With the disclosure that President Rodrigo Duterte is interested in reviving the now dissolved Philippine Constabulary (PC) in his fight against illegal drugs, curiosity in the defunct institution, which was established during the American period as replacement of the Spanish guardia civil, has surged to a new high.
Actually, it was the Philippine Commission that first broached the idea to create the PC to hunt down the anti-colonial Filipino revolutionarios. When this mission was accomplished, the agency was retained, this time as a government arm imbued with the task to run after criminals, especially rustlers and brigands, and local insurgents.
In The Philippine Islands, Fred W. Atkinson, the first general superintendent of Education, described the PC as an entity that took over the military responsibility from the US Army Volunteers in “maintaining peace in all the provinces that have been organized under civil rule.”
Historically, the PC, first led by West Point alumnus Captain Henry T. Allen of the 6th US Cavalry, was founded on Aug. 18, 1901 by the authority of the second Philippine Commission under Act No. 175. It was supervised by the American civil governor-general of the Philippines.
In organizing, managing, and training the evolving civilian police agency, Captain Allen enlisted the support of four other army officers, all with the rank of captains, namely David Baker, W. Goldsborough, H. Atkinson, and J.S. Garwood. Two Filipinos were commissioned as third lieutenants in the corps during its first month. They were Jose Velasquez of Nueva Ecija and Felix Llorente of Manila.
John Morgan Gates, in Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1898-1902, explained the role of the PC in the American pacification campaign:
“The constabulary, separate from both the army and the municipal police, consisted of units of no more than 150 men in each province. Enlisted members were drawn from the provinces in which the units were formed, but officers or inspectors were drawn chiefly, but not exclusively, from the ranks of the American army…
“The commission had sought the development of such a force since 1900, and it had been both impressed with the effectiveness of the army’s Filipino scouts and the limited ability of municipal police forces to deal with problems of lawlessness outside of their immediate village surroundings. The advantages of Filipino troops, with their ability to distinguish between members of the native population, their knowledge of Filipino languages and customs, their familiarity with local terrain features, and their access to intelligence data had already been demonstrated. From its beginning the Philippine Constabulary was a success…
“The [PC] was particularly adept at dealing with the problem of brigandage that had plagued the Philippines for centuries. Although poorly armed with shotguns and .45 caliber revolvers because of the fear that members of the force might desert to the revolutionaries with their weapons, the constabulary tracked and brought to bay numerous bands of ladrones. As a police force its effectiveness was unquestioned. It also contributed to the more pressing problem of ending the guerrilla war and achieving a state of complete pacification in the islands.”
By November 1901 the PC has nearly 1,000 enlisted men, and by the end of the year, it had 160 commissioned officers. A month later, the agency had almost 3,000 uniformed men carrying the mission to keep peace and assist the army in pacifying troubled areas.
On Jan. 30, 1903, Howard Taft, the country’s civil governor, signed a law that further institutionalized the PC. The Act, passed by the Congress of the United States, sought “to promote the efficiency of the Philippine Constabulary, to establish the rank and pay of its commanding officers, and for other purposes.”
Central to the new Act was the detail of officers from the US Army in the PC as chief and assistant chiefs, but their number was limited to four. The chiefs assumed the rank, pay, and allowance of a brigadier-general, while the assistants got the amenities afforded to a colonel. The law also mandated that companies of Philippine Scouts tapped to help maintain peace and order were placed only under the command of the PC chief or his assistant chiefs.
When the National Defense Act was passed in 1935, the PC became the central command of the Philippine Army, causing its deactivation and transforming it into a subsidiary agency of the AFP known as Constabulary Division. As a result, the insular police duties the PC was handling was turned over to another unit created by Commonwealth Act No. 88 on Oct. 26, 1936.
When US President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a state of emergency in the US mainland and all it overseas possessions, the PC was placed under the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) and became part of the national defense of the islands with three infantry regiments created under it. In the post-war era, it was merged with the national police during martial law but was later subsume under the Philippine National Police (PNP) on Jan. 29, 1991.
Acknowledged as the first service command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the PC was known worldwide for its band, formed by Col. Walter Loving on Oct. 15, 1902 at the behest of the governor-general. The 86-piece pre-war Philippine Constabulary Band toured the United States, lead the inaugural parade of Taft’s 1909 presidential investiture, performed at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and invited to the 1915 World’s Fair.
During the Martial Law era (1972-1981), the PC and its soulmate, the Integrated National Police (INP), were labeled as “messengers of death.”
