972 relieved Caloocan cops ready for deployment after retraining

Caloocan City policemen attend a graduation ceremony at Camp Crame, Quezon City, after completing a retraining program. Not all of them, however, will be redeployed back to the city. —NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

A total of 972 Caloocan policemen passed while 104 others failed the retraining program required by the National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO) after the high profile killings of young drug suspects in the city this year.

A graduation ceremony was held on Monday at the Philippine National Police headquarters where NCRPO chief, Director Oscar Albayalde, said that he would not hesitate to order another retraining for policemen who fail in their sworn duty to protect the public.

“If we see breach of discipline, we will not hesitate to re-train. This is part of our retraining program. All policemen can undergo this,” Albayalde added.

The retraining program consisted of different modules that included lectures, exams and physical agility tests, he said.

Among the 1,076 Caloocan police who underwent retraining, 104 failed and will undergo the process again.

Some 40 policemen failed because they did not submit themselves to a drug test while two others went Awol (absent without official leave).

Albayalde said a committee led by the PNP Deputy Regional Director for Administration (DRDA) would continue to conduct a validation and evaluation of all those who completed the retraining. The DRDA would determine where the policemen would be assigned next.

According to him, not all of them will return to Caloocan.

In September, Albayalde ordered the relief of the entire Caloocan police force, except for two officials, following the killings of alleged teen drug suspects Kian delos Santos and Carl Angelo Arnaiz, in addition to an illegal raid on a house in the city.

“We cannot say that there was a series of killings [in Caloocan]. What we tried to avoid [by making the Caloocan police undergo retraining] was for this to become [part of their] culture. We saw that this might be running deep in their stations and one way to stop this [was] to relieve them and make them undergo retraining,” Albayalde said.

President Duterte’s war against illegal drugs has turned bloody, with the PNP admitting to killing over 2,000 suspects who supposedly resisted arrest.