Herbie Gomez MY neighbor says she literally threw her glasses as she watched the morning news last week. She was enraged over what she saw: the closed-circuit television recording of the Oct. 23 broad daylight abduction of Enrique Fernandez III outside Uptown Condotel in Upper Carmen. Who wouldn’t? I mean, who wouldn’t be infuriated to see an entire police unit ganging up on a helpless civilian without a clearly good reason? The 33-year old Fernandez had put on a helmet and was about to hop on a motorcycle after checking his cellphone when two men stepped out of a white car and started dragging him. Fernandez resisted. About eight seconds later, a third man with a pistol and a vest emerged from the same car to provide his two fellow scoundrels a helping hand. The gun-toting animal of a despicable man struck Fernandez with his pistol. Still unable to subdue their target, a bespectacled suspect with a serious and very ugly hair loss problem rushed from the driver’s seat, picked the victim’s helmet up, and grabbed Fernandez as a fifth suspect crossed the busy road, opened a door to the backseat, took out a rifle, and helped in dragging and pushing the victim into the car. From the time the fifth aggressor opened the door, the struggle outside the car continued in full public view for another minute and 14 seconds. From a lighter side, these rascals are neither fit as policemen nor criminals. It took all five of them an unimpressive one minute and 58 seconds--yes, almost two minutes!--to accomplish the simple job of forcing their unarmed and unsuspecting target to get in their car. Neither policemen nor kidnappers can be proud of that lousy work. These crooked and bumbling idiots are weaklings without a moral compass from whatever angle one looks at it. (And their children will grow up with the thought that it took their fathers nearly two minutes to subdue a helpless citizen not known to have any police or military training whatsoever.) Seriously, what the public has seen is clearly a case of police abuse. Apparently, badges gave them a feeling or a false sense of impunity. It really looked like they were so used to doing it that they think they can do anything under the sun, and trample on people’s rights and civil liberties even in broad daylight, and get away with it. And, still, you wonder who’s capable of dumping all the bodies in the bushes? Now, you know why the writ of habeas corpus is so important to a society that values democracy and human rights. Suspend the writ and chances are, the number of Enrique Fernandezes will shoot up. People who say they’re excited to experience martial law don’t really know what they’re talking about. My sympathy goes to the Fernandez family. As I write this, no one can say what really happened to the victim after his Oct. 23 abduction. That is difficult and very painful for the family, I understand. And, really, I pity the families of the rogue cops, especially their children. Such dishonor. Such infamy. Until now, I am having a hard time understanding why any officer of the law who knows how to think would gamble on his family’s honor and future, his freedom and career, including salary and benefits, for something like what happened in Oct. 23. But that, I guess, is the nature of idiocy. What a waste! (I know a janitor who says he would trade all the fingers in his left hand and even his left eye, and give his best if only police regional director Chief Supt. Noel Constantino would give him a shot at becoming an honorable Police Officer 1. Never mind if he does not get promoted, he says.) Kudos to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and even Camp Alagar for quickly doing something about the Fernandez case, and making sure that the suspects are brought to justice. They saved the day. The public is seeing justice. As for the rest of us, I guess it’s a consolation to see that in this country, still, crime does not pay--sometimes--especially when weak idiots cum crooks are caught on cam. Pastilan.