"Police General Guillermo Eleazar now faces the difficult challenge of restoring the credibility of the police force."
"Police General Guillermo Eleazar now faces the difficult challenge of restoring the credibility of the police force."
You won't miss it. The motto of the Philippine National Police —"To Serve and Protect"—is painted in big, bold letters right near the gate of its main headquarters along EDSA in Quezon City.
That motto is supposed to communicate to the public that the responsibility of the police force is to keep them safe and protect them from harm. It also serves to remind its members that they have been issued a gun and a badge precisely to enforce the law and maintain peace and order in our communities.
But how many deviations from the norm have been committed by some members of the police force, who have been meted disciplinary action ranging from reprimand to suspension to dismissal for violations of rules to abuses and outright criminal activities?
One too many, from where we sit.
To be fair, we believe the majority of the men and women in police uniform are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities.
We must emphasize, however, that the entire institution should really work hard to earn the trust and confidence of the public.
Police General Guillermo Eleazar now faces the difficult challenge of restoring the credibility of the police force, particularly in light of what appears to be excesses in the conduct of the bloody war on illegal drugs launched by the Duterte administration in mid -2016 and continues to this day.
The PNP acknowledges that the anti-drug campaign has already led to the killing of more than 6,000 drug suspects in the past five years, with police operatives claiming that the fatalities all fought back ("nanlaban") when cornered and ordered to surrender.
Human rights groups here and abroad believe, however, that the actual number of deaths in the war on drugs to be as much as four to five times higher. The PNP says these alleged extrajudicial killings or EJKs are "deaths under investigation," but we have yet to read any news report that their probes have yielded positive results and led to the prosecution of the perpetrators.
We take note of the recent statement of the top cop that he would look into the constant refrain of police operatives that those killed in the anti-drug war really fought back.
This is a positive development that bears watching.
After all, the Supreme Court, if we recall right, ordered the PNP to furnish it with the results of its supposed probe of unsolved cases in the war on drugs, particularly those believed to be the handiwork of riding-in-tandem assassins.
Not surprisingly, the PNP submitted a list that said all those killed had really fought back.
This makes the police chief's recent pronouncement that he would hasten the acquisition of body cameras one of his priorities during his brief stint at the helm of the PNP—he bows out of the uniformed service upon his mandatory retirement in November—a most welcome one.
The body cams will come in handy when conducting so-called "buy-bust" operations—the very same instances where the "nanlaban" narrative is usually invoked—but only if the wearers do not conveniently forget to activate them.
The body cams will also reveal if police conduct themselves according to the rules when serving search and/or arrest warrants.
And the same body cams could very well show whether the police actually find firearms and explosives during operations against those Red-tagged or suspected of being members of the Left underground, that is, if, again, they conveniently forget to turn on their body cams.
It appears, however, that the PNP has only 3,000 body cameras at present. Given the PNP's total manpower of 150,000, that's a very small number of body cams for transparent law enforcement. We understand that there are plans to acquire 30,000 more. When, we don't know.
We expect results from the general in his declared campaign to intensify internal cleansing and to punish cops who violate rules and regulations or are engaged in criminal activities themselves.
We've seen television footage of the general dressing down cops who've been accused of wrongdoing. We would like to think he is sincere in protecting the reputation of the institution and really wants to boot out dirty cops.
While at this, we definitely see as a welcome development the apology by the head of the PNP Human Rights Affairs Office for what was perceived as profiling and Red-tagging of organizers of community pantries by police personnel. Earlier, the Quezon City Police District issued a similar apology for sharing a social media post which linked community pantries to the rebel movement. If this is reflective of a change in attitude by police officials toward criticism, then it should be encouraged among other units.
When Eleazar was still the top cop in Quezon City a few years back, we had him as our guest at our Saturday News Forum @Annabel's several times to give us updates on the peace and order situation in his area of jurisdiction. He impressed the media with his grasp of the situation on the ground and his insistence that cops should take their responsibilities seriously and go by the book. After all that's been said and done, it all boils down to one thing: for the police to serve and protect the citizenry at all times.