At PNP, investigate the investigators

Uh-oh, looks like anti-kidnapping tsar Angelo Reyes got off on the wrong footing. A week before he is to take over as Secretary of Interior, he thought aloud about legalizing jueteng, the illegal numbers game that has corrupted police chiefs, governors and mayors. The idea is sure to raise the hackles of religious leaders and ordinary citizens weary of official inaction against vice. Not that the proposal is new. Then-Constabulary chief Fidel Ramos had broached it as far back as 1978. Ten years later the sweepstakes office sponsored small-town lotteries to grab the jueteng take, to no avail. Another ten years and police generals supported a Palace crony’s bid to replace it with a two-ball bingo, also in vain. Since then, all incoming police chiefs have promised to crush jueteng, but only managed to sound like they were sending vice lords the message to start dealing with the new kids on the block. Jueteng has since sparked a people-power revolt, brought down a President, and forced the resignation of a succession of interior secretaries, including Reyes’s predecessor. Still it thrives, partly because it has been so ingrained in community life since the ’50s, and from feeble antivice drives that ultimately end in revived overtures to just decriminalize it.

Legalizing jueteng can indeed take one big source of graft from cops and local execs. Studies had been made in America and Europe in the ’60s to remove the police from antivice operations since these only tempt them into protection rackets. Gambling, like prostitution, it was said, is a "victimless crime" precisely because it is a mere vice, the product of human frailty. But the hair-splitting was disproved when drugs, the worst vice to hit modern man, rose to threaten the internal security of even the most developed nations. Since then, the new thinking is that governments simply have to wage relentless wars against vice, lest these ruin social mores and weaken the populace into unproductive, drug-sniffing, body-selling gamblers.

Police departments started forming internal affairs sections to deal with miscreants in the ranks. Simultaneously, numerous awards and promotions were given to outstanding cops. The aim was to instill a system of reward and punishment for good work and misdeeds. The PNP formed its own Internal Affairs Service in 1999.

But then a new racket emerged. Internal-affairs investigators began to use their powers to extort from the investigated or place favorites in influential positions in the force. The New Jersey and Texas police recently were rocked by exposés of internal affairs abuses. Reyes would do well to look into similar cases in the PNP-IAS.

Word is that the five-year old watchdog has failed to curb police wrongdoings. Proof: recurrent reports of officers pocketing the allowances of patrolmen, of shoddy crime investigations and delayed police response to distress calls, perhaps even the continuing rise of communist insurgency in rural areas. The IAS has spent millions of pesos in probes, but the PNP remains one of the most reviled government agencies. It may not all be the IAS’s fault. Poor rookie recruitment and officer training also are to blame, along with a politicized hierarchy. Then again, these are ills that the IAS must cure, if only it undergoes surgery to cut off the cancer of corruption.

Papers have been sent to the Ombudsman about IAS officers divvying up what should have gone to rentals of its private office space before it relocated to Camp Crame. Reyes can review this upon taking over concurrently as chairman of the National Police Commission. One IAS bigwig reportedly hired his own son as a Napolcom aide, in violation of civil service rules against nepotism. He also has placed an in-law in a key position in the finance office. Another officer allegedly had himself listed among the officers to be promoted after the mob assault on Malacañang in May 2001, although he took no part in its defense. IAS’s audit section itself is in need of auditing to flush out anomalies in the finance office. A ranking IAS officer recently retired while decrying the strange goings-on, but was ignored by higher-ups. Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin had fired off a memo about possible misuse of occupational specialty pay for officers who take time off for added training. This, too, has been ignored. A top IAS officer is reportedly egging a congressman close to the President to have him reassigned to a lucrative post in Camp Crame. This could come about if Reyes does not move quickly.

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The government’s effort to refit buses from imported diesel to compressed natural gas from Malampaya got a major boost recently. Four bus companies have ordered CNG engines and chassis from China, a signal for Shell, Caltex and Petron to put up filling stations for the cleaner, cheaper fuel. Diesel presently sells at P19.85 a liter, and despite drops in the price of Dubai crude, it is unlikely to match the present P9.35-per-liter tag of CNG. The fuel is also rated as less polluting.

The bus bodies will be made by local fabricators. The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board will give CNG buses first crack at new routes and to take the place of 15-year-old units scheduled for phaseout. The Land Transportation Office will facilitate registration of the CNG units since the Department of Environment and Natural Resources have certified these to have less harmful emissions. The Development Bank of the Philippines will lend low-interest funds to operators to switch to CNG and build their own filling stations in garages.

This is one project that proves there’s profit in going environmental.

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