RESHUFFLE Davao City’s San Pedro police station, shown here on Monday, July 8, 2024, is one of the 19 police units in the city whose commanders have been relieved in an unexplained major reshuffle. —BING GONZALES
DAVAO CITY — The misreporting of police blotters to sanitize Davao City’s real crime statistics was among the reasons for the reassignment of 19 police station commanders here, Police Brig. General Nicolas Torre III, director of Police Regional Office 11, said on Sunday.
Torre showed to reporters two books of police blotters that the blotter validation officer recovered from the Calinan police station shortly after he assumed office in June.
Both books of blotter, covering 2022 to 2023, appeared identical although some entries contained in the first book did not appear in the other.
Randomly skimming through the entries of one of the books, Torre read an entry on lost items last March 2, when a certain Jessica Galleros Jawa, 29, reported that her dark blue sling bag containing her wallet, debit card, and several IDs, was missing and believed to be stolen in Beep Plaza near Jollibee Calinan.
Instead of marking it as theft, the entry was reported only as a “lost item” and was marked “for recording purposes.”
“[They put there] ‘lost item,’ so that you don’t have to put that in the crime statistics pero kung binasa mo (but if you read it), it says, ‘it’s believed to be stolen inside Beep Plaza’ so, that’s theft. It’s not recorded so, peaceful pa rin ang Davao City. Dinoktor,” Torre said.
(So Davao City is still peaceful. It was misreported.)
Torre said it is important to report the crime correctly so that the police could take necessary actions about it.
“By misreporting it, or reporting it as if the crime did not happen, the police cannot put in place programs to address the problem. You can’t deploy operatives in the area because you can’t see it in the record, ” he added.
Torre noted that several entries in the book, which could have been reported as petty crimes, were only reported as “for the record,” which meant they were not included in the city’s crime statistics.
In another entry, at 12:30 a.m. also on March 2, a complainant reported how a drunk 22-year old resident of Purok 35 Lagazo Calinan district had a heated confrontation with her and had grabbed a knife in the middle of their argument, prompting her to call the police.
Although the police briefly took custody of the youth, the incident was tagged merely as “for [the] record, when it could possibly lead to more serious crimes,” Torre said.
He added that they discovered the sanitized books of blotter during their blotter validation, a standard procedure within the police force, but the police considered misreporting the blotter as a serious offense that could lead to dismissal from service as it constitutes false reporting and perjury.
“There’s a criminal case for it,” Torre said.
However, he said he would no longer pursue any further cases against the police station commanders involved.
Torre also suspended four police officers who handled the case of a 14-year-old girl who reported to the Calinan police station on July 15 that she was raped by her father.
Since the girl, who was raped on July 4, only came to the police station on July 15, the police said they could no longer conduct a “hot pursuit operation,” against her father, so the police officer asked the girl to go back home so that if the father would rape her again, the police would be ready to arrest him.
Torre said he immediately suspended the four officers involved, including the head of the women’s and children’s desk, even as he prepared charges for dereliction of duty against them.
“Davao City deserves the best service from their police force,” he added.
In its crime statistics covering January to May this year, police reported 41 rape cases in the city, a 38.81 percent decrease from the 67 rape cases reported in the same period last year.
The police regional director had earlier earned the ire of Mayor Sebastian Duterte for the reassignment of the 19 station commanders to other areas of the region, which Duterte said, would not bode well for the peace and order in the city.
Duterte also said that the police force had consistently won awards and citations as one of the best-performing police forces in the country.
Torre, however, said the police should not rest on its past laurels and should constantly strive to improve its services to the public.