By Cong B. Corrales
MERRIAM-Webster defines the word tattletale as someone who tells secrets about what someone else has done, an informer.
It is usually a derogatory word or in the local slang ― chabis.
However, law enforcement bodies do their mandate with a lot of help from tattletales. They are, in a way, force multipliers. They tell on people who have violated ordinances in places where the ordinance implementers do not usually go.
Tattletales make law enforcement bodies seem omniscient in a city of some 80 villages. Their job is also a thankless one. Especially during this pandemic, where the rest of the country has been chiding Kagay-an as the “City of immortals.” The city was even singled out by Digong Dada in one of his late-night expletive-riddled talk shows.
These are people who mean well. Oftentimes, they are as frustrated as the people who enforce the city’s ordinances and health protocols.
So, when you start naming your informer to the person who has violated an ordinance, you break the protocol of “privilege information.” It does not only harm your credibility as a law enforcement body, it somehow endangers the informer.
They usually report on violators who are also their neighbors.
A case in point is a journo-friend who told on a neighborhood store that has been violating the city’s curfew hours and bereft of social distancing protocol.
Somehow, for reasons only the dimwit knows, a member of one of the city’s law enforcement body told the owner of the store who reported them.
Now my journo-friend is being hounded by the owner of the store. Thanks to that dimwit.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure that by telling violators who reported them, the tattletale will get the blowback. The Civil Service Commission and the Office of the Ombudsman know this. That’s why you can report erring public servants incognito.
Back to my journo-friend. Naturally, he blew his top when he learned that the law enforcement body hung him out to dry for the second time and by the same dimwit, no less.
For context, my journo-friend is not known to mince words and habitually curses on social media. So, naturally, he rants his way through group chats and of course, on his own wall on Facebook.
Now, he tells me that the dimwit’s law enforcement body is threatening to file cybercrime charges against him.
“I heard nga ila ko’ng i-report sa cybercrime division. Asa ba ang hustisya kung di ka maka express sa imohang frustration sa imohang own wall (Facebook),” my friend told me.
A tattletale telling on a tattletale. This unprofessional behavior brings out the unprofessional and uncouth in almost anyone. Is the dimwit that important to risk your organization’s integrity? It doesn’t give you the confidence to do your civic duty in reporting violators.
Good luck enforcing ordinances by yourselves, dimwits! Good luck growing an extra pair of eyes and ears. No tattletale can trust you with “privilege information.” Pfft.
