After the fiasco

SKETCHES By Ana Marie Pamintuan (The Philippine Star) Updated December 20, 2010 

Raul Bacalzo was in Cagayan de Oro with the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) at the time, Jesus Verzosa, when he saw the live CNN coverage of the Aug. 23 hostage incident in Manila.

Bacalzo remembers thinking that the crisis would be resolved by late afternoon. Several captives had been released by the hostage taker, dismissed Manila police senior inspector Rolando Mendoza, who seemed calm and was negotiating with his former PNP colleagues.

Three weeks later, Bacalzo was named PNP chief after what Verzosa likes to emphasize was an early retirement that was scheduled ahead of the hostage crisis.

Bacalzo, now a four-star director general, inherits an organization whose capability to do its job is often doubted by the public.

Several diplomats have told me that more than terror alerts, the crime problem in the Philippines is a major concern for travelers from their countries. The hostage crisis merely highlighted many of the weaknesses of Philippine law enforcement.

Over a month ago, Chinese Ambassador Liu Jianchao asked me what came next after the release of President Aquino’s decisions on the recommendations of the incident investigation and review committee. The hostage story seemed to have been forgotten, the ambassador observed.

What could I tell him that he didn’t know? There’s a new Manila police chief. Gregorio Mendoza, traffic cop and brother of the hostage taker, is the only one facing criminal prosecution. The police officers involved in the botched hostage rescue are facing administrative charges that could lead to their dismissal from the service.

If Beijing and Hong Kong want culpability for the mess to go higher, they are in for disappointment. In other countries, ranking public officials are quick to take responsibility for disasters in their turf. In this country, ranking public officials are quick to pass the blame to underlings.

If the Aquino government wants to reassure the world that there will be no repeat of the bloody hostage debacle, palpable reforms should start in the PNP. The burden falls on the shoulders of Bacalzo, who has all of 10 months to produce results.

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Bacalzo, a member of the Philippine Military Academy’s Class ’77, is aware of the limited period he has to make a difference. Verzosa reportedly retired early to give Bacalzo, his choice as successor, the necessary one year left in the service to assume the top PNP post.

Meeting with some STAR editors last week, Bacalzo occasionally sounded like a technocrat, discussing proposals for police reforms drawn up by the United Nations Development Program (that’s right, the UNDP) together with the PNP between 2004 and 2005.

“The intent is to create a capable, protective and credible police organization,” Bacalzo told us. “We intend to reform not only the organization but also the individual police.”

How does he intend to do this? Different police chiefs had their own pet projects, he said. Oscar Calderon focused on the need for decent housing for the police; Arturo Lomibao on setting up more police stations. Avelino Razon launched the “Mamang Pulis” program. Verzosa pushed “transformational leadership,” which Bacalzo is pursuing based on “four pillars.”

One pillar, he explained, is the ability to recognize dysfunction in the organization, individual or system. The second is the courage to accept that the leader is the problem. The third is the ability to come up with a plan to correct the dysfunction. And the fourth is the ability to mobilize stakeholders for reforms.

If this sounds like a doctoral thesis on the police, it is; Bacalzo submitted it to obtain his doctorate in a special UN course on peace and security administration, offered at the Bicol State University with a satellite course at Camp Crame. The thesis received a score of 95 percent, but it took Bacalzo 11 years to get the doctorate because (he said) he was moved from one assignment to another around the country.

The Aug. 23 hostage incident, he said, triggered “self-examination” within the PNP regarding organization, training and equipment.

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He said they realized that the PNP, including Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, had become too dependent on local governments for support and training.

So Reform No. 1 is the creation of a uniform SWAT force for the PNP, patterned after the elite police Special Action Force. An initial budget of P50 million, to be taken from the PNP’s capability enhancement fund, has been approved for a retraining program.

The PNP has recommended to Malacañang the procurement of standard SWAT equipment for all police units nationwide, including guns, vests and helmets.

Funding is of course one of the biggest constraints in Philippine law enforcement. This year’s PNP budget is P64 billion; in 2011, the amount is P81 billion, of which P69 billion will go to personnel expenditures including pensions.

Bacalzo says there is one cop for every 780 people in this country. The international standard is 1:500.

About 35 percent of the 135,000 PNP members have no government-issued guns. A service firearm has a basic load of 21 bullets, which are replaced only if used in line of duty. Obtaining ammunition (mostly reloads) for marksmanship training is up to police regional commanders.

The PNP has a pool of about 200 cops, some of them retired, who were trained overseas and are now tasked to train police officers on SWAT operations.

The problem, Bacalzo said, is that the instructors obtained their training from five countries with different SWAT systems: the United States, Britain, Australia, France and Israel. From this “chop suey” of skills, the PNP is developing its very own Pinoy model, Bacalzo said.

As a result of the hostage fiasco, the PNP has also drafted a new crisis management manual, which is awaiting approval by the National Police Commission.

The reforms won’t come quickly enough for Hong Kong, whose justice department is reportedly conducting its own inquiry into the hostage fiasco. Maybe this is in preparation for the filing of civil suits by the survivors and relatives of the fatalities.

Bacalzo acknowledges the pressure for improvement on the part of the PNP after the hostage crisis, which he said offered many lessons for his organization.

“Police credibility, that’s the end state,” Bacalzo said.

If he can achieve credibility for the PNP in 10 months, he could run for president.