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| Philippine National Police |
He said the fund should be included in the administration’s maiden national budget proposal for 2017.
Of the 16,140 gunless policemen of the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Commission on Audit (COA) reported that some 623 officers were using donated handguns while 3,654 officers could not be accounted for or has no record of having been issued service firearms.
The PNP has a total 124,738 policemen and it needs to recruit 23,820 policemen to fill up its manpower table.
Recto said that government should not just focus on illegal drugs but on other crimes as well.
PNP report showed that 12,900 vehicles were stolen in 2015 while there were 9,643 murder cases and 2,835 homicide incidents in 2015.
‘’There were 128,389 cases of robbery, theft, carnapping and cattle-rustling last year. Or someone loses his bag, or her cellphone or the family’s car or carabao to thieves or robbers every four minutes,’’ Recto said.
The COA, according to Recto, said the PNP’s failure to achieve a 100 percent “arming rate” for its personnel violates a 1993 National Police Commission (Napolcom) order mandating a one-gun-one-police ratio.
Recto said the PNP’s gun shortage would have been eased if it did not divert in 2012 a P336 million budget for gun procurement.
According to the same COA report, the amount was instead used to buy 20 patrol jeeps, one “Crime Data Processing System” and an “Automated Fingerprint Identification System” costing P270 million.
