‘Kahina-hinala’
Even assuming the guard had a legitimate reason to call the police, and the patrolman believed the sergeant’s firearm posed a danger, none of that gives a free pass for unnecessary violence.
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Even assuming the guard had a legitimate reason to call the police, and the patrolman believed the sergeant’s firearm posed a danger, none of that gives a free pass for unnecessary violence.
Somehow, an encounter that began with an off-duty police sergeant handing a lady guard his receipt for goods bought at a supermarket ended with his face being bashed with a gun by a responding wet-behind-the-ears rookie cop. This after the sergeant had already flashed identification showing he was a police investigator.
The guard called in the patrolman because of the victim’s “kahina-hinalang kilos.” Fine. What was the suspicious behavior? That question matters.
If he was concealing something, acting aggressively, or otherwise behaving in a way that reasonably suggested criminal activity, then say so. If the answer is merely that a firearm was spotted inside his bag when he retrieved his wallet, that is something else entirely.
Ever hear of a permit to carry firearms outside of residence for cops in civilian clothes and even for civilians who qualify for the privilege?
“Kahina-hinalang kilos.” One of those nebulous, elastic expressions that can be made to mean almost anything after the fact. A person looks nervous. He walks too quickly or too slowly. He has a bulge in his pocket or bag. Somebody felt something was wrong. “Kahina-hinala.”
Suddenly, “suspicious behavior” starts an interrogation, a frisk, a search, an arrest — and, as this case showed, something much worse — a beating.
The PNP’s 2021 Operational Procedures Manual is less casual about it. An officer may stop a person only when there is a genuine reason to believe, based on the circumstances and the officer’s experience, that criminal activity may be afoot.
The officer must point to specific facts that, with rational inferences, reasonably warrant the stop. Questions must be confined to the grounds for the stop, and the person should not be detained longer than reasonably necessary.
For this Contrarian, there is a difference between stopping somebody on reasonable grounds and beating somebody because you’ve decided suspicion makes you right. It does not.
Even assuming the guard had a legitimate reason to call the police, and the patrolman believed the sergeant’s firearm posed a danger, none of that gives a free pass for unnecessary violence.
The manual says officers must remain courteous while cautious and vigilant. A justified pat-down must be conducted with due caution, restraint, and sensitivity — limited to the outer clothing. A bag that might conceal a weapon should not simply be opened. If the pat-down reveals no weapon, no further search may be made.
There is a reason for these rules. The state gives the police extraordinary powers because they sometimes confront extraordinary situations. Those powers do not include the right to turn suspicion into punishment.
In Ridon v. People (G.R. 252396, 6 December 2023), the Supreme Court acquitted a man frisked and arrested for illegal firearm possession, ruling that his flight from officers and a reach toward his waist did not amount to the two or more suspicious circumstances required for a valid stop-and-frisk.
A hunch, the Court made clear, is not enough — and suspicion arising only after a police approach cannot retroactively justify the approach itself.
This is why the Quezon City incident should not be dismissed as a confrontation between a difficult customer and an overzealous guard. It raises the broader question of how easily Filipinos can be made to seem suspicious in their own country.
How many have been stopped because they “looked suspicious?” How many were frisked or detained, then found to have done nothing wrong? How many went home humiliated because challenging an armed officer felt more dangerous than enduring a pat-down — and it never made the news?
The PNP manual requires stop and frisks that don’t result in an arrest to be logged in the patrol book. The system should, in principle, have a record of these encounters. Perhaps it is time somebody counted them.
Because “kahina-hinalang kilos” is not a blank check. It is a legal threshold. Once suspicion has been allayed, it must stop there — not become an excuse for humiliation, arbitrary detention, or violence, much less a justification for a police officer putting a gun in the face of the person he was supposed to protect, even a fellow cop.
