PNP ‘immersion program’ puzzles QC village amid surge in infections

MANILA, Philippines — Despite the surge of COVID-19 cases in the city, the Quezon City Police District has asked a barangay in the city to allow policemen to conduct a 10-day “community immersion program” aimed at “developing reciprocal responsibility of the community and the police.”

But after a similarly strange request from the military in January, Zenaida Lectura, chair of Barangay UP Campus, deferred to officials of the University of the Philippines, which has jurisdiction over the barangay.

“Barangay UP Campus lies within the jurisdiction of the University of the Philippines. As such, we have to ask permission from the university administration for the conduct of activities in our barangay. In light of the ongoing talks on the UP-DILG (Department of the Interior and Local Government) accord, we cannot commit approval at this time,” Lectura said in her letter dated March 19.

The accord she cited was the 1992 agreement between UP and the DILG that barred policemen from conducting operations within UP Diliman’s campus without the knowledge and consent of university officials.

Moreover, Lectura said no similar activity was allowed within the community because of the community quarantine that was imposed after Quezon City reported the highest number of new COVID-19 cases in the country.

Over the past two weeks, Quezon City has reported more than 5,000 new cases of the deadly respiratory disease, making the city the country’s COVID-19 hot spot with total cases reaching 51,249 as of Saturday.

Lectura’s letter was in response to the March 18 letter of Lt. Col. Benjamin Ariola, the officer in charge of the Quezon City Police Community Affairs Development Division, seeking permission for the “immersion program” of seven police officers from Quezon City and the Eastern Police District from March 23 to April 2.

“This 10-day activity is geared toward developing reciprocal responsibility of the community and the police toward peace and order and nation building,” he said in a message.

Ariola did not say why they chose to conduct their activity when Quezon City was struggling to deal with many COVID-19 cases but claimed they chose UP Campus “for them to know that we are not militarizing the area and we are not Red-tagging them.”

Ariola said the 10-day community program would also be used “to showcase the good activities being conducted by the PNP (Philippine National Police) in the barangay.”

The move was ironic as the PNP in January tagged Barangay UP Campus, one of the eight barangays sitting on the 431-hectare UP Diliman campus, as a “crime hot spot,” a claim that UP officials have denied.