CONSIDER THIS: you are a policeman in a small town. One of the residents alerts you about a robbery taking place in a barrio several kilometers away. You are all set to respond. Unfortunately, the only vehicle assigned to your police station has conked out. What do you do?

The police have often been ridiculed for failing to respond to crimes as they happen. Many times, however, policemen could not respond because they lack resources. Emmanuel Aranas, chief of the Scene of Crime Operations (SOCO) unit in the Eastern Police District says, “You can’t always blame the policeman.”

For instance, the gas ration for their unit’s operations amounts to only 40 liters a month—hardly enough to keep Aranas’s vehicle running for a whole week. Many police stations do not even have patrol vehicles. Even the police station in Mandaluyong—one of the relatively better equipped stations in the country—could not supply all its personnel with handheld radios. The entire police organization needs about 25,000 handheld radios. There are only 2,280 units on hand, of which 298 do not work, according to official data.

As of the first quarter of 2004, over 20,000 police personnel (out of about 110,000) did not have their own firearms, a study commissioned by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) says. Even if they do have firearms, policemen complain that they are given only 28 bullets for patrol duty for an entire year.

Only 10 bullets are issued per year for marksmanship training, according to the UNDP study Personnel in some police stations even report that no marksmanship training has ever been conducted.

Such inadequacies have a critical effect on police performance. For instance, how does a policeman know that the person in front of him is a wanted man if he has no access to crime information? If a policeman patrols on foot, how can he run after criminals fleeing with a stolen car?

Even if his unit has a patrol vehicle, how can he chase suspects if his service vehicle is already out of gas? If he has no radio, how does he call on his other colleagues to set up a road block fast enough to catch fleeing bank robbers? How can he hone his shooting skills if he does not have enough bullets for target practice? And how can he shoot properly if he has not been given the opportunity to practice?

On the surface, there seems to be no way out of this predicament which has been crippling the police force for years. Given the current fiscal woes, there is little chance that the budget will grow significantly soon. Practically all government agencies are experiencing similar budgetary constraints.

ONE FIREARM EACH

There appears to be very little room for discretion in the budget of the Philippine National Police (PNP), with close to 90 percent of its P35.5 billion budget already allotted to salaries of its personnel. This leaves roughly 10 percent for maintenance and other operating expenditures.

Barely 1 percent of the annual budget goes to capital outlay, the item used to fund the construction and maintenance of buildings as well as the purchase of equipment.

The UNDP study, which covers various facets of the PNP, says that the budget could go a longer way if it were used more effectively within the organization. What is needed are “out of the box” solutions, PNP Deputy Director General for Operations Avelino Razon tells NEWSBREAK.

For instance, on the lack of side arms, Razon says that previously, each policeman was equipped with one long firearm and one short firearm. Long arms are often used by police on guard duty and involved in internal security operations. Short arms are for police on patrol or cops doing intelligence work.

When existing long arms and side arms were inventoried, it was found that the PNP had more firearms than personnel, Razon says. “This meant we are not managing our resources properly.” To ensure that every policeman will have at least one firearm, the program management office decided that, henceforth, all policemen will be issued either a long arm or a sidearm. “So we will all end up with one firearm each.”

The same thing is true with bullets. “It’s a matter of approach,” Razon says. The budget for training is too small to buy enough factory-loaded bullets which cost roughly P30 to P40 each. But factory-loaded bullets are not necessary for training, Razon says. “You only need reloads.” “Reloads” or recycled bullets cost roughly P5 per bullet.

The PNP, too, will be hard put to provide all its policemen with two-way radios that cost P80,000 each. Most policemen, however, already have cell phones, Razon points out, so “you only need to provide them with load credits.”

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY

With the help of various donor organizations, the PNP seeks to work on programs that will help the organization break through “20th century policing” using advancements in information and communications technology (ICT), Razon says.

Such programs, he admits, cannot be as grand as those in developed countries, given meager resources. For instance, in a country that cannot even afford to supply all its policemen with radio units, local police cannot hope to have laptops in every patrol car like their counterparts in the United States.

Instead, the PNP intends to make use of short message services (SMS) to provide policemen with information they need in a timely manner.

Among others, the ICT plan includes the creation of databases such as a Vehicle Identification Monitoring System, which will allow agents of the traffic management group to identify the owner of, and keep a tab on, a suspicious vehicle.

Another system will help police in the field determine if a firearm is registered and if a person is licensed to carry firearms. The ICT database will also include a warrant registry so that police in a particular area can check if a suspicious newcomer is the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant.

Once this system is in place, a police station in Tawi-Tawi will have the same capabilities as the one in Makati, Razon says.

The directorate for investigation and detection management is now working on an e-blotter system that will immediately update crime information in real time. At present, crime reporting is done manually. This has made it prone to manipulation, the UNDP study says.

While some of these proposed ICT-powered innovations are still on the PNP’s wish list, some new ideas are already being used by select units within the organization.

For instance, the Joint Anti-Bank Robbery Action Committee (JABRAC) used to meet regularly to discuss findings. Now they don’t have to. They are now using a wiki, an online collaborative publishing tool, which operatives update whenever they come across new information.

The program not only saves the team a lot of paper work but time as well, Razon says. Using the wiki, agents are now able to correct information uploaded by their colleagues online without leaving their work place. Messages sent to the PNP’s complaint management system, Text 2920, are also fed into a wiki.

But beyond these out-of-the-box ideas, the PNP leadership must also rethink the distribution of the organization’s resources, Razon admits.

For instance, the UNDP study points out that even if it is the field offices that conduct actual police work, it is the central office that gets the largest share of the budget for maintenance and operating expenses (MOOE). In 2003, the ratio stood at 55:45, already down from a high of 74:26 in 1998 and 1999.

A large chunk of the MOOE goes to overhead expenditures—programs for general administration and support for operations of officials and personnel in the central and regional offices. From 1998 to 2003, the budget for operations—or actual police work—accounted for an average of 26 percent of the MOOE.

HEADQUARTERS FIRST

More often than not, “the headquarters gets the first cut,” Razon admits. For instance, he explains, while 149 police stations do not have any patrol cars, all generals, directors, deputies, and heads assigned to headquarters have staff cars.

When he assumed command over the PNP in 1999, Sen. Panfilo Lacson tells NEWSBREAK that the PNP chief was issued a credit card with no credit limit. Expenses charged against the card are paid for using the “commander’s reserve,” which, according to Lacson, amounted to around P40 million a year. Lacson says he refused to use the commander’s reserve and the credit card while he held the post. (Razon says, however, that he is not aware of such practice.)

“The fiscal management program seeks to bring resources and programs to where our cutting edge is, and not here at headquarters,” Razon says. This means that whenever resources become available, they will initially be distributed to the field offices.

Only when all the field units have their vehicle requirements should the organization start issuing staff cars to officials and personnel at headquarters. “It’s the other way around right now.”

This will not be easy, as it means the PNP’s top brass will have to seriously cut down on expenses and implement belt-tightening measures, Razon says.

But it is necessary, he adds, if headquarters wants to have the moral ascendancy to tell the rest of the organization that they have to make do with what they have right now. “You cannot tell your son that he should sacrifice because you have no money while you are wasting your money on gambling and other vices.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is the last in a NEWSBREAK series on the police, made possible by a grant from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

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