TOUGH TIMES, TOUGHER MEASURES. Cebu City mayor-elect Tomas Osmeña maintained Tuesday that his kill-a-criminal-for-a-reward method is necessary for the safety of his constituents amid the pervasive criminality in their city.

In an interview with ANC's Dateline Philippines, Osmeña said policemen have been passive in implementing the law since they may be criminally charged if they kill an offender.

"You realize that anytime a policeman engages in a shootout and shoots somebody, he has to undergo a full criminal investigation. He has to take care of his own lawyer and he has to justify every aspect of that shooting. Many policemen have the attitude of ' why would I get into that court,'" he said.

He said government needs to crack down on criminals, especially in Cebu, which he claimed has become the "murder capital of the Philippines."

The mayor-elect said the city has the highest murder rate nationwide, and the fourth highest number of robbery cases.

Osmeña earlier said he would pay policemen P50,000 for each criminal they kill and P5,000 for each one they wound.

But asked if such rewards will encourage vigilante killings, Osmeña merely said: "It's not my problem."

He added that his aim is to re-instill fear among criminals, just as he did during his previous terms as mayor from 1988 to 1995 and from 2001 to 2010.

"That's what happened before. They got scared so they went away, and that's fine with me," he said.

(After Duterte: Mayor offers bounties for slain criminals)

Osmeña also said he is ready to face any legal action for his policy.

"My priority is not what other people think about what I'm doing. My priority is to make our people safe. That's as simple as that," the mayor-elect said.

"If you're the father of the city, you're the father of everybody. I'm no different than a mother cub protecting her cubs. You want to fight my cubs, I'll kill you first," he added. "It's purely defensive. If you don't want to be shot, then don't shoot anyone, don't rob anyone."

Osmeña recently turned over P50,000 in cash to the Cebu City Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force (CAIDSOTF) team after they shot and killed a suspected big-time drug pusher.

Earlier this May, he also paid for the P250,000 bail of a policeman who killed a suspected robber in 2014.

Aside from the reward system, Osmeña plans to boost the intelligence-gathering capacity of policemen. He has also ordered law enforcers to respond to every reported crime or call for assistance.

Osmena's pledge comes after Duterte, the longtime mayor of Davao city, won the May 9 presidential elections in a landslide largely due to a controversial law-and-order platform headlined by a vow to kill tens of thousands of criminals.

Duterte vowed during the campaign to wipe out crime within six months by unleashing security forces with shoot-to-kill orders.

He said 100,000 criminals would die in his crackdown, and that so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them.

Since winning the election, Duterte also said he would bring back the death penalty, with hanging as his preferred method of execution.

CHAOS INSTEAD OF ORDER

Meanwhile, the Commission on Human Rights reminded public officials and law enforcers to follow rules of engagement in apprehending suspects.

CHR Commissioner Chito Gascon also expressed concern that setting up rewards for the death of suspected criminals may result to a "bounty hunter culture."

"Offering a reward for killing might create a bounty hunter culture. That might lead to certain law enforcement personnel in Cebu shooting first to achieve maximum impact and obtain death when they are in the middle of law enforcement procedures so they might claim this reward," Gascon told ANC's Dateline.

"Every local official wants to ensure that their communities are safe and people are protected from violent crimes, but if they promote a culture of violence, what we might see is not the promise of law and order, but instead, lawlessness and fear," he added.

Gascon, however, admitted that the CHR has no power to prosecute and can only recommend criminal cases before the Justice Department and administrative cases before the Ombudsman and Interior Department. -- With a report from Agence France-Presse