MANILA — The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Thursday said it continues to act on the complaints against erring policemen.
In a press conference, PNP Counter Intelligence Task Force (CITF) Director Senior Supt. Jose Malayo said extortion, involvement in illegal drugs and protection rackets remain on top of the complaints against police officers.
Malayo said the CITF was able to review a total of 10,381 text messages and complaints, of which 1,535 are related to police personnel.
Of this number, 358 are Police Commissioned Officers (PCOs) and 1,177 are Police Non Commissioned Officers (PNCOs).
“(T)hese are the personnel subjected to validation and monitoring and once there is evidence we will conduct entrapment operation or the filing of appropriate cases,” Malayo said adding that most of the cases involve “extortion, illegal drugs and protection”. Of this number, 60 were arrested in operations last year.
Malayo said that those cases undergoing verification involve reports of an erring star-rank official supposedly implicated in illegal gambling protection scheme.
“Meron tayong (We have a) star rank (being investigated) we are still conducting validation up to this point. ‘Yun ang pinaka-highest rank (That’s the one with highest rank) but ‘yung sa naaresto natin, meron tayong (the one that we arrested, we have) chief inspector, highest arrested,” he said.
Under the PNP’s civilian rank set up, a star rank would be officials ranked Chief Superintendent and above, the equivalent of Brigadier General in the military.
“I think we received two reports about that (star rank) personnel. That was in the early months of our operation at hindi naman nadugtungan (and it was not followed by anyone) up to this time,” Malayo said.
He declined to give details about the personnel’s assignment and name.
As for non commissioned officers, those incriminated are mostly ranked Police Officer 1 to Police Officer 3 and majority are from the National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO), the official added and opined that most were entangled in the criminal activities even before the Palace approved the base pay hike for uniformed personnel.
“Although my mandate is only to arrest, to me ito kasi sila ay involved na before so naabutan na lang ngayon but mostly doon sa mga statistics natin na bumaba naman yung reklamo dahil sa pagtaas ng sweldo but yung mga nahuli, naabutan sila because they have been into this practice before (To me, they have been involved before and it continued until now but mostly in our statistics, the complaints are now fewer because of the pay hike for uniformed personnel. But as for those erring policemen who were caught, they were into this practice before),” Malayo said.
“We hope the others will also stop,” he added. (PNA)
