Albayalde: Spirituality, family values to ‘cleanse’ over 5,000 rogue cops

MANILA, Philippines — Over 5,000 rogue police officers will be given a “more personal and intimate” internal cleansing program that will focus on spirituality and family values, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde said Tuesday.

The PNP has launched the revitalized internal cleansing program to focus on the restorative approach — one of the approaches in the drive to rid the police force of scalawags — for 5,582 police officers with resolved administrative cases since July 2016 until June 20, 2019.

READ: PNP bares three-pronged approach to internal cleansing program  

Amid issues hounding the PNP, including criticism on the government’s war on illegal drugs, Albayalde said the program aims to build God-fearing and service-oriented personnel and  make the PNP a family-based organization.

“Siguro alam natin lahat na pag may respeto tayo sa Diyos, may respeto tayo sa kapwa natin (We all know that when we have respect for God, we have respect to others),” he said.

He said these values are being recited in the PNP officers’ pledge during simultaneous flag raising ceremonies in police camps across the country every Monday.

“Kung ang pulis memorized niya ‘yan and he puts it into action, or puts it into his heart, at hindi lang basta memorized yung officers’ pledge namin, he will be guided accordingly,” he said.

(If the police officer memorizes it and puts it into action and into his heart, and not just memorize the officers’ pledge, he will be guided accordingly.)

Among the 5,000 police officers who will be prioritized in the program are those who have been demoted, suspended, reprimanded, restricted, or had their privileges withheld and salaries  forfeited for facing administrative cases.

Under the new internal cleansing program, Albayalde said police officers will be divided into squads — a concept adopted from the Philippine Military Academy — to be composed of six to eight members and led by a squad leader who has a rank of at least a Staff Sergeant.

“When we were cadets, meron tayong squad leader. Kapag na-lolow morale ‘yung squad member mo, bibigyan mo ng pep talk. Parang ganyan ‘yung concept. Pag nalilihis ‘yung kanyang landas (squad member), kailangan kausapin,” he said.

(When we were cadets, we have a squad leader. When your squad member experiences low morale, you will give him a pep talk. The concept is like that. When the path of the squad member becomes amiss, you need to talk to him.)

The squad leader, not belonging to the 5,000 officers, will guide and teach the members of the squad, according to Albayalde.

“This is one way of changing the attitude. It’s more intimate. It’s more personal,” he said.

He said the program will be supervised by the internal cleansing committee chaired by PNP Deputy Chief for Operations Lt. Gen. Archie Gamboa.

Albayalde said the program will be implemented first at the National Capital Region Police Office, which has the most number of “scalawag cops” because of its population.

He said the squad concept will be continuously implemented within the PNP and will also involve other police officers who are not facing any charges. For the meantime however, the program will focus on officers with administrative cases.  (Editor: Mike U. Frialde)