By AARON B. RECUENCO
Manila, Philippines – Intense and no-nonsense training program is one of the measures to prevent the entry of scalawag policemen while the Philippine National Police (PNP) is aggressively running after those who have already entered the police service.
But PNP chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa said the training program that they want to implement is being barred by an existing law that designates the Philippine Public Safety College (PPSC) as the one in charge for training police recruits.
“That is why I have been repeatedly appealing to the Congress to give us back the control of the training for our policemen because it would be in the training that you would be able to sort out the bad eggs from good ones,” said Dela Rosa.
The official made the statement after another middle-ranking officer was involved anew in another case of kidnap-slay involving a casino junket operator last month.
It was recalled that early this year, a police colonel was also implicated in the kidnap-slay of South Korean executive Jee Ick Joo who was killed right inside the PNP headquarters at Camp Crame in Quezon City.
Both police colonels have tapped the services of several policemen in carrying out the illegal activity, police investigation had disclosed.
Aside from training program for police recruits, one of the major suppliers of officers for the PNP, the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA), is not being trained by the police.
Supt. Johnny Ormee, who is linked to casino junket operator Oscar Tan kidnap-slay, is a member of the PNPA Class 1997.
Although Dela Rosa said only a very few percentage of the 160,000-strong PNP are bad eggs, the involvement of policemen in various illegal activities is bothering.
“If you make the training very strict and hard, these potential bad eggs will leave because what they have in mind is how to be a rich one once you become a policeman,” said Dela Rosa.
“But how can you do that now if the training is not hard, is not that strict? So I really want the training to be handled by the PNP to make sure that only the best and brightest with good intentions would become policemen,” he added.
