Police credibility and integrity

Two weeks ago, Chief PNP Director-General Arturo Lomibao described how he would like his countrymen to remember his stint as commander of the national police organization. He said he wants to be remembered as the chief who restored dignity in the police service.

Dignity means a proper sense of pride and self-respect or the condition of being worthy of respect, esteem and honor. In referring to this, Mr. Lomibao was in fact addressing the policeman in the street, not the public. To his credit, he has done much to help make the policeman perform his tasks efficiently by directing the construction of what he described as “world-class” police stations in many key towns and cities, slowly shoring the old sorry image of a decrepit police station to a picture of a snappy organization.

The dignity that Mr. Lomibao speaks of, therefore, is about the policeman taking pride in his uniform and in his career.

Alas, in the public’s jaded view, the dignity of a policeman can only be equated with his/her dedication to duty and readiness to serve his/her life to maintain peace and order in a community, and honor.

In turn, dedication to duty of a policeman is viewed in his capability and capacity to enforce what is legal and to command respect for his legal authority. Given this premise, how does one regard the dignity of the police profession in Pangasinan?

Let’s take the case of jueteng, a contentious issue but which directly influences the character of the police owing to the corrupting nature of jueteng as an illegal numbers game. The buzzword on the street is: there can be no jueteng if the cop chief and the mayor are not on the take!

And curiously, the provincial police command, under Pangasinan police chief Sr. Supt. Alan Purisima, that had boasted of a “jueteng-free” province last year has curiously chosen to ignore calls to stop the resurgence of jueteng in the province this time around. He has refused to apply the vaunted “One-strike policy” of Mr. Lomibao.

Hence, if one were to analyze the circumstances surrounding the resurgence of jueteng and the present seeming passivity of the police, and the not too recent complete stoppage of jueteng in the province, one is tempted to conclude that the police are actually taking orders from jueteng operators.

In sum, there was no jueteng in Pangasinan, not because the police chief acted on his orders but because the jueteng operators unilaterally agreed to cease operations and vanish momentarily. Today, we see jueteng operating with impunity and our view is the police chiefs have been told by the jueteng operators to get out the way. And apparently, they did just that.

For the dedicated policeman who has sworn to do his duty but is ordered to go slow on the jueteng operators knows he cannot take pride in his chosen profession that has been consumed by corruption. There can be no dignity where there is no honor.

Given this, Mr. Lomibao should already consider setting another legacy for himself but restoring the dignity in the police profession will remain in the public’s wish list.

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