"What was this officer thinking?"
"What was this officer thinking?"
A few weeks ago, a police major who was a Chief of Police in one municipality in the Visayas was fired and charges filed against him for reportedly engaging in sexual relations with a female detainee. It seems that he allowed the female detainee to sleep in his air conditioned office in exchange for the service. I remember some of these happening when I was new in the service but this is now 2020. One would think that this is no longer happening but it is embarrassing for me to learn that it is still happening.
What was this officer thinking?
Maybe he was thinking that it is part of the fringe benefits of being in the service. Even if there is no written specific regulation saying that it is prohibited to sleep with a female detainee, surely, he must have known that it was wrong to do it. Unfortunately, I dare say that this is not an isolated case but one of the many shocking incidents that one can still find in the service.
It was absolutely right for General Archie Gamboa to have dismissed the officer and filed charges against him. Even with all the reforms being undertaken by various Chiefs of the Philippine National Police, one that has never been done as far as I know is the development and publication of a sort of a police handbook that contains everything that a police personnel, be it an officer or enlisted, is expected to know, follow and take to heart from the day he or she is inducted into the service until the day that person retires.
In a way, it is something of a bible in the service that police personnel must know everything and memorize. This can also help in the development of traditions of the service which as everybody knows takes decades to develop. This police handbook if there is one can also make police administration a lot easier.
At present, what is being practiced at least by officers are the customs and traditions of the Philippine Military Academy by PMA graduates and Philippine National Police Academy traditions by PNPA graduates. There is none for the enlisted personnel because it would depend where that individual was recruited as customs vary from region to region. There is no single book to follow.
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The administration is currently confronting several issues. The most serious is the local transmission of COVID-19 which has put the other problems like the effects of the Rice Tariffication Law, the African swine fever, the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States, and the ill effects of the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators at the back burner. This is because the COVID-19 problem is a global health emergency and needs all the attention and resources of the government.
As of press time Wednesday, there are already 49 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections in the country, mostly in and around the Metro Manila area. For a while, we were all wishing that the country could escape the local spread of the dreaded disease and perhaps get away unscathed but this was wishful thinking right from the very beginning. We have to remember that China only reported the virus to the world sometime in January even if the virus was already known to them earlier. There must have been an inkling of the virus as early as late November or December last year yet they remained quiet.
We also only enforced the travel ban in February which might have been late already. By that time, there were already hundreds of trips between China and the Philippines which could only mean that there must have been some infected people already going around the country much earlier. It is a wonder that local transmission was only detected a few days ago. It is therefore very unlikely that the number of infections will stay at 49 very long. Because the infections are centered in and around the metro area, this has prompted some people to suggest to lockdown the Metro area to try to contain the spread of the virus. I do not know if this is at all possible or whether a lockdown can in fact stop the spread. The economic effect might also be too prohibitive and not advisable. Perhaps some localized lockdowns could be implemented but not the entire National Capital Region. Right now, the local government units appear to be capable of handling the situation in their respective localities. They are aggressive and are responding promptly. They know the local conditions more and since a lot of the effort has to do with tracking people, the LGUs should lead the effort in close coordination with the national government.
It is important that this coordination is maintained throughout the fight to contain the virus. What is shocking though is that the country has only more than two thousand testing kits at the moment. If the spread of the virus will spike like South Korea and Italy, then that number will be totally inadequate. What were those planners in the Department of Health thinking? That two or three thousand testing kits will be enough for a country of more than 100 million people? So far, the DOH has done a good job of tracking people but that is because the number is not yet so many. We are all hoping that it stays that way, but we have to be realistic and plan for a worst case scenario. Let us also hope that the medical infrastructure of the country will be good enough to provide us all with the needed help when the time comes.
