Bullet points on the hostage-taking at the Quirino Grandstand (pun not intended)

What a disgrace. This is what we look like to the world – ipinagyayabang sa mundo ang pagiging Pinoy, kahit napakaraming kapalpakan din na nararanasan natin sa araw-araw ay gawa rin ng Pinoy.

Let me just express in bullet points what I think of what happened yesterday when several Hong Kong nationals were killed and wounded in the hostage taking at the Quirino Grandstand. I had expressed many of my thoughts already on Yahoo’s Fit to Post, so I’ll just have a summary here.

• The PNP and SWAT looked terribly unprepared to somehow take Mendoza by surprise, so they really didn’t have much tactical advantage. Snipers couldn’t even get a clear shot of Mendoza until he went to the front of the bus where it was better lit.
• The leadership among the police forces did not even realize the live media coverage was doing two things:

(1) It was showing Mendoza through the TV inside the bus how his brother was forcibly removed and detained after resisting arrest for several minutes, making him angrier;

(2) It was showing Mendoza where the police were trying to sneak up on him, which means if they ever get the bus cracked wide open they’ll easily be sprayed with bullets because he’ll be expecting them.

• The media on the other hand ignored the possibility that Mendoza had access to their live reports. Sure they were just “doing their jobs,” and MINDLESSLY endangering the hostages and the police positioned around the bus in the process. (And tonight’s TV Patrol even went so far as to say they deliberately limited their reportage. Maybe that’s true before the bus driver escaped, but they definitely covered what happened next LIVE, including police and SWAT movement outside.) If Mendoza had a fragmentation grenade or an incendiary grenade and dropped it at the back of the bus (through bullet holes he could easily make) we would have seen bits and pieces of our policemen splattered on live television. I have no tolerance for media that sits on a high horse but behaves irresponsibly and inconsiderately towards the lives they affect.
• I find it embarrassing that President Aquino behaved like a 9-t0-5 president and made himself unavailable to Donald Tsang’s calls during the hostage crisis, only to send his condolences the day after many hostages have been killed and wounded. Is this how he plans to handle everything he has no experience in – by hiding from everybody until the smoke clears and the only thing left for him to do is send condolences?
• What was the strategy? How did the police plan to prioritize the protection of the hostages from Mendoza’s boiling rage? By slowly moving in? That gave Mendoza more than enough time to shoot his hostages. The police went to the bus not knowing how to quickly get in, and took so much time wondering outside the bus what to do to get in. They should have figured out their options before doing an approach. I really don’t see how their operations prioritized the safety of the hostages.
• The investigation on Mendoza’s case would be reopened anyway, so it would have been much less costly in human lives if the negotiators worked to give in to his immediate demands until he could be lured out and overpowered. Loss of life could have been avoided if the negotiations were handled by more competent, more experienced people. The bloodshed did not have to happen if only the handling of negotiations were treated more delicately and the immediate costs were considered.
• Before we even talk about RETRAINING the PNP, why don’t we get them TRAINED first? The only thing these guys have been guaranteed to learn is growing a beer gut. They can’t even properly tackle and pin down a suspect resisting arrest. What a disgrace.

Feel free to add your own observations. I think you share a lot of mine.

If it were up to me, heads will roll.

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