MANILA, Philippines?It took just one look for Supt. Eric Noble to find that ?ghosts? were haunting the rolls of the Philippine National Police.

As the deputy chief of the PNP?s personnel holding and accounting unit for a five-month period last year, Noble cleansed the PNP employee rolls of 146 ghost police officers out of a force of 127,000.

Noble?s feat spared the PNP at least P3 million in monthly payroll expenses last year and earned him a place in the Country?s Outstanding Policemen in Service (COPS) Awards of the Metrobank Foundation, the Rotary Club of New Manila East and PSBank.

What I did was not rocket science, said Noble, who now serves as police chief of his hometown, Santa Barbara, in Pangasinan.

?I requested access to the payroll, which had been confidential before. I wanted to see who were getting paid. Then I asked for access to the list of personnel, and then compared them. Separate units had been handling those lists before, and nobody saw them side by side,? said Noble.

Haiti experience

Utilizing the skills that he learned as the finance and personnel officer of the United Nations mission in Haiti the year before, Noble compared the payroll and personnel lists which readily yielded loopholes in the employee rolls.

?What I did then was, when there was a suspected case, first I looked for the person, and physically accounted for him,? said Noble, who has been with the police force for the past 16 years.

He conducted surprise troop checks among the police units, mostly in the Camp Crame national headquarters. Those he found habitually absent, he checked for overseas travel through his contacts at the immigration bureau.

After six months of tedious investigation, Noble found that the PNP was still paying for services that had not been rendered by, among others, police doctors and nurses in the Camp Crame Health Service, the Highway Patrol Group, the Police Security and Protection Group, the Special Action Force, and police units in Metro Manila and Central Luzon.

More than 146 cops

The ?ghost cops? ranged from rank and file to as high as police superintendents who had left the country to work overseas or had died.

He said he could not give the names as most of the cases were still under investigation and many were under appeal.

The PNP Directorate for Personnel and Records Management has already dropped the officers from the rolls, even as it is still investigating how the names could have remained on the list despite their long absence from duty.

?I know that it?s not only 146. I know that there could be more after I left,? Noble said in an interview after the testimonial dinner for the 10 COPS awardees in Makati last Wednesday.

Director German Doria, the PNP?s community relations chief, said the PNP has already instituted measures to prevent the disbursement of undeserved paychecks.

?I think we were forewarned about this. Right now, we already disburse salaries through the ATM, and we immediately cut the pay when an officer goes on AWOL? This is one of the measures the PNP adopted to curb such incidents,? said Doria.

A year ago, at the request of the Santa Barbara mayor, former PNP Deputy Director General Reynaldo Velasco, Noble left Camp Crame to become the police chief of his Pangasinan hometown. Noble had served as Velasco?s administrative officer when the latter was PNP deputy chief for operations.

Palace honors

The 10 outstanding policemen chosen in the annual COPS search were honored at a ceremony in Malacañang last week. Each received a cash prize of P250,000. The winners were selected by a panel that included Supreme Court Associate Justice Renato Corona.

Superintendents Dionardo Carlos and Eliseo Cruz, Insp. Alden Delvo, SPO4 Baltazar Carillo, SPO2 Danilo Ramos, SPO1 Gaudencio Callo, Police Officers 3 Manuela Cueto and Arturo Melchor Jr., and PO2 Sherill Ybañez were cited for their efforts against illegal drugs, insurgency, robbery gangs and sex offenders, among others.

Reorient negative view

PSBank president Pascual Garcia III said he believed that police officers bring good news daily, adding that he hoped the annual awards would ?help reorient? the public?s negative view of the police force.

?Imagine 127,000 officers, a great majority of them do good deeds. And yet, when there?s that negative perception and your good deeds are not recognized, it?s a demotivator. It?s tough, especially in a line of work where they have to shed blood or give their lives,? said Garcia.