Policing the Police: No Holds Barred Presentation

July 9, 2025 - At the invitation of the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance, I stood before them—the Chief of the Philippine National Police, the Commissioner of NAPOLCOM, and the Dean of Deans of criminology schools. Men who shape the mind, the muscle, and the moral compass of policing in this country. I had no illusions. I wasn’t there to flatter or to be flattered. I was there to speak.

It was, by design, a hard-hitting, no-apologies presentation. Three decades of engagement—and entanglement—with the Philippine criminal justice system had given me more than enough to say. The topic was policing. The diagnosis, damning.

I framed it simply: input, throughput, output—the lifeblood of a system choking on its own procedures.

Input begins with a twisted arithmetic: the more arrests, the better the performance. That’s the math that governs our streets. And so our police, instead of keeping peace, go hunting. Not for predators, but for the easiest prey—low-level, low-risk, nonviolent, first-time offenders. The arrest is the KPI. The jail is the trophy. The problem is passed down to prosecutors and courts, while the arresting officer moves on, case closed in his logbook, chaos opened elsewhere.

I spoke of coached complainants, of cut-and-paste affidavits, where only the names and times change. I spoke of overcharging, where homicide becomes murder—just to deny bail. They know it won’t stick in court. They don’t care. The goal is not conviction. The goal is detention. Delay becomes strategy. Guilt becomes irrelevant.

And then, there is patong kaso. Panganganak ng kaso. File multiple cases in multiple courts. Make sure the accused cannot breathe, cannot move, cannot even plan their own defense. Let them rot. Let them beg. Let them plead guilty just to make the ordeal end. And when they do, the police can smile—justice, conveniently done.

Throughput is no better. In many provinces, there is only one chemist. One. So hearings are spaced out like eclipses. Postponements pile up like uncollected trash. And sometimes, delay isn’t a defect—it’s the punishment. The police know the case may crumble, but not before the accused has suffered enough. Justice delayed is justice weaponized.

Output is equally cruel. There are no warnings. No citations. No diversions. The police do not distinguish between the hardened and the helpless. Everyone goes to jail. That is the default. That is the disease.

And what does this congestion breed? Deaths in detention. Human rights violations. Violence inside cells and outside conscience. A system that doesn’t just fail, but infects.

I told them this isn’t a glitch—it’s a design. These practices have structural, organizational, and cultural roots.

Structurally, we have too few officers, too little equipment, too many gaps. Thus police officers are deprived in their working conditions. They are forced to improvise. They make diskarte. They bend rules to hit quotas. Because numbers are all that count.

Organizationally, many police units survive on the mercy of local governments. Budgets depend on mayors. And when politics holds the purse, the badge becomes a weapon. LGUs don’t just support police—they command them. They own them. They aim them.

Culturally, it is survival of the most connected. Palakasan. Padrino system. Bata-bata system. Officers are takaw-asunto—any mistake can mean an administrative case. So they shield themselves with allies. Kababayan. Frat brother. Masonic brother. Mistah. Your protection lies not in integrity, but in who can protect you when trouble knocks.

And so the culture spreads—downward, sideways, upward. A fresh graduate from the academy enters the field wide-eyed, idealistic, armed with the law. A year later, he’s arresting for the sake of arresting. Two years later, he’s defending the guilty because he may need defending someday. He learns not the law, but the rules of survival. Matira ang matibay.

But credit where credit is due.

General Nicholas Torre, the Chief PNP, listened. He did not deflect. He acknowledged the disease. He didn’t reach for the usual script of denial and defensiveness. He spoke of changing things—targeting serious offenders, allowing alternatives for low-level crimes, even recognizing the cultural rot inherited from the drug war. In that room, his openness was rare and refreshing. For that, he earned my respect.

Commissioner Rafael Calinisan of NAPOLCOM likewise affirmed the findings. He spoke of weeding out scalawags. Of finishing cases against erring police in sixty days. Of cutting down the backlog. Of not just supervising, but cleaning the ranks. A tall order. But a necessary one.

Dr. Gerry Cano, the Dean of Deans, promised a curriculum reset. Criminology, he said, must not just produce enforcers. It must produce thinkers. Professionals. Men and women of ethics. Not just crime-fighters, but crime-understanders. And more than anything, he promised to anchor it all in research.

Two hours passed quickly. Too quickly. We had only scratched the surface. But there was something in the room. A pause. A breath. A recognition that, for once, the problem had been named. That we were no longer pretending.

This isn’t reform yet. This is only conversation. But all change starts with naming what is wrong.

What happens next will matter. We can continue with business as usual, or we can finally say: Enough.

Because we are not just policing the streets. We are policing a nation’s soul.

And we have long allowed it to rot.