Quite early on—basically, even as the Greenbelt 5 robbery was in the process of being reported—a suspect came to the fore. This was the so-called Alvin Flores Group, suspected of having undertaken 23 robberies last year alone, including the bloody shoot-out in Parañaque City on Dec. 5, 2008. The AFG was almost immediately tagged by crime-watchers in public and private life as the group behind the daring robbery. This suspicion is now officially shared by the Philippine National Police, which theorizes that another armed robbery gang was invited to participate in the Greenbelt heist by the AFG.

It has been 10 months since the horrendous Parañaque City shootout. The police consider the AFG as the prime suspect in a series of spectacular heists, ranging from the botched robbery at Walter Mart in Quezon City, to break-ins at a cell phone warehouse in Pasig City and in a mall at Harrison Plaza in Manila. All of which raises the question of what, exactly, the PNP has been doing, since Alvin Flores, who was himself said to have personally participated in the Greenbelt 5 robbery, remains at large and remains capable of plotting and leading increasingly daring robberies.

Whether fairly or not, official connivance—explicit or implied—implicates the military or police top brass themselves, due to the combination of past crimes not being resolved and the robberies getting more flagrant and brazen. The criminals have been using official uniforms and insignia and come armed with automatic weapons, and ordnance that included a grenade launcher in the Greenbelt 5 heist.

There are other questions, of course. Public opinion, on the whole, has approved of the bodyguards of Taguig Mayor Freddie Tinga shooting at the robbers. The mayor himself criticized the mall’s security for not engaging the robbers in a shoot-out. But it seems to be solely due to the coolness under fire of the robbers that a slaughter didn’t take place. All the bodyguards in the world wouldn’t have shielded Tinga, or any other shopper, from grenades being lobbed within the mall.

The real question should be, then, whether private bodyguards should be engaging in shootouts in public areas. Their primary obligation, after all, is to provide personal security to their principal, who happens to be a public official. Restaurants require their clientele to turn in their weapons before entering the premises, and malls ought to do the same, even if the weapons belong to bodyguards of a public official. This is the first and foremost security lapse that requires investigation.

There are other lapses, too. There is the question of what mall security guards are supposed to do if a crime is in progress in broad daylight—and whether it would be wise to engage robbers armed with automatic weapons and grenade launchers in a shootout with so many shoppers and mall workers in the vicinity.

From what we now know of the armed robbery, one central fact stands out: the robbers were dressed as bomb squad members and they blustered their way past the mall security by saying there was a bomb threat. It was this aspect of their modus operandi—their use of official police uniforms and brandishing high-powered firearms—that allowed them to get into the mall’s premises in the first place.

Mall security simply wasn’t able to verify if the official-looking robbers were legitimate or not, in time. And in the face of such a heavily-armed group of robbers, the security guards probably found themselves torn between their conflicting duties of interdicting the robbers and securing the safety of shoppers. The intervention of Tinga’s bodyguards could have complicated matters for the public and the authorities—not just the robbers.

The long and short of it is that the biggest shield of criminals remains the government. They rely on two things to accomplish their aims: intimidation through the use of official uniforms, and official incompetence, if not outright cooperation of accomplices in the police or the military, which allows them to get their hands on an arsenal of heavy weapons and gives them confidence that they can get away scot-free.