Internal affairs: 674 complaints only 1% of total police work force
Philippine National Police force file photo. Inquirer/Marianne Bermudez
MANILA, Philippines — The public may be “more motivated” now to file complaints against police officers for violating law enforcement rules, according to Philippine National Police Internal Affairs Service (PNP IAS) Inspector General Brigido Dulay.
He said this in a press conference at Camp Crame on Wednesday, sharing with reporters that as of April 22, 2025, there had been 674 complaints against erring police officers.
“You can also look at it this way. Are they more confident in filing complaints now? Maybe the reason it went up is people are now more motivated to file charges,” Dulay said.
For comparison, according to Dulay, there were 1,897 cases against cops for the entirety of 2023; and 2,073 cases for the whole of 2024.
`99 percent are dedicated’
“If you were to do it on the basis of the total workforce, it’s (the number of complaints) around one percent of the total workforce of the PNP. The 99 percent are actually dedicated policemen,” Dulay said. “The PNP is not defined by this one percent.”
IAS has yet to provide a detailed breakdown of the complaints’ statuses and the nature of the offenses for which they were lodged.
“In all honesty, for us at IAS, if our citizens have a complaint, they should file the complaint. If they don’t, we can’t do anything about it, unless we do a motu proprio (investigation),” Dulay stressed.
READ: Cop held for breaking into home, hurting minor
At the same press conference, the IAS announced that it had launched pre-charge investigations against four Quezon City Police District (QCPD) officers in two cases.
The first case involved a cop who broke into three homes and hurt its residents in Barangay Damayan.
READ: QCPD investigation chief, 2 more cops relieved
The other case is about a QCPD investigation chief and two more officers who allegedly freed a detainee from custody and took the detainee to a hotel to supposedly meet with her family.
