Published March 5, 2000

Sunstar - Baguio

First, (when was that?), it was waistline smaller than chests. Now, it’s 34 inches or bust. So, is it going to stick this time? Well...

For starters there can be no quarrel about slim and trim policemen being more assuring than cops with swollen guts. That assessment is born out of experience too. We did have our little scrape with the law as high school juveniles, a potential career as thieves snapped by lean and mean patrolmen who chased us down during one of our shoplifting capers.

The seven of us who were caught have been forever grateful for that, though I must say we could have outrun the potbellied sorts of current familiarity. But that would have probably led us further down the low road.

I remember, too, a couple of Baguio’s finest who lived in the old neighborhood. Each morning as they strode by on their way to man their shift, neighborhood kids stood by respectfully, not in awe nor in fear of their trim figures and fresh khakis.

Those were gentler and more innocent times of course. These days, police work is a lot more than cutting a fine figure. Society and its crimes are more complex and demand more daring, imaginative and cerebral approaches.

But while it may be argued that a fat cat is no less intelligent than a lean one, it is still conceivably more assuring for the public when it’s a trim cop at work. Besides a fat gut on a cop almost always raises the suspicion that the man may be prone to taking the path of least resistance, whether intellectually of physically.

This is no creed against well-fed people with the bellies to show for it. Eating, after all, is one of the greatest pleasures of life, whether of a policeman or layman.

My two editors are, in fact, are great eaters, heavyweights in the midsection department but are by no means mental sloths. They do their own fair, or more, share of all work too.

Truth is that there is a whole culture and style to the big waistline. Kindness and gift-giving are annually associated with the rotund Santa Claus. Enlightenment is personified in the round-bellied Buddha. Even in the sports circuits, of golf especially, it is not uncommon for the bellied types to post themselves on the winner boards.

And how can I forget the two fathers in my life. My father-in-law was one such hefty man, as was my father, both of whom were never short of industry nor of intellectual excellence. If truth be told, I am surrounded by a whole slew of good friends of the "healthy midsection" variety.

So why this piece on corpulent policemen?

It might all boil down to a matter of perception really. What better example than top cop Panfilo Lacson himself. One might carp about and object to his civil rights record or methods, but there is no mistaking the confidence he inspires in a public so starved for the image of a lean and mean law enforcer.

The "common tao" do tend to view soldiers and policemen like they want the law to be: no excess fat and blubber, but simply hard and fast.

But what is this we hear about gene make-up accounting for those unwanted waistlines? As some would have us believe, excess poundage might just be the result of inherited eating and metabolism patterns. Tell that to the marines, they of the thirty-four-and-under girths whom the public has embraced in the malls.

So then, what are we to make of the latest declaration of Ping against the pong? What else but to encourage this latest advise against the jutting belly. Lawmen, after all, are supposed to be just that, not low (down there and elsewhere, you know) men.

Let us pause once more and ask: How will Lacson go about his latest fitness crusade? Ask the man on the street and he will probably tell you the battle against the bulge will need more than rhetoric from someone who can comfortably speak from a cushy pulpit.

A truly professional and well-paid police and military force just might do more than admonition. The adage comes to mind: "No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach." Crime and its suppression are still matters that have to do with keeping life and limb together, mainly through the stomach.

On the other hand, give me a dedicated slim, trim and full of vim policeman and I’ll not ask for more. Ask your neighbor. I’ll bet this: I’ll put my trust on a washboard tummy than on the big belly.