MANILA, Philippines—This police officer is only too glad to disappoint those who look down on Filipinos.
Senior Supt. Benigno Durana Jr. seizes every opportunity to disprove the seeming First World impression that the Filipino could not do anything beyond the menial.
And he does so in Caucasia as deputy chief strategist at the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), helping reform the restive nation’s traditionalist police force through lessons he learned back home.
“This is my opportunity to disappoint people who look down on Filipinos. This is the best time for us to prove them wrong,” said 44-year-old Durana, a Philippine Military Academy cum laude graduate, who has spent 18 years in the police force.
Show the best
“It’s an opportunity to show the best in the Filipino, when many foreigners look down on Filipinos. But no, we can do better than you. Let’s not be trapped in the mentality that ‘I am just a Filipino.’ So what if I have this dark skin? I can deliver,” said an impassioned Durana in an interview in Camp Crame’s Program Management Office, the police force’s reform arm he had helped pioneer in 2005.
Durana, once the police chief of crime-plagued Cubao District in Quezon City and the provincial director of tourist haven Aklan, joined UNOMIG in September last year as deputy senior police adviser. The six-month tour followed his stint as chief of strategic information for the UN contingent in East Timor.
Russia-Georgia war
One of three Filipino policemen contracted by UNOMIG, Durana arrived in the former Soviet state when the dust had yet to settle between Russia and Georgia, which engaged in armed conflict over the latter’s breakaway regions—south Ossetia and Abkhazia.
UNOMIG was born 15 years earlier to oversee Georgia and its breakaway regions’ compliance with a 1993 ceasefire agreement.
The observer mission also maintains a ceasefire zone between Georgia and its separatist territories.
Community-oriented police
Arriving on the heels of heavy bombardment in the conflict zone, Durana was assigned to help reform Georgia’s police from brute force to community-oriented policing, a perspective he had introduced in previous assignments in the Philippine National Police.
With Durana on the mission are Supt. Jose Rony Forro, also a police adviser, and Dr. Nerino Daciego, a Russian-speaking superintendent at the PNP Crime Laboratory.
But the Filipino policemen had no worries about their security, citing the UN’s role as a neutral organization in the conflict.
“We are out of harm’s way. We are not there to enforce the law, but we are there to ensure that the peace agreement is observed by both parties,” said Durana, who obtained a doctorate in Peace and Security Administration at the Bicol University.
Problem as opportunity
By “looking at every problem as an opportunity,” Durana is at the frontline of orienting Georgia police to the kind the United Nations wants its member-states to pursue: “Democratic policing, where officers do their job to serve the people, not to impress their bosses.”
“I would like to help them realize that the ultimate goal of policing is to improve quality of life, not just catch criminals, making arrests one after another,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Jan. 16, on the eve of his flight back to Georgia to finish his tour that ends in April.
Citing the PNP’s exposure to training under Western expertise, Durana said: “The PNP has a lot to offer to these emerging law enforcement agencies.”
Public servant
This turnaround from commando to public servant is what the PNP has also been aiming to instill in its 120,000 members through the Integrated Transformation Program (ITP), which Durana helped put together three years ago.
The program encourages the development of leaders at all PNP levels, from the headquarters to the station “because the PNP [head office] can’t provide you with everything,” said Durana, who faced this first-hand as city and provincial police chief.
“The police in Georgia are very mission-oriented, very military, traditionalist in approaching their job because of the security environment. Right now, we’re starting to build rapport first,” he said.
Lessons are packaged as bite-size ideas to avoid overwhelming the usually stern-faced Georgian police officers, who are used to gauging success based on their arrest count.
“They won’t care about what you know unless they know you care,” he said.
Quality circles
Borrowing a PNP practice, Durana also organized “quality circles,” an informal discussion group proven more effective than traditional lectures to translate ideas into “doables.”
He learned this during his years as top cop in the Cubao commercial area, known to be a hub of robbers, pickpockets and illegal trade. Through his campaign “Police Cubao, Love Kayo,” Durana helped improve public perception of cops and encouraged community participation in fighting crime.
Within his term, from 2003 to 2005, Durana also enforced the “No Take” policy, a campaign against bribery known to have been rampant at the Cubao police station at the time.
Bribe offers
And to show that he practiced what he was advocating, Durana said he constantly rejected several bribe offers from business establishments and illegal rings in the area, among them jueteng (illegal numbers game) operators, nightclub owners and illegal vendors.
Monthly offers ranged from P80,000 to P100,000.
In his last year at the station, Durana was among the “Country’s Outstanding Policemen in Service” in the national search of the Metrobank Foundation Inc. and the Rotary Club New Manila East. Also in 2005, Durana was declared Best Senior Police Commissioned Officer for Operations in all of Metro Manila.
Boracay
As police chief in Aklan from January 2007 until early last year, he imposed a centralized port system for commuter boats in Boracay, banning the usual practice of docking straight at the beach.
Despite resistance from stakeholders, Durana said he succeeded in enforcing the scheme and finally cleared the white sand coastline of docking boats.
“We should stop the “tama na yan, OK na yan” thinking,” said Durana, sharing a lesson by which he has been raising his children Miguel Christian, 14, and Kristina Mae, 12.
“Reform will take generations, but the seeds must be sown. Allow it to germinate and think about the future generations that will reap it,” he said. Inquirer.net
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