The past week saw an Inquirer headline: “TOP PNP EXECS SUSPENDED AMID POGO ‘EXTORT’ CLAIM.”
Two police generals, NCRPO chief Police Maj. Gen. Sidney Hernia and PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG) chief Maj. Gen. Ronnie Francis Cariaga, were being investigated for charges made against them that four Chinese nationals were coerced “to pay P1 million each for a supposedly well-connected lawyer.” This was in connection with the raid they conducted on “the suspected scam hub at Century Peak Tower in Ermita, Manila, last Oct. 29, rounding up 69 foreigners – 34 Indonesian, 10 Malaysian, and 25 Chinese nationals.”
Whether fact or fiction, the PNP is again in the limelight, as their operations apparently showed the “tampering of the closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera by PNP officers during the raid.”
Law enforcement agents are expected by the people to be government agents of integrity and beyond reproach. Upholding the Rule of Law is in fact the duty of every government employee, and much more so of public officials, mandated to enforce the law, and that includes prosecutors and judges.
Culture To Kill
Why the suspicion, and actual filing of extortion charges, on the two police generals who led the raid?
This occurred at a time when the House Quad Committee has been conducting its own investigation on the POGOs, EJKs, and other public order issues. Note that the investigation somehow points almost daily on the involvement of the current civilian Rodrigo Roa Duterte when he was the country’s chief executive. People cannot help but somehow connect this police misadventure to the former president’s culture of “kill kill kill” when he was the most powerful public official of the land. And they remember that among his first official directives was to double the salaries of all police personnel, making sure, in effect, of their canine loyalty to strictly follow his orders, legal or illegal.
That people will simply shake their heads with the news of the alleged irresponsible violation of the PNP generals’ mandate to enforce the law is quite understandable.
Biggest Crime Group
They are aware that, in the course of the ongoing House Quad committee hearing, their own fellow police officer Lt. Col. Jovie Espenido named the PNP as “the biggest crime group” in the country, given especially its record of inability to stop the drug problem for the past eight years. This is not to mention the record of ongoing human rights violations until today, as often noted by the Human Rights Watchdog, KARAPATAN, under the red-tagging accusations promoted by the notorious NTF-ELCAC against activists and critics of the government’s anti-people plans and programs.
The people are asking, “When will the PNP completely erase its tarnished reputation of being “law breakers,” and truly prove itself the “law enforcers”?
When, indeed, will the people feel safe and genuinely cherish and enjoy the omni-presence of the PNP as “the Protector of the People”?
Incidentally, is there some chance the current Bongbong Marcos--Sara Duterte top leadership tandem able in one way or another tone down or overhaul the “culture of death” of VP Sara’s father into some degree of “culture of justice and humaneness” in our Philippine society?
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