THE Philippine National Police (PNP) Counter-Intelligence Task Force (CITF) has arrested 60 police personnel in line with the PNP’s intensified internal cleansing program.
A year after the CITF was created, it arrested 60 police personnel and one Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) agent and 19 civilians who were in cahoots with some policemen engaged in illegal transactions such as extortion, kidnapping, illegal drugs and other various offenses.
“CITF investigations led to the filing of administrative cases before the Internal Affairs Service against 29 police personnel, and criminal charges in court against 65 other errant personnel,” said PNP spokesperson Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao.
The CITF said since February 2017, they received 10,246 complaints and information in which a total of 1,475 were processed and acted upon by CITF through “discreet investigation, case build-up, validation, and direct police intervention.”
Among the complaints and reports received were 262 extortions, 238 drug-related, six kidnapping, 75 robbery-extortion, 161 illegal gambling, 19 physical abuse, four gunrunning, 13 illegal logging, 309 protection racket, nine for unexplained wealth and 383 other irregularities.
The CITF said the most number of complaints were from the National Capital Region with 471, followed by 189 in Calabarzon, 128 in Central Luzon and 84 in Central Visayas.
The CITF was created in February 2017 in a bid to cleanse the PNP of erring policemen following the involvement of several personnel in the abduction and killing of Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo.
A policeman who admitted being part of Jee’s abduction on October 18, 2016 said several members of the former PNP anti-illegal drugs group planned and conducted the crime in the guise of the government’s war on drugs.
It was later found that Jee was killed inside a parked vehicle inside Camp Crame while his remains were cremated in a funeral parlor in Caloocan and his ashes were reportedly flushed in a toilet bowl.
Jee’s killing was the reason why President Rodrigo Duterte stripped the PNP of its lead role in the government’s crackdown on illegal drugs.
Describing the policemen as “corrupt to the core,” Duterte ordered PNP chief Ronald Dela Rosa to cleanse the PNP from scalawags who continue tainting the police rank.
Earlier, Dela Rosa said their fight against erring policemen remains their biggest challenge. (SunStar Philippines)