PHILIPPINE National Police chief Director General Nicanor A. Bartolome yesterday maintained that they are strictly maintaining a rights-based policing system with all police personnel under instruction to fully observe police operational procedures.

“The promotion of rights-based policing is a norm in the service where we fully develop human rights help desks in all police stations and where all our officers and men are under constant instruction to fully and strictly adhere to the basic tenet of human rights with emphasis on police operational procedures to plug loopholes,” Bartolome said.

Bartolome on Friday ordered Police Regional Office 3 director Chief Superintendent Edgardo T. Ladao to conduct a full-dress investigation into alleged operational lapses by the police in an encounter with armed robbers in San Fernando City in Pampanga last Wednesday.

The PNP chief ordered the investigation after viewing a video footage aired by ANC and ABS-CBN’s Channel 2 showing a police officer casually firing a shot at an apparently dead suspect.

Bartolome said that the investigation will not be limited to the alleged violation of police operational procedures by police personnel involved but will also go as far up as their immediate superior officers under the doctrine of command responsibility.

The three slain suspects reportedly had just pulled off a heist when they were intercepted by pursuing policemen. Seized from their possession were several loaded firearms.

Use of non-lethal force is a strict policy being prioritized by the Philippine National Police as part of its strict adherence to human rights, said Bartolome.

Bartolome emphasized that the promotion of human rights in the PNP as a key result area of the ongoing integrated transformation program of the PNP  is one of the most challenging yet fulfilling aspects of police reform.

He said that mainstreaming human rights-based approaches in law enforcement is the very embodiment of the PP Motto “We Serve and Protect.’