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“For CY 2022, the manpower complement of PNP totaled 230,284 composed of 15,883 Police Commissioned Officers, 216, 989 Police Non-Commissioned Officers, 1,083 cadets and 12,212 Non-Uniformed Personnel.”

  — Executive Summary of the COA’s 2022 Audit Report on the Philippine National Police (PNP),  based on PNP-provided data. —

Do you see anything “off” in that statement, Reader? 

What’s “off” is that the whole (total) is much less than the sum of its parts. Reader, do the arithmetic yourself.  The Commissioned Officers plus the Non-Commissioned Offices already add up to 232, 872; and if you include the cadets and the non-uniformed personnel, that adds up to 246,167.  (15,883 + 216,989 + 1-93 + 12,212 ≠ 230,284).  Nowhere near the 230,284 figure first cited in the quote.

What’s my point?  Well, if the PNP can’t even be trusted to provide us with the proper numbers and arithmetic on the size of their force, what other numbers can they be trusted with?  Can they be trusted with their numbers on index crimes committed, or on deaths because “nanlaban”, or on crime investigations undertaken, etc?  

Of course, this might be just a tempest in a teapot —  it may have been a typographical error,  or that by the remotest of chances, the COA misread police data wrong.  You decide, Reader. 

But the COA Report gives us other enlightening information.  It shows us what the PNP reported as their accomplishments “per Major Final Output (MFO) and Performance Indicators” for Calendar Year (CY) 2022.   There are three Major Final Outputs:  

1)Crime Prevention and Suppression Services;  

2) Crime Investigation Services;  and 

3)Police Education Program.  

In turn, MFO 1 (crime prevention) has three Performance Indicators (PI):  

(i) Number of foot and mobile patrol operations conducted,  

(ii) Percentage change in the National Index Crime  Rate (Index crimes include murder, homicide, physical injury, rape, robbery, theft, motorcycle theft and vehicle theft); and 

(iii) Percentage of crime incidents responded (to) within 15 minutes.  

MFO 2 (crime investigation) also has three:  

(i) Number of crime investigations undertaken, 

(ii) Percentage of most wanted persons/high value targets arrested, and 

(iii) Percentage of arrested persons within 30 days upon receipt of warrant of arrest.  

And MFO 3 (police education) also has three PIs:  

(i) Number of assessment and training needs (National Police Training Institute and Philippine National Police Academy);

(ii)  Percentage of total uniformed personnel completing training programs of the PNP for a School Year (Baccalaureate and and 4 mandatory courses); and 

(iii) Number of PNP personnel trained  in the Baccalaureate and Mandatory Courses.

The police give targets for each performance indicator, and report their accomplishments, for comparison against their targets.   Reader, their  accomplishments, as reported by them,  whole, impressive! 

For example, the PNP reported that they targeted 27.3 million foot and mobile patrol operations for 2022, and conducted 36.3 million, or 133% of target.  Skeptic that I am , whenever I see such an overachievement, my gut tells me that the target must have been too low in the first place.  So I looked at their 2021 report – and found out that the target and accomplishment for that year was 35.5 million and 33.1 million, respectively.  They had underachieved – met only 93% of target.

Why was their target for 2022 only 77% of what it was in 2021, considering at the very least, an increase in our population by over 1.4 million over the period, and that we were slowly winning the war against Covid.  Or, put in another way, if they conducted 33.1 million foot and mobile patrol operations in 2021, shouldn’t they have targeted at least that much for 2022, instead pf reducing their target to 27.3 million? 

And, as it turns out, the pattern of the PNP overachieving the targets was the same for all the other performance indicators:   the national index crime rate was targeted to be reduced by 6%, and the accomplishment was a 64% reduction; the percentage of most wanted persons/high value targets arrested was targeted at  a 5% increase, but instead, there was an 18% increase, etc.   The image the PNP wants to portray is a force that is so hardworking that their targets are not only achieved but they are left behind in the dust of the boots of the policemen working to achieve more.

I frankly don’t think the PNP take their targets seriously, in the sense of  trying to set realistic targets.  As additional evidence, I give you their PIs for Crime Investigation:  Their 2021 and 2022 targets  are identical for the number of crime investigations (522,301), for the percentage of most wanted persons arrested (5%) increase, percentage of persons arrested within 30 days after receipt of warrant of arrest (5% increase).  It doesn’t matter what their accomplishments were in 2021, they targeted the same percentage increase in 2022.  

As for the number of crime investigations, not only were the targets identical for both years, the accomplishments were also identical (365, 526).   Here, as you can see the target (522,301) was definitely underachieved, but the PNP managed to put themselves ahead:  they reported that (for both years, you understand) “the crime volume is significantly lower than the forecasted number of crimes for the year”.   Yet, according to the same report, national index crime rate decreased by only 2.55% in 2021, while it decreased by 64% in 2022. Go figure.

There was, however, one performance indicator where the PNP was man enough to admit their failure/could not fudge the data because it had nothing to do with crimes ,was in the area of MF0 3 – the Police Education Program:  of the 33,800 PNP personnel who were targeted to take  the mandatory Public Safety courses (Officers Candidate, Senior Leadership, Junior Leadership, Basic Recruit), only 12,683 took them, and only 642 passed.  Target: 100%.  Accomplishment:  1.89%.  There were reasons given for this, among which were the National and Local Elections.  Good grief!  What a lame excuse. The 2022 elections were known to everybody. 

To summarize:  the PNP, according to the PNP , have achieved and greatly overachieved the 2022 operational targets they have set for themselves involving crime prevention/suppression, crime investigation, and police education.  They will admit to only two failures:  in the number of crime investigations (but that is because the number of crimes significantly decreased, they say) and the number of PNP personnel who have passed the mandatory courses for police non-commissioned officers.  

  Watch Out For:  The PNP, through the eyes of their victims (as recounted to international NGOs)