Napolcom reinstates dismissed cops
THE NATIONAL Police Commission (Napolcom), the governing body of the Philippine National Police, is useless junk (sorry for the redundancy) and should be abolished.
The collegial body has not improved the discipline of policemen or passed resolutions to make the PNP at par with police organizations in other parts of Asia, such as Hong Kong or Singapore.
Its present chair, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, is not up to the job unlike his predecessor, the late Jesse Robredo.
(The secretary of interior and local government automatically assumes the chairmanship of the Napolcom. The DILG secretary, per se has no power over the PNP; he/she runs the PNP through the Napolcom.)
Complaints against policemen are handled by Napolcom, as well as other agencies.
Robredo personally attended to complaints against erring cops and was very accessible to the public, as Roxas is unapproachable.
My public service program, “Isumbong Mo kay Tulfo,” tried to reach Roxas to discuss with him the backlog of administrative cases against policemen referred to the Napolcom by “Isumbong.”
Roxas sent his subordinates to talk with me and my staff and nothing came out of our dialogue with them.
The interior secretary has been too busy attending to other matters—major and trivial like quarrelling with dismissed PNP chief Alan Purisima—to pay attention to abusive and corrupt policemen.
The worse mistake Napolcom has done apart from sitting on complaints against erring policemen is reinstating dismissed policemen.
This columnist, as well as PNP officials I’ve talked with, is surprised at the rate Napolcom has been reinstating dismissed cops.
I don’t have proof but I heard rumors that some dismissed cops paid certain people at the Napolcom so they can taken back into the force.
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“Why haven’t P-Noy and Mar Roxas addressed the corruption at Napolcom?” asked Rick Ramos, a fellow columnist and a strong advocate of good government.
Why indeed?
Because Roxas depends on Ed Escueta, Napolcom’s vice chair and executive officer, whose only purpose, it seems, is to be a rah-rah boy of whoever is the chair.
People are also saying —and we hope the story isn’t true—that his house and garage big enough for six cars sit on two lots, and when he is at Napolcom, four high-end cars, including a Toyota Prado, are in his garage.
Like Roxas, Escueta tries to avoid interviews or dialogues with journalists.
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One of the issues against Roxas, who is running for President in 2016, is the high crime rate and undisciplined policemen manning the force.
If he was not able tot stop the rising criminality and reform the PNP as secretary of interior, how can he institute reforms in the government when he becomes President?
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The only way to reform a corrupt government and stem the surging current of lawlessness is by undertaking a drastic solution: declare a revolutionary government as proposed by Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte, a possible presidential candidate.
Ferdinand Marcos declared a revolutionary government which he called martial law. So did Cory Aquino in the early days of her administration.
What was wrong with Marcos is that he and his wife, Imelda, became corrupt with absolute power, while Cory was a weak leader.
I was a journalist when Marcos declared martial law and during the martial law years.
I witnessed the change in Philippine society in the first two years of martial rule.
After that, the country slid back to its corrupt ways because Ferdinand and Imelda became drunk with power.
Cory, on the other hand, was something else. She didn’t know how to rule and this made some critics call her TLA or talagang walang alam (totally uninformed).
