Erring cops

BEHIND THE SCENES

Alfred P. Dizon

There would only be a few cops left on the streets if President Rodrigo Duterte would make good his threat to kill corrupt police, including those accused of involvement in illegal drugs and other crimes.

This, according to our perennially tipsy neighbourhood philosopher after the boss of this Banana Republic issued his threat in an expletives-laden interview on live TV.

More than 100 policemen, many of them facing administrative and criminal complaints including rape, kidnapping and robbery, were escorted to the presidential palace last week where Duterte gave them the shivers.

The Philippine National Police which Duterte once called "corrupt to the core," according to its top honchos, had been undergoing internal cleansing since they were removed twice from the president's crackdown on illegal drugs last year due to reports of abuses.

Duterte later allowed them to rejoin drug raids, partly because the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency lacked personnel and firepower to quell the drug menace.

"If you'll stay like this, son of a bitch, I will really kill you," Duterte told the policemen in the dressing-down broadcast by TV networks. The cases of some of the policemen will be reviewed, but Duterte warned, "I have a special unit which will watch you for life and if you commit even a small mistake, I'll ask that you be killed."

Addressing the policemen's families, Duterte said, "If these sons of bitches die, don't come to us yelling 'human rights, due process' because I warned you already."

Such public threats, along with the more than 4,500 mostly poor drug suspects who have been killed in gun battles with police under Duterte's anti-drug crackdown, have triggered alarm by Western governments and human rights watchdogs since he rose to power in mid-2016.

Duterte has vowed to press his campaign until the last day of his six-year term, often declaring he is ready to go to jail, although he denies sanctioning extrajudicial killings.

Police say nearly 150,000 drug suspects have been arrested and dozens of law enforcers have been killed in drug raids, proving the danger of battling illegal drugs, which remain a major problem.

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Now the PNP will soon publish in broadsheets and social media the names of new police recruits as part of its stricter screening process.

PNP Director General Oscar Albayalde said this would allow the public to report recruits with pending criminal cases.

Albayalde added under the proposed recruitment reform, an officer who conducted and signed off on the background investigation of a would-be policeman who later turns out to have pending criminal cases, will also be sanctioned.

 “We will be strict with background investigation that will be conducted by different PNP stations they will make to sign, the station commanders and the person who conducted and the police officer who conducted the background investigation. So if the new recruit does something bad, we will go back to that person who did background information on him,” the PNP chief told media.

The PNP also plans to put barcodes on psychological tests taken by its recruits to prevent them from being tampered with.

The reforms in the PNP recruitment process were prompted by the cases involving cops in crimes and illegal practices.

Just recently, a PO3 was named as the gunman in the killing of Sapa-Sapa, Tawi-Tawi City Vice Mayor Alrashid Mohammad Alih last July 11.

Another cop was implicated in the abduction of a businessman in Laguna while a group of rookie policemen was arrested over extortion complaints.

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PNP officers who have been dismissed from service has now reached more than 2,181 since the President initiated internal cleansing among the agency’s ranks from July 2016 to June 2018.

“The PNP has sustained the momentum of its continuing internal cleansing program in the 190,000-strong police force over the past two years under the Duterte administration when organizational discipline and internal reform became the centerpiece of the service agenda of PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde,” PNP spokesman Senior Supt. Benigno Durana said in a statement.

Over 1,828 of these personalities reportedly committed serious infractions while 353 are involved in illegal drug trade.

Top PNP officials said the agency is cleansing its ranks of scalawags in an effort to end corruption and proliferation of illegal drugs in the country.