Covering Crime

Life as a police reporter
Covering Crime
By Willard Cheng

It was 5:45 a.m. I was ready to call it a day—or night—when I got a call from our news desk. “Rush to SLEX. A truck just plowed into a house. One person is killed,” desk editor Paul Espiritu said.

It was my first day in the police beat, an otherwise uneventful day until this call. My crew and I immediately rushed to the scene. A 10-wheeler was still stuck in the middle of a shanty. Bystanders had swarmed the area, eagerly posing in front of the camera. One thing you’d immediately notice was that there was no police line at all in this part of the world.

Not that journalists should complain because by getting near the accident, the cameraman or the photographer could shoot better pictures. But should there be that yellow tape, journalists who cross or enter the police line without clearance from the police never fail to get dagger looks from the investigators. That’s because overeager journalists might accidentally step on important pieces of evidence and contaminate the crime scene, bungling the investigation in the process. Needless to say, this would not help the journalist any in trying to endear himself to the police with whom he would be spending most of his time in the beat.

Cultivating assets
Crime or police reporters, as journalists who cover the police beat are called, mostly rely on the police for stories. Most of the time, a police officer becomes a journalist’s asset, tipping us off on a crime that happened or a police operation to be launched somewhere. They are closest to the action. As pointed out by veteran journalists, sources are the lifeblood of journalism and this couldn’t be truer in the police beat.

I began slowly in cultivating sources. When I started out in the beat, I spent much of my time doing the rounds of all police precincts in my assigned area and introducing myself to the desk officer and other police personnel. I would leave my contact number hoping they would text or call when an interesting story comes up.

Well, I never thought I would be working closely with the police, whom I had always thought as stereotypically corrupt, crude, and ineffective. But when I was exposed to the beat, I’ve met quite a number of courteous and respectable policemen. I’ve also come to understand the process and various aspects of police work. Many of the policemen struck me as sincere in going after the “bad guys” in the streets and are dismayed at being branded as goons when one of their colleagues commits a felony. Oh, I’ve done stories where policemen were the subjects of complaints—indiscriminate firing, robbery, and even murder.

But I can confidently say that majority of the policemen are upright and hardworking               in spite of the limited resources available to them. I’ve especially enjoyed making friends with policemen in the lower ranks (PO1s, PO2s, SPO, senior inspectors)—the more idealistic and dutiful of the crop. I respect policemen who are in complete uniform even during the graveyard shift, who carry out their duty with pride. I’m even happier to meet colonels and generals who are down-to-earth, frank, and the proverbial “cowboy” who don’t keep up pretenses despite their rank. Needless to say, I’ve long shed my negative stereotypes of the police.

Being in the police beat also meant meeting a lot of emergency workers: government and volunteer firefighters, rescuers, and hospital staffers. As I stayed in the beat, the more I appreciated the hard work and sacrifice that these guys make, risking life and limb to save lives, even without pay. From the many fire and rescue stories we’ve done together, many of them have become close contacts and even friends.

Ultimately, a strong network of assets could bring in a steady flow of scoops or exclusives. One such memorable scoop was a fire that gutted a sedan after crashing into a 10-wheeler in Shaw Boulevard. The car’s driver was drunk and the car hit the truck while running in the opposite lane. The car was a total wreck but both drivers came out unscathed. My crew arrived at the scene with huge flames still engulfing the car’s engine. Later came two loud booms that made the perfect natsot (natural sound). We went home with a good—exclusive—story, tipped off by a police asset.

The gore of it all
One thing that I enjoyed in the police beat is the unpredictability and variety of stories. One night I’m in a police precinct covering a holdup incident; the next I’m in a tunnel where police caught up with notorious carjackers. And then we would be in a remote shantyville where a hostage drama was unfolding.

As mainstays of the night, my cameraman Rolly Roque and I have also caught on tape a number of rumbles in the streets and bars. In one instance, a protagonist even fired a warning shot in the middle of a melee. There is always the risk of getting hurt and my cameraman and I have agreed to always keep a safe distance.

The most memorable one was a rumble between two groups of guys in a bar in Parañaque. We were doing the usual rounds of the streets when a commotion erupted in the sidewalk. My driver Alfred immediately hit the brakes and the cameraman quickly alighted and pushed the camera’s record button. The protagonists hurled chairs and exchanged fierce blows (one had his nose bridge badly broken; the other had his face bloodied) until roving barangay tanods intervened. We had everything caught on tape and my crew and I went home happy with an action-packed exclusive.

Then there are the dead bodies. Back in the newsroom, we had been instructed to take only safe shots and not to expose to viewers the gruesome and bloody state of crime victims: from chopped body parts to defaced carjack suspects to a decomposing woman found in a closet, or in another instance, decomposing under the bed wrapped in a carpet.  In the field, somehow, I’ve become impervious to the sight of the dead. I guess it’s a matter of getting used to it, or “sanayan lang.” With all the horror and the brutality of the crime, I am often asked if I get nightmares or get to think about the gore before sleeping. My standard reply is that I don’t have the time to. After a long and grueling night outside, all I think about is going straight to bed and getting a good sleep.

Good guys, bad guys
A complete police story, it is said, should have a victim and a suspect. The victim is the stereotypical aggrieved party while the suspect is the habitual bad guy. Well, covering the beat, I was surprised to realize that is not always the case.

I would always remember the story where a decent young couple was arrested for “kidnapping” after a mother-complainant asked the police to recover from the couple her weeks-old baby even after she had given it away to them. She gave the baby away without undergoing the formal adoption process. The couple could not bear a child and had decided to adopt the baby, even paying for the check-up and hospitalization of the complainant during her pregnancy.

Upon birth, the baby was already given away to the couple. But the mother later changed her mind and wanted the baby back. The hapless couple, now wanting to recover—or “reimburse”—their expenses for the fickle-minded mother’s medical needs, asked for money before giving back the baby. Desperate and penniless, the mother asked the help of the police and entrapped the couple. Asking for money in exchange for returning the baby is considered a form of kidnapping for ransom, and the decent couple unwittingly became suspects.

The couple meant well, and perhaps the mother, too, for the baby’s future. But in this case, the “suspects” could not be the usual bad guys when the couple had invested and sacrificed quite a lot for the baby. The lesson here is that many things, if not all, should be taken with a grain of salt. And as a journalist, I cannot quickly label either party as the “victim” or the “suspect.” The labels are pretty loaded and they should be used with care. We can let the viewers judge for themselves by putting things in context and including the smallest and important details that could spell the difference.

I used to be one of those viewers who complain of too much crime and sensationalism in the news. Ano ang pakialam ko kung naholdap siya? E ano ngayon kung nasagasaan siya? Pakialam ko kung nasunog ang bahay nila?  Now finding myself in the police beat reporting about crimes, I try my best to make my stories relevant to the viewers. I try to put myself in the viewer’s place and put a news peg to every story I tell. My story should answer the question: So what?

The challenge now is to put crime stories in context and make sure that the story is something that could be of use to the viewer. Putting a single holdup story in context should make viewers know why the incident happened and what they could do to prevent it from happening to them. The goal is not so much to shock the viewer but to make him aware of the need to keep his environment safe. Do remind us when we’re deviating.

From Ateneo de Manila University where he graduated about two years ago, Willard Cheng joined ABS-CBN where he was assigned to the police beat. He is now a general assignment reporter and still covers crime.

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