that things could take a wild turn at any time and prepare for it. You may entertain optimism, but you don't let your guard down. You don't sit back and relax as though the situation would resolve itself. As the old saying goes: Hope for the best; prepare for the worse.

More so when you're dealing with an ex policeman brandishing an automatic rifle and apparently a whole arsenal of more guns and ammunition.

I have seen it in the movies, and it made sense: you don't argue with the hostage-taker. Put in other words: you don't do anything that would incite, induce, instigate, or trigger the hostage-taker to taking drastic action. You have to recognize that there's a completely different psychology to the situation. Susmariosep, the hostage-taker even declared expressly that "wala nang saysay ang buhay ko sa ginawa nila." (they had deprived my life of any sense) or words to that effect. Translation: I'm likely to kill people at the least provocation. Didn't that tell them enough. He wasn't friends with anyone, and not likely to make so anytime soon. I heard the Police say they had been at the impression that he would give up in time. Wrong.

We now know that after they manhandled the brother, SP02 Gregorio Mendoza, along with the rest of Rolando's kin, gunshots fired and lives started drifting away from those hapless victims. Regardless of what the Police, at that point, thought Gregorio was guilty of, they should have not detached themselves from the situation, and avoided at all cost any scenario that would have any semblance of maltreatment against Rolando's kin. Short judgment.

Now comes the time to react, after the driver had luckily slipped off his handcuff and managed to escape, relating to the police how he thought everyone inside the bus was already dead. Manila's finest sprung into action (or into something they thought all along they didn't have to do).

The running caption on ANC read "Police stormed the bus," and we all know what happened. The whole world watched as the Police fizzled. It was like watching an episode of Leslie Nielsen's "Naked Gun," except that here real lives are lost while in the former the audience laughed away and the dead came back to life when someone yelled "CUT!" Mallet flying out of wielder's hand; tempered window glasses failing to break after blows proving  to be tougher than they thought; assault team scampering out of the emergency door when fired upon (what were they expecting, that Rolando would welcome them with house tea?) They didn't figure out where the emergency door was, someone  had to text them in the middle of the deadly chaos.


A long while later, the TV flashed "Police failed to break in the bus after forty-five minutes." If you had just tuned in, you might think they're breaking into an Airbus. Nah! It's just an immobilized bus sitting on a road. My golly! What happened? Did the storm stall?

Again, I'd go back to the movies, I truly wish they had watched more action movies.

You have a hostage situation; the hostage-taker is a former police captain who's armed to the teeth, decorated at that, certainly knows how to fire a gun with fluidity; you had ten to eleven hours in between. What do you do? Well, the movies tell me, and again they make sense: you negotiate, you bide time, you keep the hostage-taker calm and the hostages safe, you ask for hostage release every now and then, build friendly relations with the hostage-taker with the view of talking him out the situation, assuring him that he would have his day in court, his grievances would be looked into and sincerely considered, and that he eventually surrender.

While this was going on, a last option (assault) plan, in case things spiral out of control and lives are put in imminent or actual danger, would have been carefully drawn out: assemble a specialized assault team, meaning a trained team that switches into hostage psychology when called to duty; profile the hostage-taker and his resistance capability, arms and all; contact the owner of the bus to get its build details, what materials the glass is made of, and oh yes, where the emergency door is -every current model of a bus has one; plan the assault itself.

Now, assault I understand as applied in hostage rescue operation has for its elements swiftness, surprise, deliberateness, and a determination for execution -meaning once put in motion it is to proceed with lightning speed notwithstanding any unexpected obstacles and with understanding that, by its very nature, lives in fact may be lost- with the consequent object of affording the hostage-taker the least chance to react, and the assault team and hostages, less risk.  

What makes this especially embarrassing is  that the world has quite a few models of successful rescue of a much more difficult and dangerous complexion. One that quickly comes to mind is the June 2001 nearly impeccable  Marseilles' Marignane Airport Air France rescue operation by the French Gendarmerie commandos, touted to be one of the world's most successful rescue operations in the aviation history, killing all four terrorist hostage-takers, and freeing the plane's 173 passengers and crew with no death but wounds. Another is a more distant 1976 Entebbe Operation also known as Operation Thunderbolt, or Operation Jonathan, in honor and memory of Yonathan/Jonathan Netanyahu, brother of once Israeli Prime Minister Benamin Netanyahu, who died in the said operation which he led with unwavering gallantry with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

While the preceding are highly characterized by careful planning, professionalism, readiness, commitment, and overall effectiveness, the Sunday's rescue by our so-called Manila's Finest, no not funniest, had been at best, amateurish, poorly planned, and even irresponsible:

1. The assault team didn't appear to be in their element or in their crisis psychology. I suspect because they had harbored the illusion that it was only a matter of time before Rolando surrendered peacefully. 
2. They unwittingly stoked the already agitated and confused Rolando to run berserk by unnecessarily and untimely confronting (it looked more like maltreating on TV) the brother and the rest of his kin. That ugly scene, perhaps, was what broke the last straw. 
3. They had wild-guessed how tough the glass were, they might not even have to break the glass had anyone of them thought of what seemed elementary, find out with the owner where the emergency door was.
4. No one seemed in command, while all else were failing no one was calling in other smarts, like maybe we could wreck the door by a metal hook tugged to a truck. Not rope! It may be a door, but it's attached to a bus.

At this point, don't get me wrong, I will live and die with our Police, they're all we have. In fact all we have is each other, but it's high time we called the attention of its leadership to really start shaping up. Hell you can't peddle that "inadequate resource" crap no more, many had already died behind that. We all know many in our history and that of other countries with much little resources had done better. Talk about physical and mental readiness. I remember our forefathers fought guns with bolos.

It's a tough call for the President Noynoy now, but heads have to roll. Speak softly while you carry a big stick. In the end, we have our tourism identity to rebuild, and it hinges on what concrete steps we take in addressing the problem. Band aid won't do, unless the international community sees real reform in our national Police, we'll see more and more countries telling their citizens to steer clear of our little paradise. It's no consolation, while true, that we are relatively peaceful, what matters most is our ability to reign in lawlessness and violence.