Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa defended his decision to send policemen involved in illegal drugs to the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao or (ARMM).
In an interview, Dela Rosa said that sending police scalawags to that region will have an immediate impact to their lives.
“For us that’s the present system that we have. That’s the immediate action that can have an immediate impact to the lives of policemen who are part of syndicates,” Dela Rosa said.
“Yes, there’s a positive development. A number of them have gone AWOL (Absence Without Official Leave) and left the service. So administratively, we no longer have a problem with them. We also don’t have to conduct any trial and hearings on their administrative cases because they are already AWOL. They can be dismissed from the service, that’s the immediate act,” he added.
Dela Rosa, at the same time, said that as far as he is concerned, there are about 3,000 police scalawags in the police service.
“We are about 165,000. Maybe its about two percent, there are about 3,000 of them (scalawags),” Dela Rosa said.
Meanwhile, the police regional director of the ARMM, Chief Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac, sees nothing wrong with the deployment of scalawags policemen from Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon to Mindanao.
In fact, Sindac is optimistic that the deployment would be a golden opportunity for the erring policemen to reform and become better and ideal cops.
“This approach will give them another chance that will either redeem or end their careers in the region,” said Sindac. (Aaron Recuenco, Francis Wakefield)