EDITORIAL - Shakedown

How many complaints will it take before a member of the Philippine National Police is dismissed from the service for misconduct? In the case of Special Police Officer 4 Jose de la Peña, seven administrative cases failed to lead to his expulsion from the PNP. Two of the seven were for robbery-extortion.

Last Tuesday, De la Peña reportedly struck again, accusing a young man speaking on a mobile phone of engaging in phone sex as the man stood in front of his car. De la Peña allegedly demanded money to let the man off. The man denied the accusation and said he had no money. He could not stop De la Peña from boarding the car and driving to two ATMs to make him pay up. A police car driven by PO2 Resty del Rosario served as backup. The man then urged De la Peña to talk to his father for the money. And that was when the two cops found themselves in hot water: at the other end of the line was Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina, head of the police Highway Patrol Group and who on that day had just been named the new chief of the National Capital Region Police Office.

De la Peña has gone into hiding; he is unlikely to get away with his latest caper. But how many others like him are out there, tarnishing the image of the PNP? If his latest victim had not been the 22-year-old son of a ranking PNP official, would De la Peña face the possibility of being purged from the police?

QCPD records show that only last May, De la Peña had also accused of indecent acts a man and a woman he had chanced upon in a parked car on Panay Avenue in Quezon City. De la Peña allegedly earned P7,000 from that shakedown. But the victim went to the QCPD and filed a complaint, identifying De la Peña from the mobile unit’s photo gallery.

PNP officials should determine the prevalence of such extortion activities, punish the perpetrators and put a stop to a problem that has been around for many years. “Kotong” cops have been among the biggest reasons for the erosion of public trust in the PNP.