EDITORIAL — Moonlighting SAF men

Before the scandal over dismissed mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac led to a total ban on Philippine offshore gaming operations, POGO personnel moved around like VIPs in their favored mode of transport, a spacious luxury van often painted black. The POGO employees traveled in convoys that the nation would later find out included state security forces.

On May 18 this year, the attention of the Philippine National Police was drawn to the illegal escort services following a fight involving two such security forces at the exclusive Ayala-Alabang Village in Muntinlupa. Upon investigation, it turned out that a team of the PNP’s elite Special Action Force were providing private security services to a Chinese national believed to be involved in POGOs. The SAF men were assigned in Zamboanga, but their battalion commander allowed their illegal deployment as private bodyguards, reportedly for a 50 percent cut in the escort service fee.

This is according to the investigation carried out by the PNP Internal Affairs Service, which found out that each SAF member received P40,000 a month, with P20,000 going to their battalion commander. The IAS recommended the dismissal of 11 of those implicated in the illegal scheme. This week PNP chief Gen. Rommel Marbil approved the recommendation and ordered the dismissal of the 11 led by Lt. Col. Joseph Bagsao. Three captains and two lieutenants were also among the 11.

The case is disgraceful for the SAF, long regarded as the elite unit of the PNP, and remembered for the loss of 44 members in a firefight with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front while hunting down an international terrorist in Mamasapano, Maguindanao on Jan. 25, 2015.

It would be an additional disgrace if the PNP would allow such escort services to persist. Apart from clamping down on such illegal schemes, Marbil has promised to rationalize the deployment of PNP personnel as security escorts of VIPs, pulling out many from such assignments.

All people in this country deserve police protection. VIPs are almost always wealthy enough to afford the services of private bodyguards. Why should they move around with escorts on the public payroll, with some even using government-issued motorcycles and other vehicles? Only the top five officials of the land, and only relatives of the top two deserve such special security. The dismissal of the 11 SAF members must signal the start of an earnest effort to end these security escort services.