Angara calls for hiring of more policemen

Senator Juan Edgardo Angara. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines –To fight the crime surge, the government should put “more boots on the ground” by hiring 50,000 more policemen, Senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara said on Friday.

The move, Angara said, would both raise the national police strength to 200,000 and the cop-to-population ratio to the ideal one per 500.

“With a current population of 100 million, the country needs about 200,000 policemen, but the authorized ‘uniformed personnel ceiling’ of the Philippine National Police (PNP) is only around 151,410,”  he said in a statement.

“Filling all of these, plus adding more should be part of the ‘last two years’ agenda of the Aquino administration,” the senator said.

Angara said President Benigno Aquino III should announce a massive policemen recruitment program in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) in July.

“It will send a comforting message to the nation that more men are being suited up to roll back crime,” he said.

Last year, the senator said 1,033,833 crimes were reported to the police but said it could just be a fraction of the total  “as more victims, skeptic perhaps that the culprits will not be caught, opt not to report to the police what they had experienced.”

“Understated the data may be, it still paints a scary picture: One is murdered every hour, a robbery is committed every 10 minutes, someone is raped every 72 minutes, a theft is happening every three and half minutes,” Angara pointed out.

He said Aquino’s Sona announcement can be followed through with a funding request in the 2015 national budget for the hiring of the initial batch of rookies.

Angara is proposing that the first batch of 25,000 policemen should be hired in 2015 and the same number in 2016.

The initial cost of hiring 25,000 new cops, he said, would cost the government about P5 billion.

“Of course, there is the question of funding. We can then downscale the quota and stretch the recruitment period. What is important is to assuage the people that more cops are coming,” said the senator.

Angara noted that the “first year price tag” of P5 billion was almost equivalent to the P4.8 billion of the scrapped PDAF of senators. PDAF is Priority Development Assistance Funds also known as “pork barrel” funds.

“It is one-fifth of what could have been the entire pork of both houses of Congress,” he said.

“If we are looking for a project to which we can re-channel the scuttled PDAF funds, then what could be more worthy than hiring more policemen to keep our communities and children safe?”

Angara pointed out that the one policeman for every 500 population ratio was not an “option but a mandate” of law, Republic Act 6975, the 1989 law creating the Department of Interior and Local Government.

But a quarter of a century since the law was passed, the policeman-to-population ratio, which on paper currently stands at one per 675, has never been achieved, said the senator.

“In contrast, our Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) neighbors are fielding more policemen. Thailand has one for every 304 persons; Indonesia, one per 428; Malaysia, one per 267,” he said.

Angara said the present Philippine ratio of one policeman to 675 population did not translate to the actual number of cops on duty at any given time.

“Cops work in shifts. There are those who call in sick, on leave, in training, or are suspended. Thousands are assigned to headquarters duty or support services. So the actual number of policemen in precinct duty, or on patrol, who can respond to a distress call is probably a third of the total force, and that is already a very optimistic estimate,” he said.

In addition to hiring more policemen, Angara said the PNP can maximize its force by “unshackling police officers from their desks, and handing over administrative duties to non-uniformed personnel (NUP).”

Angara said the PNP is hiring 13,000 NUPs this year to free police officers who should be pounding beats instead of doing paper work.

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