352 robbery, 28 rape, 34 killing cases a day
Recto: Next pres must fill 24K vacant PNP posts

With one woman or child raped every 50 minutes, whoever is sworn in as president in June 30 should declare as national priority combatting violence against women, Sen. Ralph Recto said today.

To fight rape and other crimes, the next president should immediately fill 23,820 vacant positions in the roster of the Philippine National Police (PNP) "to put more boots on street patrol," Recto said.

Just filling these posts, Recto said, will give the nation's 1,489 towns an additional 12 policemen each, "and 41 more policemen for each of the 145 cities."

The first step in fighting crime, Recto said, "is a police surge." The PNP, he explained, has 174,410 "authorized uniformed personnel positions" of which only 150,590 are filled.

"Malaking bagay ang dagdag na pulis," Recto said. "Lahat ng bayan at siyudad sa Pilipinas nagrereklamo na kulang sila sa pulis."

Based on the Commission on Population estimate that the country's population will reach 104 million this year, "then we have a 1 cop per 690 persons ratio," Recto said.

"But this is on paper, and on the assumption that all cops are on duty at the same time, all the time. May shifts yan, ang iba naka-leave, or schooling, or suspended, or naka-headquarters duty. So ang actual number of cops on duty at a given time is really small," Recto said.

Recto said the official rape statistics underscore the need to hire more cops and buy more police equipment.

"Last year, rape cases reported to the police and other law enforcement agencies reached 10,298, up from 9,887 in 2014," the reelectionist senator said.

The real number, he added, could be higher as many assaults go unreported.

But what is more disturbing, he said, is the larger picture which depicts a rising trend in violence committed against women and children

In 2014, the PNP reported 40,220 Violence Against Women (VAW) incidents and 38,269 cases of abuse inflicted on children.

"This means every six minutes, a child or a woman is being hurt somewhere," Recto, a common candidate of the Liberal Party, Partido Galing at Puso, and the Santiago-Marcos ticket, said.

That's the almost same frequency of reported crimes against property in the country today, he said.

"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

"There were 12,900 vehicles stolen last year," Recto said, citing a PNP report.

Recto also scored "the brazenness and the impunity" by which murder is committed nowadays, with cases of murder reaching 9,643 last year. The PNP also recorded 2,835 homicide incidents.

"One murder or homicide is committed every 42 minutes. That would 34 every 24 hours. Yung nakaw, 352 cases kada araw," Recto said.

"So let us recruit more cops. Let us make sure that they are sent to do street patrol. Let us also make sure that every station has a Women's and Children's Desk," Recto said.

This can be done by earmarking and reserving for women a certain percentage of the number of police officers to be hired in a year, the senator added.

Recto also said that cases of violence committed against LGBTs should now be officially tallied.

"This is an underreported segment in collating crime statistics. If we know the depth and dimension of hate crimes, the more we are equipped to offer protection," he said.