Acorda vows fight vs drugs, rogue cops

MANILA, Philippines — Newly appointed Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Benjamin Acorda Jr. said the fight against illegal drugs, insurgency, terrorism and police scalawags will be among his main concerns as the new top cop in the country.

At a press briefing yesterday, Acorda told reporters that the “usual things” being done by the police to ensure the country’s security will be emphasized under his watch.

“We reiterated our main concerns. Of course, these are anti-illegal drugs, anti-insurgency, anti-terrorism and anti-scalawags, our internal cleansing,” he said in Filipino.

Acorda added that he will be “aggressive” in the fight against illegal drugs. “With regards to the strategy, as I said to our commanders on the ground, it will be a divide and focused operation and this is already stated in our mission, vision and function,” Acorda said.

“Also, we are following the Philippine Development Plan of our country. It is stated there. So, we will support that through our administration and operation,” he said, adding the deputy chiefs for operation and administration will be “very active.”

“It is simple but it is hard, and we really need to have all hands on deck. Also, we [need] the support of the community, the media and other agencies,” the PNP chief said.

Acorda added that there is no planned revamp of the police ranks yet. “Everything will be done based on the policies and guidelines, based on merit, ability, capability and of course moral ascendancy of our officers,” he said.

No PNP data breach

The PNP database was not hacked nor breached but the sensitive information from 1.2 million police applicants or recruits was leaked due to lack of or poor cybersecurity, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Ivan John Uy said yesterday.

“It’s not a hack, it’s not a breach. There was no intrusion so to speak into any government system,” Uy told reporters in Malacañang.

“Apparently, this is an application recruitment site where you apply for a job. Since you are applying for work on that site, you are uploading your information. So you upload your NBI clearance, you upload your birth certificate, you upload your ID, you upload your TIN and all those things,” he said.

“Now, that recruitment site was exposed so what happened was all the uploaded data was seen. So there was no breach in the NBI database, no breach in BIR,” he said. Uy said he immediately wrote to the PNP about the vulnerability of its system and that the incident is currently being investigated. — Shiela Crisostomo, Helen Flores