The spotlight has shifted to the 3,000-member Davao City Police Office after its police director decided to subject his personnel to random drug tests, beginning Thursday morning.
Initial results of the ongoing drug test were not made available to reports as of Thursday afternoon.
DCPO director Sr. Supt. Alexander Tagum bared that the drug test sought to ensure that the whole city police is free from the use of illegal drugs. “We are receiving text messages that are not validated, maybe to ruin our police’s reputation, that is the reason why we are conducting this drug test to validate those reports,” he said.
He said there are about 100 personnel who are being ordered to undergo drug testing to validate the reports the office received.
Tagum said the surprise drug tests being conducted will also discouraged his personnel to use or be involved on illegal drugs.
He said all personnel of all departments of DCPO excluding the police station, have undergone the drug testing yesterday. Tagum said he already ordered all station commanders in the city to conduct surprise drug tests to their stations.
He said anyone who will be found positive on the use of illegal drugs will be automatically relived from their office and be investigated. Tagum said during the relief of the personnel, a confirmatory drug text will be conducted to the personnel who found positive, and if found positive again the police will be dismissed from police service. “Upon final validation that they are indeed drug users, I am sorry for them because the directive of our chief PNP is outright dismissal,” he said.
Tagum said the Thursday’s random drug test is the first time in DCPO under his term. As of the press time, results were not yet released to Davao reporters since the process was still ongoing.
