By Christopher Lloyd Caliwan – PNA News
MANILA — There are no plans to revive the “Alsa Masa”, a network of civilian informers during the 1980s that transformed into a vigilante group, the Philippine National Police (PNP) said Monday.
PNP Spokesperson, Chief Supt. Benigno Durana, made the clarification regarding the statement of Calabarzon police regional director, Chief Supt. Edward Carranza, that the PNP was considering the expansion of its Community Mobilization Project (CMP) into an intelligence-gathering network that would be like “Alsa Masa”.
Durana said what Carranza meant was that the regional advisory council proposed the enhancement of a community mobilization project, which will gather stakeholders in the community, church, acedeme, business groups and all other to sit down and deliberate on pressing security and public issues.
This, according to Durana, will be a consultative mechanism to harness support and insights, talents and energies in solving matters.
“It will never be a policy of PNP to revive this concept of Alsa Masa because we don’t advocate vigilantism in our midst in solving security problems. On the context of the Regional Director of the Police Regional Office 4-A (Calabarzon), we gather the regional advisory councils of PNP in continuously promoting and advocating ang patrol plan 2030. Whether it is a security problem, peace and order problem, we believe all stakeholders in commmunity should be involved,” Durana told reporters.
The PNP spokesperson also said that with the presence of regional advisory councils, various sectors will be able to give insights on how to address various security issues.
“Community policing is a philosophy of growing the support of the public. It can be initiated by LGUs (local government units), by barangays with support of PNP to ensure laws will not be violated, human rights are observed. We’re all in this together the community is the police and the police is the community that is a tried and tested concept,” Durana explained.
