PRO-6 to field commander: Make police visible 24/7

By Jennifer P. Rendon

Being a policeman is a 24/7 job: there are no weekends or holidays.

This, Brigadier General Sidney Villaflor, Western Visayas police chief, emphasized as he ordered all field commanders “to make your uniformed personnel visible even on weekends, mornings, noontime, nighttime and even wee hours in the morning.”

Villaflor said they should initiate mobile checkpoints, foot patrols, mobile patrols, motorcycle patrols, and even barangay visitations, among others.

And as he repeatedly said, “you are paid well, so they must perform well.”

To further reinforce his instructions to put more uniformed personnel on the field, Villaflor has caused the relief of 68 personnel assigned in the Police Regional Office (PRO) 6 headquarters doing menial and duplicated or redundant administrative duties.

This came after his initiated conference with the Regional Personnel and Human Resource Doctrine Division on Saturday (June 10) evening.

They would be reassigned to Iloilo City Police Office to perform field duties.

“I personally directed the City Director (Colonel Joeresty Coronica) to deploy them to perform mobile checkpoints, foot, mobile and motorcycle patrols, which are essentially police visibility duties,” he said.

During his subsequent visits to different police provincial and city in the days to come, Villaflor said he shall also keenly look into their units’ personnel statistics and profile.

“I will implement the 85-15 ratio of deployment of personnel,” he said explaining that only 15 percent of the personnel complement shall perform administrative duties while 85 while shall perform operational duties.

The policy of 15-85% deployment of police personnel has been practiced even by previous commanders in a bid to maximize availability of personnel for actual law enforcement and public safety operations.

The 85-15 day scheme will allow 85 percent of officers performing actual police duties, leaving only 15 percent to desk jobs.