AT PNP, INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS

Uh-oh, looks like anti-kidnapping tsar Angelo Reyes got off on the
wrong footing.

A week before he is to take over as Secretary of Interior, he thought
aloud about legalizing jueteng, the illegal numbers game that has
corrupted police chiefs, governors and mayors.

The idea is sure to raise the hackles of religious leaders and
ordinary citizens weary of official inaction against vice. Not that
the proposal is new. Then-Constabulary chief Fidel Ramos had broached
it as far back as 1978. Ten years later the sweepstakes office
sponsored small-town lotteries to grab the jueteng take, to no avail.

Another ten years and police generals supported a Palace crony's bid
to replace it with a two-ball bingo, also in vain. Since then, all
incoming police chiefs have promised to crush jueteng, but only
managed to sound like they were sending vice lords the message to
start dealing with the new kids on the block.

Jueteng has since sparked a people-power revolt, brought down a
President, and forced the resignation of a succession of interior
secretaries, including Reyes's predecessor. Still it thrives, partly
because it has been so ingrained in community life since the '50s, and
from feeble antivice drives that ultimately end in revived overtures
to just decriminalize it.

Legalizing jueteng can indeed take one big source of graft from cops
and local execs.

Studies had been made in America and Europe in the '60s to remove the
police from antivice operations since these only tempt them into
protection rackets. Gambling, like prostitution, it was said, is a
"victimless crime" precisely because it is a mere vice, the product of
human frailty.

But the hair-splitting was disproved when drugs, the worst vice to hit
modern man, rose to threaten the internal security of even the most
developed nations. Since then, the new thinking is that governments
simply have to wage relentless wars against vice, lest these ruin
social mores and weaken the populace into unproductive, drug-sniffing,
body-selling gamblers.

Police departments started forming internal affairs sections to deal
with miscreants in the ranks.

Simultaneously, numerous awards and promotions were given to
outstanding cops. The aim was to instill a system of reward and
punishment for good work and misdeeds.

The PNP formed its own Internal Affairs Service in 1999.

But then a new racket emerged.

Internal-affairs investigators began to use their powers to extort
from the investigated or place favorites in influential positions in
the force.

The New Jersey and Texas police recently were rocked by exposes of
internal affairs abuses.

Reyes would do well to look into similar cases in the PNP-IAS.

Word is that the five-year old watchdog has failed to curb
police wrongdoings. Proof: recurrent reports of officers
pocketing the allowances of patrolmen, of shoddy crime
investigations and delayed police response to distress
calls, perhaps even the continuing rise of communist
insurgency in rural areas.

The IAS has spent millions of pesos in probes, but the PNP remains one
of the most reviled government agencies.

It may not all be the IAS's fault.

Poor rookie recruitment and officer training also are to blame, along
with a politicized hierarchy.

Then again, these are ills that the IAS must cure, if only it
undergoes surgery to cut off the cancer of corruption.

Papers have been sent to the Ombudsman about IAS officers divvying up
what should have gone to rentals of its private office space before it
relocated to Camp Crame. Reyes can review this upon taking over
concurrently as chairman of the National Police Commission. One IAS
bigwig reportedly hired his own son as a Napolcom aide, in violation
of civil service rules against nepotism.

He also has placed an in-law in a key position in the finance office.

Another officer allegedly had himself listed among the officers to be
promoted after the mob assault on Malacanang in May 2001, although he
took no part in its defense.

IAS's audit section itself is in need of auditing to flush out
anomalies in the finance office.

A ranking IAS officer recently retired while decrying the strange
goings-on, but was ignored by higher-ups. Budget Secretary Emilia
Boncodin had fired off a memo about possible misuse of occupational
specialty pay for officers who take time off for added training.

This, too, has been ignored.

A top IAS officer is reportedly egging a congressman close to the
President to have him reassigned to a lucrative post in Camp Crame.
This could come about if Reyes does not move quickly.