Squatter cops

For a nation beset with peace and order problems, we don’t know how to take care of those in charge of keeping the public safe.

Despite all the nationalistic bombast, we refuse to invest in a credible armed force, thinking that Uncle Sam will always be there to help anyway, with or without bases in the Philippines. And we expect soldiers and cops to constantly put their lives on the line for wages that are barely above the daily minimum.

A recent report said 60 percent of cops live below the poverty line, with many of them living in slums, and 38 percent do not have service firearms.

Those figures are not exaggerations. The situation was already bad when I was a crime reporter in the city of Manila ages ago. Back then it was not unusual to hear police investigators asking crime victims to buy bond paper and carbon paper for the preparation of investigation reports on ancient typewriters. Many cops did not own cars, and there was an acute lack of patrol cars and motorcycles. When responding to a crime alert, investigators often rushed to the crime scene by hitching a ride with journalists. Lunch at the police canteen was for people straddling the poverty line: fried Ma Ling luncheon meat was sold at P1 per slice.

Crime solution was faster when a victim or his relatives could bankroll the pursuit of suspects. This included forking out money for investigators’ gasoline, meals and, if the suspects had left Metro Manila, airfare and hotel accommodations for the cops.

Back then there was already a shortage of firearms and ammunition. Too poor to afford extra bullets for target practice, even many ranking police officers could not shoot straight. They were called "farmers" because in the rare times that they managed to test their marksmanship, the bullets kept raking the ground.

It is disheartening to learn that such problems persist. Earlier this month Deputy Director General Avelino Razon of the Philippine National Police said up to 60 percent of PNP personnel live below the poverty line.

Another report prepared by the Department of the Interior and Local Government, which has jurisdiction over the national police, said 38.5 percent of 115,000 PNP personnel have no service firearms.

Effective law enforcement is simply not possible on an empty stomach – and an empty holster.

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There is always great reluctance to give the PNP – and the Armed Forces of the Philippines – a bigger budget. This is due largely to lingering public distrust of police and military personnel. Perceptions of corruption and human rights violations in the AFP and PNP, carried over from the martial law years, have always deterred efforts to allocate more public funds for law enforcement and national defense. It has not helped that corruption and human rights violations continue to plague the military and police.

Tell Filipinos that they don’t know how to take care of their police force, and the typical response will be, well, cops know how to take care of themselves.

Dealing with the problem then becomes a chicken-and-egg thing: do we wait for cops and soldiers to clean up their act first before we give them a bigger slice of the budget pie, or do we give them the resources they need to improve their capabilities and discourage corruption?

Those with the power of the purse must give this careful thought.

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The problems besetting the PNP breed criminality. An impoverished cop is vulnerable to corruption – by motorists trying to avoid a traffic citation ticket, by gambling lords and even drug dealers. For the right price, a cop will allow notorious drug traffickers to escape even from a maximum-security facility.

An impoverished cop has no respect for his uniform and often lacks the guts to enforce the law when the lawbreaker is an influential person or a relative or friend of those in power.

An impoverished cop is easily recruited into a political kingpin’s private army, ready to harass a warlord’s political opponents and even kidnap and murder for the boss. Philippine politicians, experts in the art of patronage, know how to take care of their police security escorts, giving the cops guns, cars, allowances and decent housing.

This situation may be an economic boon for cops. Unless we put an end to this setup, however, we will never create a professional police force that will stay neutral during elections.

Apart from being vulnerable to corruption and political influence, the crime-fighting equipment of the PNP is often no match for the resources of organized criminal syndicates. Kidnappers, carjackers, drug dealers and smugglers outgun the typical cop, and often have more sophisticated communications equipment, better vehicles and more fuel.

The situation is so bad that police officers have openly admitted accepting "contributions" from jueteng lords to finance law enforcement operations. Razon has said that the PNP lacks 21,204 firearms, 14,700 vehicles, 48 patrol boats and 32 aircraft. Bet you didn’t even know the PNP uses boats and planes.

Of course no one has admitted accepting "donations" from gambling lords to augment a cop’s meager monthly paycheck.

The lack of funds also contributes to short cuts to law enforcement including extrajudicial killings. How? Cops get little or no support from the PNP in testifying in the prosecution of criminal cases. To avoid repeated court appearances in trials that could even lead to the acquittal of the accused on a technicality, some cops find it more convenient to just simply kill a suspect.

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The lack of funds of course bedevils the entire bureaucracy. Cops are not the only ones whose pay is barely above the minimum wage. Abysmal pay continues to drive away public school teachers and government health workers to better paying jobs overseas. Firefighters even in the country’s most prosperous cities cannot do their job properly.

Does the chicken come first before the egg? The corrupt and incompetent can be weeded out as pay scales are improved. If we want to create a professional, incorruptible and efficient bureaucracy, we must give civil servants decent pay.

Given the government’s financial constraints, this can only be accomplished slowly, but it must be done.