Koko welcomes Du30 order not retrain rogue cops

Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III on Tuesday praised the decision of President Rodrigo Duterte to reject a plan by the Philippine National Police (PNP) to retrain police officers involved in misconducts.

President Duterte on Sunday said that erring cops should remain "suspended all over," saying that putting them under retraining process will not make them better cops but rather "better scalawags."

"This only shows President Duterte's political will to cleanse the ranks of the PNP of hoodlum cops", said Pimentel.

The PNP earlier revealed that some 387 policemen have been recalled and reassigned inside Camp Crame to undergo disciplinary retraining.

Pimentel said that there is no place for rogue cops anywhere in the country and they should be sacked immediately once proven guilty of committing illicit activities.

Pimentel is the highest official to criticize the old PNP practice of reassigning erring policemen to Mindanao.

He said that the Mindanao region also deserves honest and disciplined law enforcers like the rest of the country.

Pimentel said that bad cops should go directly to jail if proven guilty rather than being redeployed in other areas, particularly in Mindanao.

Pimentel, the author of the NBI Modernization Law, also called on the National Bureau of Investigation to task on Saturday for "squandering a precious opportunity" to become an "effective, modern, and competent investigative body" as envisioned in the law he sponsored modernizing the agency.

Pimentel's comments on the country's law enforcement agencies came in the heels of the kidnap-slay of Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo last October, a crime which allegedly involved officials in both the PNP and NBI.