By MARTIN A. SADONGDONG
At least 1,176 cops believed to be involved in various illegal activities are being monitored by the Philippine National Police (PNP).
PNP chief Director General Oscar Albayalde said yesterday the suspected rogue cops are on the watch list of the Directorate for Intelligence (DI) and now under strict monitoring of the PNP Counter Intelligence Task Force (CITF).
“These [cops] are really armed, these are considered armed and dangerous especially kung gumagawa ng illegal activities,” Albayalde said.
Ahead of the scheduled command conference with President Duterte tomorrow, Albayalde said the internal cleansing will be “quick and relentless” so as to adhere to the Commander-in-Chief’s recent remarks that the PNP needs re-organization by year-end. Among the topics expected to be discussed by the President and Albayalde are the PNP re-organization and the country’s peace and order.
“We will do it as fast as we can. We’ll do this and we will be relentless, ‘yun ang pinapangako natin,” he said.
The CITF was created and operationalized on Feb. 3, 2017 to run after cops who are suspected to be involved in illegal activities including illegal drugs, extortion, kidnapping, and carnapping among other cases.
Data showed that from Feb. 3, 2017 to June 4, 2018, the CITF has arrested 72 PNP personnel, one Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) agent, and 170 civilians in entrapment operations.
Two more cops were nabbed after the CITF tipped their respective police units of their illegal activities.
Meanwhile, 69 PNP personnel were charged by CITF with criminal complaints through regular filing, 10 more were charged after their criminal cases were referred to police units and 38 others were subjected to PNP’s Internal Affairs Service (IAS) for their respective administrative cases.
In total, from the start of the Duterte administration in 2016 to April 18, 2018, the PNP has filed administrative charges against 8,526 policemen, 1,383 of them resulted in their dismissal.