By AARON RECUENCO
On the night of Sept. 2 this year, Police Patrolman Leo Valdez was arrested for selling a sachet of shabu to a police poseur-buyer in Muntinlupa City.
The arrest came just days Valdez was caught on surveillance videos engaging in a shabu session with friends.
Valdez faces dismissal, but it turned out that it won’t be the first time. A background check showed that Valdez was kicked out of the service over a drug case in 2014, but was reinstated in 2017.
His reinstatement exposes a failed disciplinary mechanism in the PNP that allows the reinstatement of rogue cops.
The 190,000-strong PNP is replete with stories about anomalies in the reinstatement of policemen. The PNP is also replete with stories of policemen going on Absent Without Official Leave for several years to work abroad before returning to the country and become cops again.
Going on AWOL, conviction on criminal charges, and guilty verdict on serious administrative charges are among the grounds for dismissal in the police service.
Dismissal orders are usually being meted by the PNP via the regional directors and the chief PNP, the People’s Law Enforcement Board, and the Ombudsman.
But while the chief PNP and regional directors have the power to dismiss erring policemen, they also have the power to reinstate those who have already been kicked out of the police service.
This is where the problem of “padrino” (benefactor) system comes.
Sources said that influential people and groups would usually lobby for the reinstatement of dismissed cops mostly on the level of the regional directors.
In December last year for instance, a woman, identified as Diane Mae Navarez, was arrested in Paranaque City for cashing in at least P80,000 from a policeman who wanted to be reinstated. She was namedropping a ranking police officer who denied Navarez’s claim and was furious that his name was being used for illegal money-making activities.
During the Senate investigation on the issue of “ninja” cops or policemen involved in the reselling of illegal drugs seized in anti-drug operations, retired Police Brig. Gen. Rudy Lacadin lamented that narco-cops are emboldened in their illegal activities because of what appears to be a system failure in the reinstatement process.
“I conducted a background review of dismissed police personnel and I found that dismissed police personnel, because of drug cases, were reinstated back in the police service through the National Police Commission,” Lacadin told the Senate probe.
Anomalies in the reinstatement of erring cops are common knowledge in the PNP. For a price, or depending on who the padrinos are, dismissed cops could easily go back to the organization.
Early this month, then Metro Manila police chief Police Major Gen. Guillermo Eleazar tried to address the problem of anomalous reinstatement of scalawag cops, particularly those dismissed on drug charges.
The problem, however, is that the National Capital Region Police Office, like the rest of police regional offices and even the national headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City, have poor data banking system on the records of erring cops.
In most cases, ranking police officers would only know of the misdeeds of policemen in the past if they are arrested again for another case of illegal activities, like in the case of Valdez.
Eleazar said that what he had in mind then is to come up with a quick computer system reference so that the NCRPO director would be alerted on whether or not dismissed scalawag policemen deserve a second chance.
But he said he is particular of policemen who were dismissed from the service due to drug-related cases, as his goal is to bar all of them from being reinstated.
“Those who were dismissed before due to illegal drugs involvement should not be given a second chance. They are a disgrace to our organization. That is why we want to initiate move to bar them from being reinstated,” said Eleazar.
