Young lawyers encouraged to join PNP

With a competitive pay and rank equivalent of a military captain, young lawyers might want to consider joining the police force.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) will start going around law schools in the country to encourage young aspiring lawyers to join its legal service unit.

This is part of the PNP’s “aggressive campaign” to fill 100 vacant posts for police lawyers, according to PNP Legal Service (LS)’s acting chief of litigation division Supt. Arthur Llamas.

“We should hire more lawyers in order to  ensure that the rights of our policemen facing charges will be protected,” Llamas said in an interview on Friday.

To entice applicants, Llamas pointed out that lawyers joining the legal unit of the PNP will get the privilege of holding the Senior Inspector (military equivalent of Captain) rank upon entry.

The LS, which only has 96 lawyers to date, also gives competitive salaries and allowances for police lawyers with P48,000 as starting pay.

“Plus, there is permanency because if they join the service at the young age of 25, their retirement age is 56 so they are assured of continuous employment given that they would not face dismissal from service,” he said.

To qualify, applicants must be official members of the Philippine bar and must not be over 35 years old.

Once they get hired, the lawyers will undergo a four-month training for officers, including field training exercises.

“We would like to change their mentality from purely civilian mentality to the mentality of a uniformed personnel,” Llamas said.

“Sa field training exercises, dadaan sila sa traffic, sa investigation, etc. para ma-feel nila anong feeling na maging pulis,” he added.

Recently, PNP chief Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa said the PNP is not as “legally-equipped,” explaining that it slows down the resolution of cases, most of which involved illegal drugs./rga