EDITORIAL – A Christmas wish for cops

In this police station, there is not a computer in sight, and cops take turns using one run-down Olympia typewriter to prepare investigation reports. This is not some remote police outpost in a neglected village, but a police station in Malabon, one of the cities in the National Capital Region. If this is the situation in Metro Manila, what is it like for cops outside the nation’s premier region?

Malabon police officers have a Christmas wish: more typewriters, or at least one computer so they don’t have to waste time waiting for colleagues as they take turns at the typewriter. The cops said they receive each day an average of six to eight complaints that require preparing a typewritten report. Their requests for a computer or more typewriters, they said, have gone unheeded.

The officers’ plight is not unique. Until a few years ago, you could still see cops in the city of Manila pounding on antique typewriters, preparing reports with copies using carbon paper that had been used so often the copies were barely readable. It is not uncommon for cops to ask crime victims for donations to buy bond paper and carbon paper. Neither is it uncommon for cops to ask crime victims for gasoline money or more funds to finance efforts to catch crooks. Before the latest jueteng scandal implicated presidential relatives in illegal gambling payoffs, some police officers admitted that jueteng money often financed law enforcement operations in many parts of the country.

Filipinos often complain that in this country, there are too many laws and too little enforcement. Given the situation in Malabon, it should come as no surprise that cops don’t bother enforcing minor laws even if those laws could contribute to crime prevention and the maintenance of peace and order. And it should come as no surprise that there are still some cops who prefer to execute pickpockets in a neighborhood rather than round them up and book them, which would require preparing boring reports and feeding arrested suspects using scarce police funds.

If we want effective law enforcement, we must give law enforcers the resources to do their job. We must at least give them more typewriters.