PNP acting chief wants regional directors to be two-star generals

MANILA, Philippines — Chiefs of Philippine National Police (PNP) regional offices may soon be required to have a two-star rank, if Lt. Gen. Archie Gamboa, PNP officer-in-charge (OIC), will have his way.

In a press briefing at Camp Crame in Quezon City on Monday, Gamboa said that as OIC, he also wants to sit as an ex-officio member of the National Police Commission (Napolcom), a post given to a PNP chief.

He explained that he wants this position so he can help raise policies that require priority attention of Napolcom, including empowering the Internal Affairs Service, the PNP unit that investigates cases of alleged errant police officers.

“Another is ‘yung… (the) two-star general [requirement] for all regional directors. I also want to pursue that, and I can only pursue that intelligently and with a debate if I will be invited and sit down at the commission,” he said.

Under PNP rules, all regional directors must have a rank of brigadier general or a one-star rank. This excludes the director of the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), who should be a major general – a two-star rank – since Metro Manila has a denser population and has around 27,000 police personnel which is significantly higher than in other regions.

Since he is not an ex-officio member of Napolcom, Gamboa is also not involved in the ongoing investigation on then PNP chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde in the alleged drug recycling in Pampanga in 2013, when the latter was its provincial police director.

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When he was PNP chief, Albayalde sat in Napolcom, which supervises the police force, together with four other commissioners and Interior Secretary Eduardo Año, who serves as ex-officio chairman.

But Gamboa, one of the candidates for the next PNP chief, clarified he does not want to be appointed at Napolcom to be part of the probe on Albayalde. /kga