Woman cop is top honoree at PNP 110th anniversary
By DJ YapPhilippine Daily Inquirer
Long considered a bastion of machismo, the Philippine National Police (PNP) celebrates its 110th year on Monday by honoring a mother with more guts and fire than many of her testosterone-filled colleagues.
Senior Inspector Charity Galvez, chief of police of Trento town in Agusan del Sur and a former schoolteacher, leads the honorees in rites at PNP headquarters at Camp Crame, Quezon City, officials said.
President Benigno Aquino III will bestow on Galvez the PNP Medalya ng Katapangan (Bravery Medal) for her “conspicuous courage and gallantry in action” when she led a handful of her men in pushing back some 250 communist New People’s Army insurgents in July.
After making sure that her baby and its nanny were safe, the 39-year-old policewoman and 30 men fought off and successfully repelled a large group of NPA dissidents who went on a shooting and looting rampage.
When the hour-long gun battle was over, two civilians lay dead and three others, including two lawmen, were wounded, officials said.
A resident of San Francisco town, also in Agusan del Sur, Galvez became Trento’s top cop after just over a year in the service. She became a junior police officer through the PNP’s lateral entry program in 2008.
“I joined the force in the early 2000s after seven years of teaching at the (Father Saturnino) Urios (University in Butuan). I also studied criminology while making my way in the service and passed the licensure examination and became a criminologist,” she said in an earlier Inquirer interview.
Galvez has one child with her husband, an employee of a water utility company in San Francisco.
Her achievement gives a new female face to the PNP, a traditionally male-dominated institution.
Only one in 750 cops is a woman in the 140,000-strong police force, PNP spokesperson Chief Superintendent Agrimero Cruz Jr. said.
August 8 is celebrated as the anniversary of the police service in commemoration of the founding on Aug. 8, 1901, of the defunct Philippine Constabulary, the forerunner of the PNP.
Aside from Galvez, another Bravery Medal recipient is Chief Inspector Allan B. Umipig, chief of the District Intelligence Operation Unit of the Southern Police District, who figured in an encounter with armed robbers in Sucat, Parañaque City, in June. Three suspects were killed in the incident.
President Aquino will also award posthumous promotions to Senior Police Officers 2 Ricky O. Agwit and Jeff E. Domingo, both of the Ifugao provincial police office, who perished in a landslide while on a rescue mission at the height of Tropical Storm “Juaning” in the Cordilleras on July 27.
Mr. Aquino will also present the “Presidential Streamer Award” to the Police Regional Office-Cordillera as Police Regional Office of the Year.
Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, meanwhile, will present the National Police Commission Streamer Award to the Headquarters Support Service as the National Administrative Support Unit of the Year.
The PNP’s elite squad, the Special Action Force, will be presented with the Chief PNP Streamer Award as the National Operational Support Unit of the Year.
Other individual awards will go to:
PSSupt. Manuel R. Gaerlan, DPRM—Senior Police Commissioned Officer for Administration; PSSupt. Ronald M. De la Rosa, PRO11-Senior Police Commissioned Officer for Operation; PCInsp. Romeo S. Santander, PRO7-Junior Police Commissioned Officer of the Year; SPO4 Florante B. Ubina, Engineering Service—Senior Police Non-Commissioned Officer of the Year; NUP Mely Sorra, Crime Laboratory—Non-Uniformed Supervisor of the Year; NUP Michael N. de la Vega PRO1-Non-Uniformed Personnel of the Year.
Other unit winners are: Quezon Police Provincial Office-Police Provincial Office of the Year General Santos City Police Office of the Year 5th Regional Public Safety Battalion, PRO5-Regional Public Safety Battalion of the Year; Quezon Provincial Public Safety Company, PRO4A—Provincial Public Safety Company of the Year; Cagayan de Oro City Public Safety Company, PRO10—City Public Safety Company of the Year; San Fernando City Police Station, PRO1—Component City Police Station of the Year; Glan Municipal Police Station, PRO12—Municipal Police Station of the Year.
Special Awards will be given to the following: PSInsp. Genie L. Balubal, PRO4A-Women and Children Protection Desk Officer of the Year; Eastern Police District—NCR Police District of the Year; PCInsp. Benigno F. Albao Sr., PRO5-Lead PNP Awardee for the Year: The Mentor Leader.
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Tags: anniversary , Charity Galvez , gender , Philippine National Police , PNP , Women
