Relief of entire police force
Consider it an experiment. Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 Chief Debold Sinas relieved the entire Talisay City police force effective yesterday for their failure to solve the city’s drug problem. The drastic move came days after President Rodrigo Duterte said that the majority of the policemen assigned in Talisay are involved in illegal drugs.
The Talisay City Police Office had 65 police officers, plus its chief, Supt. Marlu Conag. The 65 personnel include two deputy police chiefs, Insp. Rene Cerna and Insp. Ronaldo Logronio. Conag is still the police chief and is heading a replacement force composed of 69 personnel from a company of the Regional Mobile Force Battalion. The company commander, Chief Insp. Ardiolito Cabagnot, is now Conag’s deputy, replacing the relieved Cerna and Logronio.
There’s an old proverb that says, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Sinas’s plan has to be executed for us to know if it will be effective. Could it attain its purpose, which is to solve the problem of illegal drugs in Talisay? There’s another old phrase for that, “only time will tell.”
But starting with a clean slate is but the first step in dealing with the problem. The next and more important step would be to destroy the illegal drugs network that is in place in the city. That needs an understanding of the gravity of the problem in the area and the scope and depth of the network’s operation.
Without this understanding, the second step wouldn’t be effective. The reason why the arrests of people believed to be in the illegal drugs trade, and even the killing of drug pushers, failed to curb the illegal drugs trade is often because the existing network is largely intact. Illegal drug traders can just replace those killed and arrested with new personalities and the operation will hum again.
Sinas has made the first move, an unprecedented one considering that the relief of the entire police force has not been done before. Now all eyes would be on what happens next. The fate of the other areas similarly situated with Talisay would depend on what happens to this experiment.