By Christopher Lloyd Caliwan
MANILA – The reassignment of 65 officers of the Davao City Police Station has nothing to do with the current political situation in the country, police officials said Thursday.
In a press briefing held at Camp Crame, PNP spokesperson Brig. Gen. Jean Fajardo said these officers, who were earlier relieved for allegedly tampering of crime statistics, have been reassigned to at least four regions.
Those reassigned include 32 Police Commissioned Officers (PCOs) and 33 Police Non-Commissioned Officers (PNCOs).
The group includes officers who served as station commanders of police stations in Davao City.
Davao City is the bailiwick of Vice President Sara Duterte, who drew flak for cursing at President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez and threatening to have them assassinated should she be killed first.
“The reassignment underwent the normal process and those re-assigned involved the officers during the time of Police Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre as director of the Police Regional Office (PRO) 11. There is no politics here. It just so happened that this (re-assignment) was only implemented now,” she said.
Of the reassigned officers, 24 of them were assigned to Mimaropa (Mindoro Oriental and Occidental Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan), 21 to the Cordillera Administrative Region, 12 to Bicol and eight to Cagayan Valley.
“They were relieved and facing investigation for maintaining double blotter. It is normal for a police officer under investigation to be relieved so as not to influence the conduct of the investigation,” Fajardo said.
In July, Torre ordered the relief of the police officers after they discovered the tampering of crime statistics in the Davao region through a double blotter, which he said is illegal.
Torre, now the head of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), said the tampering of the crime statistics made it impossible for PNP strategists to properly analyze the crime situation in Davao City.
“Una bawal yun okay lang na for recording purposes meron silang redundancy. The problem is nafind out natin noon na ang isang blotter ay yun lang ang nirereport kaya lumalabas na ganito lang karami ang certain crimes tapos sa official blotter yun lang talaga ang hindi maitago. So yun ang rason na skew ang data (First, it is prohibited, although it is fine if it is for recording purposes. They have a redundancy. The problem is we found out that one blotter reports the same so it appears that there is only this number of certain crimes and then the official blotter, that cannot be hidden. That is the reason, the data was skewed),” said Torre in the same press briefing.
He said some police officials are manipulating police blotters so as not to reflect the real situation in a particular area of responsibility.
“Pinapa konti ang mga insidente (There is an underreporting of incidents) so what happens if we used skewed statistics, ang mangyayari ang ating programa ay hindi magiging (our programs will not be) responsive kung ano ang nangyayari sa (as to what is happening on the) ground at palabasin natin na ito ay (and we make it appear that this is) peaceful pero ang totoo naman pala ay may mga dapat trabahuhin pa kaya kailangan madisiplina yung ganung klaseng pulis. Ang solusyon ay (but the truth is there is a lot fo work to do, hence, the need to discipline this kind of police officers) tabletop exercises, hindi actual na solusyon na talagang nag intervene doon sa actual na problems (not an actually solution that would really intervene to solve actual problems),” he added. (PNA)
