PNP chief, Director General Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa. PNA FILE PHOTO BY AVITO C. DALAN
If he won't resign as chief of the Philippine National Police, then Director General Ronald de la Rosa must adopt as a birthday resolution a firm resolve to use his last year in the service to rid the PNP of scalawags like the ones who choked to death inside Camp Crame the Pampanga-based Korean businessman they had abducted earlier.
De la Rosa turned 55 Friday, “leaving him with exactly one more year before he retires to do some serious house cleaning,” Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto said at the weekend.
“That should be his battle plan for the next 365 days. To leave behind a PNP purged of the crooks who give the whole organization a bad name,” Recto said.
On Friday, the PNP's Anti-Kidnapping Group (PNP-AKG) took custody of Senior Police Officer3 Ricky Sta. Isabel, detailed with the Anti-Illegal Drugs Group (PNP-AIDG), who is accused of strangling to death Ji Ick-Joo whom they seized Oct. 18, 2016, from his Pampanga home.
Sta. Isabel and seven others, including two active-duty policemen, four others known as John Does, are facing charges of kidnapping for ransom with homicide.
Sta. Isabel is pinning the blame on his superior in the AIDG, Supt. Rafael Dumlao, whom Dela Rosa ordered placed under restrictive custody on Friday.
Despite his promise to get to the bottom of the case, Dela Rosa has come under fire in a case that has tainted the government's anti-drug campaign, drawn protest from the South Korean government and showed the ugly side of rogue cops misusing the PNP campaign for criminal agendas.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez called on dela Rosa to resign, but Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former PNP chief himself, said dela Rosa should be allowed to clean up the mess.
In the view of Senator Recto, if de la Rosa manages to stay in office despite mounting calls from influential personalities that he resigns, “then he should dedicate his every waking hour thereafter to disprove his critics and to show that he deserves his continued stay in his post.”
Recto said he was not joining calls for de la Rosa to quit or be fired.
”But if you are not ordered to resign from PNP, then reform the PNP,” was Recto’s message to the national police chief.
“Start with acknowledging that problems do exist. Then follow it up with an action plan on how to solved them. Don’t answer with excuses or alibis. This is not the time to be a denial king,” Recto said.
“But considering the gravity of the problem, any plan can only be a radical one. The people would immediately know if you’re applying a band-aid solution,” Recto said.
“Heads must roll. Consider a major reshuffle, too. Ignore the political patrons of officers. Your motto should be: “Bato bato sa langit, ang matanggal huwag magalit,” the minority leader said.
Recto added that the controversies the PNP is embroiled in indicate that the “problems are not PR in nature, but institutional.”
“The bad press you’re getting is due to bad cops. Thus, it can’t be solved by diversionary tactics but by taking out deeply-rooted reasons,” Recto said.
“This can be done together with modernizing the equipment of the PNP. By providing it with more logistics to improve police mobility, visibility and response time,” he said.
The national police should also exert the same efforts in running after drug addicts to other crimes as well, like robbery, Recto said.
http://interaksyon.com/article/136434/recto-to-bato-if-you-wont-resign-over-koreans-kidnap-slay-then-clean-up-the-pnp
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