You're Fired!

Don't you love how Donald Trump say it?  "You're fired!!"

This catch phrase is the signature line of his hit show, The Apprentice, which  enjoys top rating and employs both wit and drama.

Yesterday, one fellow who was "fired" from his job, ex-

Captain Rolando Mendoza took 25 people hostages and demanded that he be reinstated from his job as Manila mobile cop.  He was dismissed by the Ombudsman because he robbed, threatened, and manhandled a chef for illegally parking his car.  Mendoza's group demanded money from a certain Christian Kalaw, a chef of Sheraton Hotel, who was accused of illegal parking, and from whom 100,000 pesos was extorted from, and whittled down to 20

,000 and who was forced to swallow shabu.

Mendoza, due to retire next year lost his salary and benefits because of the dismissal and wanted a payback.

The hostage situation lasted more than ten hours and only ended when Mendoza shot his hostages, and the Manila Police's SWAT team swooped down on him.

Early on the hostage situation, I was thinking why media had been allowed to record and capture every bit of the "crime" scene.  I thought the police should have cordoned off the area and only tell media what it ought to know.

It's hard to analyze the situation after the fact, I know.

But I was expecting the SWAT team to have taken an early posture of "ending the gunman's" show by taking him down at the first opportunity and there was plenty of it.  Early in the morning, the gunman stood at the bus door and even waved at the camera.  As the day progressed, he shied away from the camera and hid, knowing full well, as a cop, that there would be snipers snooping at him.

The police force could be thinking, like most TV viewing public, that the hostage taking situation was one for public consumption just like the "cop reality TV shows of America," or the movies of Keanu Reeves or Bruce Willis. Or, because

 the police force is still in the limelight accused of brutality, they wanted to display transparency in the way they engage criminals and the way they arrest them.

Or they thought Mendoza, being a cop, would still have shown some respect for human lives.  Or they treated him differently because he was one of them.

I was thanking God aloud each time I saw a hostage being pulled out alive from the bus. But then, 8 people died.

This thing happens all over the globe. Yes, it's an embarrassment for the country, but Mendoza is not the Pinoy.  He is the exception.

In Pakistan, Iraq, India, Iran, and Afghanistan, Israel, Lebanon, both locals and foreigners are being murdered. In the U.S., some teens kill their classmates, teachers and their parents.  In the U.S., certain parents murder their own children.

Violence is everywhere.  Insanity is everywhere.