PNP fires 6,000 cops for various offenses

LEGAZPI CITY --- Philippine National Police (PNP) chief, Gen. Archie Gamboa, said on Tuesday, July 14 that 6,000 police officers who were found guilty of various administrative and criminal cases were dismissed from the service since he assumed office.

Gamboa said the dismissal of erring police personnel is part of the PNP cleansing process aimed to weed out the institution with bad cops.

He said the process enabled the police organization to get rid of at least four to six police officers a day who were involved in various illegal activities such as illegal drugs, criminal activities, and absence without leave. “The cleansing is a continuing process in determining why policemen become either good or bad. Let’s work with statistics and ask how many of the 209,000 police officers were involved in anomalies,” he said.

Based on statistics, the 6,000 bad cops represented only 2.8 percent of the 209,000 strong police force.

“Though with that small number of bad cops recorded in a larger context, the PNP has grown so large that we have to admit that there are “pasaways” (scalawags) in the organization so something has to be done to correct it so we can move on,” Gamboa said.