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Saturday, October 02, 2004
Editorials: ‘Shooting straight’ obsession
The way Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña has been flogging without letup policemen who could not shoot straight one gets the impression he is obsessed in this but one aspect of police work.
Now, he is no longer alone after Police Regional Office 7 Director Rolando Garcia joined him in his “crusade” to rid the Cebu City Police Office of the 117 policemen who failed in the firearms proficiency test.
But while shooting straight is one of the needed abilities policemen should possess, there is something that seems askew in the weakness-punishment ratio and in the assignment of blame by the two officials.
While law enforcers do need to be proficient in firearms, putting that ability on top of other needed police skills is wrong. Cebu City is not a combat zone where armed encounters against criminal elements happen often.
Indeed, it would be interesting to find out what the bulk of work Cebu City policemen are doing at present and range it against this shooting straight obsession.
The point is, the 117 policemen that have become targets of this obsession definitely have skills in other aspects of police work that those who passed the firearms proficiency test may be deficient of.
The mark of a good executive is in his or her being able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of his or her people, to maximize the strengths and plug the weaknesses and finally to pinpoint the reasons for the weaknesses and address these.
Which brings us to the next point, which is getting to the root of the problem.
Garcia already gave it away when he admitted that the Philippine National Police does not have a budget for firing practice. But he deflected that by egging on the lowly policemen who are suffering from low pay to do the spending for it.
If the police can’t allocate money for firing practice, how can the organization expect all of the thousands of policemen throughout the country to end up as marksmen?
Which means that the shooting straight obsession is just a way of making the “victims” of the police organization’s inadequacy a scapegoat.
CHEERS. . .
…To the operatives who arrested in Hong Kong the alleged financier of the shabu laboratory that was raided recently in Umapad, Mandaue City.
While one is prompted to point out again that no local law enforcer participated in the operation to arrest Calvin de Jesus Tan, still it was a major breakthrough in solving the case.
(October 2, 2004 issue)
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