The Caloocan City police force in Metro Manila, currently at the center of multiple controversies, including the shooting death of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, is starting over from scratch — a month after being named Best City Police Station in the National Capital Region.
Sixty-two members of the department are being relieved of their duties entirely, while the rest are set to undergo retraining before being reassigned to stations in other Metro Manila cities, according to an order from National Capital Region Police Office Chief Oscar Albayalde made public today.
The decision comes on the heels of a series of controversies involving Caloocan officers in the past month, starting with the death of delos Santos, who was allegedly shot and killed by police during an anti-drug operation.
The Caloocan police are also linked to the death of 19-year-old Carl Angelo Arnaiz. It was first reported that Arnaiz had tried to rob a taxi driver, leading to a shootout with the police and the teenager’s eventual death.
However, the cab driver said during a press briefing last week that this sequence of events was scripted and that police had, in fact, arrested Arnaiz and brought him to the precinct alive. The driver also said that police forced him to sign two affidavits stating that Arnaiz resisted arrest.
In early September, 16 officers from the force were also caught on CCTV footage robbing a home.
Albayalde said that reassignment of about 1,000 staff to other Metro Manila stations was planned before the incidents involving delos Santos and Arnaiz took place.
In a report on ABS-CBN, Albayalde said that personnel in one Caloocan station have already been fired, while the firing of officers from other stations will follow in the coming days.
The same report said that while the changes are underway, the NCRPO Regional Public Safety Battalion at Civil Disturbance Management will be in charge of operations in Caloocan.
One question we’d like to leave you with: How exactly does a police force go from “best in the city” to “not good enough to exist” in the course of a month? If you’ve got the answer, please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
