Two measures in Cebu City and Mandaue City should draw mass support from their residents if only to ensure peace and order in their areas and help make it easier for law enforcers to crack down on criminal elements.
The first is the 10 p.m. curfew ordinance for minors that is already being enforced in seven barangays in Cebu City’s South District and should be replicated in other parts of the city especially as the holiday season comes around the corner.
Whether they be poor, rich or middle class, children shouldn’t be allowed to stay out of their homes or at least they should be off the streets at night when predators often come out to seek their victims.
Again, these adult predators don’t cherry-pick their victims, but they usually prefer those they deem to be unsupervised and gullible enough to entrap.
There are school nights during which youths should stay at home studying or sleeping early for classes the next day so they have enough energy to give full attention to their studies rather than engage in all-night gimmicks with friends.
Though there may be exemptions — i.e., those attending night school — they are more of the exception rather than the rule, and parents or guardians are the frontliners when it comes to disciplining and making sure that their children are safe at home at night.
That there had to be a law in order to make sure that kids would be at home at night is indicative of how most parents had either failed or taken for granted this most basic precaution for their children because of their work, their hobbies or distractions or just plain neglect.
If there’s anyone out there who is the best protector of children, it’s the parents themselves.
Meanwhile in Mandaue City, a proposal being lobbied by the Traffic Enforcement Agency of Mandaue (Team) to prohibit the use of full-faced helmets and ski masks should be passed into law to help police crack down on criminal suspects.
We need not mention how the ski masks, also called bonnet masks or balaclavas, are used by so-called vigilantes in extrajudicial killings that claimed the lives of drug suspects by the thousands.
But last we heard, these ski masks, which are called as such because it supposedly helps protect motorcycle riders from wind and dirt caused by high-speed driving, are also being used allegedly by some habal-habal (motorcycle-for-hire) drivers who are out to victimize girls in need of transportation late at night.
The ban on ski masks or bonnets should be enforced nationwide, and motorcycle riders need to sacrifice some small comfort if only to be transparent and show to the public that they have nothing to hide.
These twin measures are but small steps that should be enforced by duly constituted law enforcement agencies and aided by the community to help protect their children and themselves at night when criminals thrive the most.
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