Carvajal: Rotten to the core

EARLIER I tagged our senators as clowns for their P4.5 billion new Senate building when 4.5 million Filipinos are homeless, 8.48 million are waterless and, if I may now add, prisoners are sick and dying in congested prisons.

Reprising the case of ninja cops is to play the clowns again. If an officer fails to execute a superior’s legitimate order for whatever reason, is he guilty of insubordination? Indeed he is. In the military the rule is obey first and question later.

Why then are senators hanging Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Oscar Albayalde out to dry on nationwide TV for asking Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Chief Aaron Aquino not to implement the order to sack the 13 ninja cops? Why blame Albayalde’s intervention when it was Aquino’s call alone to obey or not to obey orders from above?

Something smells of politics here. Didn’t this happen in 2013 when Mar Roxas was Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary and Alan Purisima the PNP Chief? Why have they not been called to testify?

I am not defending the PNP Chief. For all I know Albayalde is guilty of asking Aquino not to sack the ninja cops. The point, however, is this case was fully investigated by then Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) Chief (and now politician?) Benjamin Magalong. The ninja cops were ordered dismissed and Albayalde somehow cleared of any administrative liability. The only problem was the ninja cops were never dismissed.

So, what’s the fuss? Why don’t senators just order the ninja cops to be finally dismissed and Aquino put to task for not executing the order? I cannot see the point of senators going along with Magalong in shifting the blame to Albayalde when Aquino has no excuse for disobeying a superior’s order.

In the absence of a full-blown re-investigation, senators should just order the outright dismissal of the ninja cops. However, charges must be filed against them or they will just go from rogue cops to criminal civilians. For violating laws it is their duty to enforce, they should be meted with heavier penalties.

Our national police have never been an outfit we could be proud of. The public’s perception was always that honest cops are the exception to cops who protect illegal gambling, accept bribes to plant or destroy evidence including key witnesses. Ninja cops are the rogue cop’s latest but not worst version. Worst are drug-lord-protector cops and drug-lord cops all rolled into one.

The DOJ’s (Department of Justice) decision to re-open the case of the ninja cops has rendered the Senate’s probe pointless as the former’s fate has now to wait for the results of the re-investigation. While waiting for those results senators should stop grandstanding and instead hunker down to enact laws that would definitively clean up a police force that is unquestionably rotten to the core.

Trending

No stories found.

Just in

No stories found.

Branded Content

No stories found.
SunStar Publishing Inc.
www.sunstar.com.ph