Velasco orders re-training for station commanders

The lapses committed by the San Juan police in the handling of the kidnapping of the two children of Negros Occidental. Rep. Julio Ledesma IV has prompted Metro Manila police chief Deputy Director General Reynaldo Velasco to order a two-week re-training for all 37 station commanders in the metropolis.

While kidnap victims, Cristina Julieta Victoria, 10 and her brother, Carlos Tomas, 5, were released unharmed in Makati City Tuesday, Velasco wants to ensure that lapses would not be committed again in future kidnapping cases.

Among the biggest blunder noted was allowing the media to interview Ledesma’s driver, Randy Barcelona, 29 and housemaid Jennilyn Tesado, 25.

"The driver and the housemaid should have immediately been kept under tight security and their statements taken to get a good description of the suspects," said a police official, noting that the media interviews only muddled the investigation of the kidnapping.

The station commanders, including probable candidates for key police positions in Metro Manila, would take the two-week course at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in Makati City.

However, Superintendent Julius Abanes, spokesman of the National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO) said the re-training of the station commanders was not in any way connected to the San Juan kidnapping case.

He said the two-week training, a joint project of the NCRPO and AIM, will carry the theme "Total Quality Management," with crisis management, public administration and kidnapping as among its topics.

The training program, scheduled to start either next week or the first week of October, has a P500,000 budget coming from Velasco’s pocket, Abanes said.

"The training was not necessarily an offshoot of the San Juan kidnapping. It was a product of a memorandum of agreement between the AIM and the NCRPO which was signed days prior to the abduction of Congressman Ledesma’s children," he explained.

Abanes also noted that the Police Community Precinct commanders are set to undergo a 10-day training for human rights investigation at the University of the Philippines in the coming months.

It can be recalled that the entire Pasay City police station had to attend a 22-day training program in Subic after the mishandling of a hostage situation.