Does Crame have 1,000 ghost cops?

Is the Philippine National Police (PNP) headquarters at Camp Crame in Quezon City home to more than 1,000 "ghost policemen."

A report aired over radio station dzBB said yesterday an audit conducted by the National Police Commission (Napolcom), the civilian agency with supervision and control over the PNP, revealed that there were 1,095 policemen "unaccounted" for.

These policemen are reportedly receiving their salaries without having to report for work, the radio report said.

However, the head of Napolcom’s Investigation Monitoring and Inspection Service (IMIS), which conducted the personnel audit, quickly belied the report.

"The data (cited in the radio report) was raw information. It’s premature to conclude that the unaccounted policemen are ghost employees of the PNP," lawyer Agaton Vergara, IMIS head, said.

Vergara said IMIS is still in the process of verifying the whereabouts of the policemen who were not present when the Napolcom teams went to Camp Crame to conduct the physical audit of the policemen assigned at the headquarters.

He added that the figure cited in the report was only from one of the three teams, as he emphasized that the physical audit conducted concentrated on the national headquarters in Quezon City.

"It could be that these policemen were not at their Camp Crame offices when we went there because they are on training, in an operation, or are detained in other offices like Congress or assigned to some VIP (very important person)," Vergara said.

Vergara said having "ghost policemen" remains a possibility at the PNP but identifying them is like "looking for a needle in a haystack."

"They can always say there are on official mission," Vergara said.

The Napolcom conducts regular personnel and logistics audit of the PNP as part of its mandate.

Director Ricardo de Leon, chief of the PNP Directorate for Police Community Relations, said absence on the day when a headcount was conducted does not mean cops are missing or unaccounted for.

"Some of those marked absent could either be performing official duties elsewhere and may have inadvertently missed the Napolcom inspection." he said.

De Leon cited the case of the Police Security and Protection Office (PSPO) which the Napolcom has reportedly said had 549 unaccounted personnel.

It is highly possible that these PSPO personnel missed the inspection and headcount that day because they were in security detail, De Leon said.

The PSPO is the police unit tasked to provide close-in security to foreign dignitaries, government officials and some private individuals whose lives are under threat.

The Napolcom, based on the radio reports, also reported that aside from the PSPO, at the time of the personnel inspection, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) had 59 missing personnel, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) had 98, the Police Anti-Crime Emergency Response had 32 while eight police officers were reported missing from the office of PNP Deputy Director for Administration, Deputy Director General Edgar Aglipay.

Just the same, De Leon said all PNP units which reportedly had unaccounted personnel at the time of the Napolcom inspection were required to submit a report to the Directorate for Personnel and Records Management.

Meanwhile, PNP DPRM chief, Director Jose Lalisan branded the Napolcom report as erronous information.

"All our personnel are accounted for. We have no missing or ghost personnel. if they (Napolcom) have that finding, we will be ready to explain," Lalisan said.

Lalisan added that the Napolcom report aired by some radio stations is not updated and not official.

"It needs to be reconciled with our records. It could have been that some personnel who were reported to be missing at the time were on schooling, or were on another detail outside of the headquarters," he said. – With Mike Frialde