In his latest reprimand of rogue police officers, President Duterte gave only two options: serve in Mindanao or quit the police force. We appreciate the President’s hands-on approach in cleaning the police force of corrupt elements to bring back people’s trust in their policemen. We need to clean the ranks of the organization first before we can talk about any kind of modernization and pay increase for the Philippine National Police (PNP). We must also increase its accountability to ensure public safety.
But why is it that corrupt cops are always shipped out to Mindanao and not taken off the force? For as long as we can remember, it has been the sad practice of one administration after another to reassign erring cops from Luzon and Metro Manila to conflict-ridden areas in Mindanao, particularly Zamboanga and the ARMM, or the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, comprising the provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao.
At the start of its antidrugs campaign, the PNP had sent thousands of policemen from Metro Manila to Mindanao after PNP chief Ronald M. dela Rosa claimed they were involved in the illegal-drugs trade. Last week the President said he will send the crooked cops he castigated in Malacañang to Basilan.
It is unfair to these Mindanao provinces to become repositories of rogue policemen. They deserve honest and efficient cops like any other province or city in the Philippines. Besides, corrupt cops will be corrupt anywhere you assign them. They will find a way to make trouble, involve themselves in something illegal to make money, extract bribes or commit graft. Or worse, they could become the henchmen of murderous warlords. Just take a look at the 2009 Maguindanao massacre: a lot of the armed men in the Ampatuan clan’s private militia who murdered 58 people, including 32 journalists, were later found to be policemen.
The ARMM officials have raised similar concerns, saying the last thing they need are the rejected policemen of other provinces, as did Senate President Aquilino L. Pimentel III.
“Mindanao should be treated by the PNP with the same respect that all Filipinos deserve regardless of their faith, their culture and their economic status,” Pimentel, who hails from Cagayan de Oro, said in a press statement. “[Erring policemen] should not be recycled and sent to faraway postings as punishment. This will merely transfer the problem, not put a stop to it.”
We agree with Pimentel that, instead of transferring corrupt cops, they should be swiftly prosecuted. Administrative cases must be filed against them. They should either be expelled from the force or punished according to the gravity of their offenses. But we are also cognizant that simply dismissing these “corrupt to the core” cops (as the President called them) would be a problem, too.
There is nothing as dangerous as a dismissed and disgruntled corrupt policeman. Citizens have every reason to be scared of ex-policemen who have been involved in robbery, extortion, kidnapping and other crimes. They could even be more dangerous when they are no longer subjected to the discipline of police regulations.
In 2010, less than two months after Duterte’s predecessor took office, a disgruntled ex-policeman took hostage a bus full of Hong Kong tourists and killed eight of them after a botched rescue operation. What is infamously known as the Quirino hostage tragedy became not only the first debacle of the presidency of Benigno S. Aquino III but also one of the nation’s biggest international embarrassments.
Duterte is, perhaps, all too aware of this. This is precisely why he warned rogue cops that if they choose to leave the police force, they better not return to their crooked ways. He told them, if they opt to retire or resign, then they should behave and look for a decent job. He even said he will create a “military battalion” to track the movements of former policemen to make sure they will walk the straight and narrow path outside the police force.
Keenly watching rogue policemen who will resign, retire or get fired through a military monitoring force is a good idea, but it may not be enough. Those lawmen who are found on the wrong side of the law must not only be dismissed but jailed. If you just dismiss them, they would probably just become criminals at large. No longer in uniform, but just as bad and just as dangerous. If the administration is to restore trust in the police force, the President must do more than kick out the “corrupt to the core” cops in the PNP. He must put these criminals-in-uniform behind bars.