By Christopher Lloyd Caliwan/Philippine News Agency
MANILA — The number of policemen charged with administrative complaints went up in the first five months of this year, the Philippine National Police (PNP) said Thursday.
Data from the PNP Internal Affairs Service (IAS) showed the number of complaints against police officers from January to May increased by 36 percent to 2,291, compared to 1,683 in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the average number of cases on a monthly basis also increased to 458, from 337 last year.
Lawyer Alfegar Triambulo, IAS Inspector General, said most of the cops are with the rank of patrolman and are either involved in illegal drug activities, violations in police operational procedure, indiscriminate firing of their firearms, and vote-buying in the recent elections.
Despite the increase in the number of complaints, Triambulo said IAS’s ‘resolved cases’ remained high with 1,454 from January to May this year, compared to 1,136 in the same period last year.
The same goes for the average number of resolved cases monthly at 291, compared to 227 last year.
Earlier, PNP chief, Gen. Oscar Albayalde reminded all police personnel that he would never tolerate illegal acts or wrongdoings committed by anyone within their ranks.
“When a recruit takes his oath as a professional police officer, he automatically loses or waives some of his rights in favor of organizational discipline, duties and responsibilities. So, being scolded, reprimanded, bawled out, or dressed down for misdemeanor, misconduct or commission of crime is just part and parcel of his life being in the uniformed service,” Albayalde said in a statement.
He also reiterated that the PNP is serious in its aim to enforce culture change and character transformation among police officers.
“We continue to ask for the media’s help because this way, we can emphasize that we are true and serious in our drive in wiping out scalawags within our ranks,” Albayalde said in Filipino.
“This is a stern warning to all PNP personnel. We will be adding more teeth to our campaign against those rogues and scalawags among our ranks. We will not hesitate to relieve any official from their posts should any incident like this extortion and robbery case would happen again,” he added.
Albayalde previously said newly-recruited police officers would undergo Special Action Forces (SAF) training as a way of disciplining them.
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