Investigating police investigative skills - GOTCHA by Jarius Bondoc

Anywhere in the world, policemen have but three duties – traffic, patrol, investigation. No matter what their excuse, it’s the police who must keep traffic flowing so we can get to school or office, catch that meeting or date, let the economy and life move on. But our policemen hate traffic duty. Gone are street cops who find such delight in their work that they dance to an internal tune when directing traffic. They’d rather be assigned to special duty – Special Operations Group, Special Weapons and Tactics, Special Action Force, Special This-Special That – that the regular task is left to ill-trained traffic aides. Yet when there’s a snafu – like if they kill innocent civilians during a stakeout – they don’t want specially strict rules to govern them, just the usual ones that excuse common folk.

Cops would rather be on patrol than traffic duty. There’s more glamour in it. But the PNP sorely lacks 12,000 patrol cars and motorcycles. Local governments, because they bear the brunt of public anger about crime waves, usually donate vehicles. Still, the shortage is so acute that some cops bring their own. The enviable ones assigned to new cars can’t be called lucky either. Oftentimes they must spend for their own gas, repairs and cleaning after a long night’s work. And then there’s the problem of diligence. Too frequent are complaints about policemen responding too late to the crime scene. Too, about motorcycle cops moonlighting as escorts for VIPs, weddings, funeral corteges.

If cops can’t live up to simple traffic or patrol duty, how much more the tougher work of investigation? Here, the problem is not just attitude but also training, equipment and facilities. Car insurance firms complain that cops don’t really investigate collisions but merely write neutral reports based on the accounts of contending parties. Damage claims clog up court dockets because investigators do not know how to determine on the spot who’s at fault. It’s worse in cases of index crimes like theft, homicide and drug trafficking. A Quezon City judge laments that he has had to dismiss charges against notorious street pushers simply because investigators fail to report such basic data as quantity of shabu confiscated or circumstance of arrest. Many a cellphone snatcher get off when apprehending officers forget to even locate the complainant. Some police units are simply inept, like one in a Bicol town that hasn’t solved a single of frequent killings in two years. And we’ve not even begun to cite cases of police involvement in crime syndicates.

City policemen are clearly better off than their country cousins. They have modern, if not easier access to, investigation tools like fingerprint dusters, ballistics microscopes, forensic testers. At least 30,000 policemen in the provinces don’t have short arms. Enterprising ones buy cheap personal revolvers for licensing into official use.

Secretary Jose Lina has devised one way to equalize police training and facilities. From now till 2004, the PNP will require all cops to have college degrees. A third of the force – 40,000 of 115,000 – will have to enrol in night school or DILG distance learning centers in each region. He and PNP Director General Leandro Mendoza intend to lobby Congress for big bucks to once and for all cover the 12,000-backlog in patrol cars, not to mention 23,000 firetrucks. That’s easier said than done in a government so starved for cash for emergencies, antipoverty projects and new roads. This year’s total capital outlay for PNP purchases of firearms, bullets and other police paraphernalia and equipment is a mere P10 million. Certainly insufficient to buy two-way radios for each substation.

Director Lucas Managuelod, who cut his teeth in police work as a detective, is working on a parallel project: estabishing the first training school for investigation. For him, such a school would not only upgrade the skills of crack investigators but also pull up to par the rusty and the amateur. Too, it would give all police units in cities and provinces access to the latest crime-solving equipment that PNP can buy. Mendoza and Managuelod have identified a one-hectare lot in Bicutan for a multistory building and wide grounds for evidence-gathering and crime-scene drills.

Managuelod had led several detective bureaus in Manila and Rizal as a young cop. While taking up law, then pursuing a master’s degree in public administration and a doctorate in criminology, he had risen to head Metro Manila’s branch and later the headquarters of the elite Criminal Investigation and Detection Group. He had seen the PNP metamorphose from the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police. All those years, Managuelod always wondered why the national police never had a single training school for investigation. Now that he’s head of the policy-making PNP Directorate for Investigation, he can make his dream come true. That is, if he and Mendoza find the all-important cash for it – possibly from donations from foreign governments.

Managuelod’s investigation school would have a DNA machine more modern than what the NBI acquired in 1995, as well as facilities for fingerprint, ballistics and forensic exams. More important, it would have a crime-scene village. Batches of trainees would be herded into rooms that replicate a bank robbery, complete with vaults and teller-counter alarms. Or they’d stumble upon "corpses" in varying states of decomposition under different weather conditions. First-time and ace sleuths will be trained in evidence gathering and preservation, as well as emergency situations like proper handling of gunshot or car smashup victims.

An intended side-effect of investigation training is to demilitarize police thinking. Managuelod laments that, to this day when the 10-year-old PNP is mandated by the Constitution to be civilian in character, many habits from the paramilitary-PC linger. This shows not only in the use of camouflage suits for everyday wear or of terms like police "detachment." It also manifests in intelligence work. Managuelod points out the difference: "In the AFP, they gather intelligence to support operations. In the PNP, we should use intelligence to support investigation, to build up cases that will stand in court and enhance prosecution."

Managuelod says that improved investigative skills will eventually brighten the PNP’s crime-solution rate. And when it does, it can also lead to lesser cases having to be filed in court. High crime solution invariably scares new criminals into thinking twice about committing dastardly acts. And that’s where good investigation work contributes to crime prevention.

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