70 Malabon cops undergo surprise drug test

MANILA, Philippines—Some 70 police officers assigned to Malabon City were surprised Tuesday when they were required to undergo a urinalysis in the main station in the middle of an otherwise slow holiday morning.

The “surprise and random” drug-testing, Senior Superintendent Cornelio Barrios, chief of police, said, was in compliance with a National Capital Region Police Office initiative that seeks to keep the ranks of local and national enforcers “clean” and “healthy.”

This, Barrios said, was to primarily ensure that laws are better implemented.

“Police officers go after drug lords, pushers and users, criminals in general. They (the police) should be the first to be clean then,” Barrios told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The testing, which began at 8 a.m. and ended around 11 a.m., gathered randomly selected representatives from each of the city’s seven precincts. The number of police officers tested represented around 30 percent of the total number in the city, Barrios said.

Malabon has around 280 police officers.

The results are expected to be released by the Northern Police District’s crime laboratory next week.

“Should any of them be found to have used drugs, he may be stripped off his position, and properly investigated,” Barrios told the Inquirer.

He said that it was the first time the random drug testing was initiated at the station level in Malabon. In previous times, it was the Northern Police District itself that would direct it.

He added that there were plans to conduct more of the same in the succeeding months within the year.