Policing the police
Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc. |
NINFA R. LEONARDIA
Editor-in-Chief & President | CARLA
P. GOMEZ Editor
CHERYL CRUZ
Desk Editor
PATRICK PANGILINAN
Busines
Editor
NIDA A. BUENAFE
Sports Editor
RENE GENOVE Bureau
Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising
Coordinator | CARLOS
ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer |
The National Police Commission has invalidated the examinations taken last year by 386 people in Zamboanga City after it discovered that cheating had taken place in the written tests that were being taken by aspiring officers applying to enter the police force as well as serving officers seeking promotion.
The cheating was suspected after it was found out that so many had put exactly the same wrong answers in the examination and was uncovered only recently so those who had taken them had already been commissioned into the force. Thirteen officers have since been sacked and the rest have been placed under investigation and could be dismissed if found guilty.
Policemen in the Philippines are still in the process of slowly recovering from an unshakeable negative public image caused by decades of unpoliced shenanigans among its own members. Persistent stories of policemen being involved in hazing, doubling as extortion artists, or “kotong” cops, or engaging in “hulidap” scams, coddling criminals, or even being directly engaged in criminal activities, have tarnished the reputation of the police force in the past and this recent discovery of massive cheating in the police officer entrance examinations will add a speed bump to the painstaking efforts of the current PNP leadership in restoring the image of its men in uniform.
Aside from the scale of the cheating, another thing that made this scandal even more disgusting is that the people who resorted to it were taking the test to become police officers. If these people found it easy to succumb to dishonesty in a simple written examination, it shouldn’t take a lot to convince these officers to turn a blind eye towards criminal activities in their areas of responsibility, or to deliberately sabotage an open and shut case so the guilty party can avoid imprisonment due to a technicality, or a “lapse”, in police procedures.
NAPOLCOM deserves praise for uncovering the cheating and moving quickly to punish those involved. Aside from ensuring that the proper steps are taken to ensure that it does not happen again in Zamboanga, the NAPOLCOM should also reevaluate its testing procedures and standards for the rest of the country as well. After all, we wouldn’t want the police officers of this country to be composed of cheaters from the very start.* |