A few months ago 19 Davao City cops were reassigned for unknown reasons. Now that reason has finally come to light. They covered up crime statistics by falsifying police blotters.
The misreporting of police blotters to sanitize Davao City’s real crime statistics was among the reasons for the reassignment of 19 police station commanders here, Police Brig. General Nicolas Torre III, director of Police Regional Office 11, said on Sunday.
Torre showed to reporters two books of police blotters that the blotter validation officer recovered from the Calinan police station shortly after he assumed office in June.
Both books of blotter, covering 2022 to 2023, appeared identical although some entries contained in the first book did not appear in the other.
Randomly skimming through the entries of one of the books, Torre read an entry on lost items last March 2, when a certain Jessica Galleros Jawa, 29, reported that her dark blue sling bag containing her wallet, debit card, and several IDs, was missing and believed to be stolen in Beep Plaza near Jollibee Calinan.
Instead of marking it as theft, the entry was reported only as a “lost item” and was marked “for recording purposes.”
“[They put there] ‘lost item,’ so that you don’t have to put that in the crime statistics pero kung binasa mo (but if you read it), it says, ‘it’s believed to be stolen inside Beep Plaza’ so, that’s theft. It’s not recorded so, peaceful pa rin ang Davao City. Dinoktor,” Torre said.
(So Davao City is still peaceful. It was misreported.)
Torre said it is important to report the crime correctly so that the police could take necessary actions about it.
“By misreporting it, or reporting it as if the crime did not happen, the police cannot put in place programs to address the problem. You can’t deploy operatives in the area because you can’t see it in the record, ” he added.
Torre noted that several entries in the book, which could have been reported as petty crimes, were only reported as “for the record,” which meant they were not included in the city’s crime statistics.
In another entry, at 12:30 a.m. also on March 2, a complainant reported how a drunk 22-year old resident of Purok 35 Lagazo Calinan district had a heated confrontation with her and had grabbed a knife in the middle of their argument, prompting her to call the police.
Although the police briefly took custody of the youth, the incident was tagged merely as “for [the] record, when it could possibly lead to more serious crimes,” Torre said.
He added that they discovered the sanitized books of blotter during their blotter validation, a standard procedure within the police force, but the police considered misreporting the blotter as a serious offense that could lead to dismissal from service as it constitutes false reporting and perjury.
“There’s a criminal case for it,” Torre said.
However, he said he would no longer pursue any further cases against the police station commanders involved.
Police Brig. General Nicolas Torre III, director of Police Regional Office 11, admits these 19 police commanders committed "a serious offense that could lead to dismissal from service as it constitutes false reporting and perjury" and yet he is no longer pursuing "any further cases against the police station commanders involved."
Why not?
So much for PNP reform. So much for rooting out the bad apples. This lack of action sends a clear message that cops can get away with not only breaking the law but endangering the public by falsifying crime statistics.
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