PNP chief: Police officers should be out in the streets, not offices

CALAPAN CITY, Oriental Mindoro – Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Director General Ricardo C. Marquez recently vowed to enhance police visibility not only in Oriental Mindoro but nationwide and bared that a minimal number of police officers will be assigned in police stations with the rest out on street patrol beats.

“We will knock on the door of the complainants instead of them going to the police station. We will engage the community to serve them better,” Marquez said during the awarding rites of best policemen and police stations in the observance of 114th Police Service Anniversary held at the regional PNP headquarters in Calapan City last Monday.

Marquez said he will order all station commanders to remove all television sets and air conditioning units inside the police stations as he believes that these are factors that contribute to laziness and negligence to their jobs of most on-duty personnel.

“Most of the time, police officers do nothing productive inside police stations,” Marquez openly said before a formation of policemen from MIMAROPA (Mindoro Oriental, Mindoro Occidental, Marinduque, Romblon, Palawan) at the Police Regional Office-4B grandstand in Camp Efigenio Navarro, Barangay Suqui, Calapan City.

Marquez said the move is parallel to his plans to improve the image of the police as he pledged to weed out scalawags in uniform from their ranks.

He urged the public and the media to report to him abusive policemen and those who are involved in crimes, especially illegal drugs.

He said he will dispatch special teams to track down and identify policemen who are in cahoots with drug pushers and users.

“It has come to my attention that there are policemen acting as protectors of illegal drugs business and take this as a warning: We will spare no one in our campaign to cleanse the police organization of bad eggs,” Marquez said.

The PNP chief said he will instill discipline and make his men accessible to the public by patrolling the streets.

Marquez arrived in Mindoro one day before the PNP event and made rounds to some municipal police stations and called a command conference with PRO-4B Regional Director Chief Superintendent Dennis J. Pena together with Senior Supt. Marcelo C. Morales, deputy regional director for operations and his key officers and respective PNP provincial directors of MIMAROPA.