Bring in the ‘Hokage’ cops

By Cong Corrales

AS the “ninja cops” issue hounds the entire Philippine National Police, a journo-friend’s talk show based in Manila carried an interesting subject yesterday.

In Melo Acuña’s Tapatan sa Aristocrat carried the talking point: “After a series of controversies, we’d like to find out appropriate measures to improve the general public’s perception of the Philippine National Police.”

Among the confirmed discussants invited were the former Interior secretary Rafael Alunan III, Board of Criminology Professional Regulatory Board chair lawyer Ramil Gabao, Caloocan City Anti-Drug Abuse Council head Atty. Sikini Labastilla, and PNP Deputy Chief for Public Information Col. Eric Noble.

My knee-jerk reaction to my friend’s invitation to his talk show, which is also streamed live via Facebook, was to tell him that there is nothing wrong with the general public’s perception of our country’s finest. The rotten tomatoes, so to speak, have been eating the whole organization from the inside out is doing that spectacularly, I must say.

Let us define what perception is. In the field of psychology, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. In Biology, perception is the mental interpretation of physical sensations produced by stimuli from the outside world.

In short, perception is a phenomenon borne out of the principle that the community, in general, is a social construct built on mutual trust and respect. Public perception, then, can be viewed as the gap that divides the absolute truth-based facts and a virtual version of it molded by popular opinion, mainstream media reportage, and by how you drum up your reputation. The last part, in press relations lingo, is called “re-branding.”

There are five main stages in forming public perception.

Stimulation. As the first stage, this is a delicate one because you have to focus on what is happening that you want people to catch attention to. Stimulation can happen via the humans’ five senses. However, in this age of social media platforms, it entails stimulating the visual and auditory senses of the people.

Organization. The human brain organizes sensory perception with events by familiar packets of events. By connecting familiar packets of past general public experiences help the person understand what is happening in his “outside world.” This is the way to disseminate large quantities of information in the fastest way possible.

Interpretation. When the key packets of information of experience are recognized, people apply their own biases to it through self-assessment or what is called simply as interpretation. By relating past common experiences, belief systems, and moral values, people could then decide what the event is and how to react accordingly, in a manner that they think they came up with by themselves.

Memory. For perception to take root, these organized familiar packets of events must be committed to memory, preferably the long-term memory. Humans use these prefabricated associations with their internal belief systems and experiences, along with the biases (read: personal evaluations) formed within them, to recall this planted perception at will.

Recall. By retrieving the planted perception much later will automatically bring about the most important details of it. Gaps in the recall of a particular planted perception are usually filled in by “planter” of the perception to rethink the situation again. Incessant recall also improves the supposed accuracy of this stage.

In its latest Perils of Perception survey, Ipsos MORI highlighted “how wrong the general public across 40 countries and districts are about key global issues and features of the population in their country.”

Among the key patterns Ipsos MORI found out were:

• All countries think their population is less happy than they actually say they are.

• Nearly all countries think wealth is more evenly distributed than it actually is.

Methinks, that to be able to pull this off, the national police should do more than “improving” the general public’s perception of them. It should seriously seek out and root out the decades-long corrupt practices, without fear or favor.

On the one hand, Filipinos have been witnesses to the rampant killing of the poor. On the other hand, Filipinos also witnessed how these public servants, who deemed the poor need not undergo a due process, cry justice and due process like they alone are entitled to it. After all, they are the state’s coercive instrument.

For the sake of argument, let’s use the organization’s number of those killed under this administration’s war on drugs. How can you sweep under the rug the 2,000 killings through improving the general public’s perception of your organization?

Don’t get me wrong. I know many police officers that I respect and I know personally that they want a substantial change within their ranks. These people who committed the most productive years of their lives to serve and protect.

So, what I’m suggesting is that for the PNP to hurdle this “ninja cops” issue and assuage the growing fear of people in its own police force is to bring in the “Hokage” police officers. Police officers who have upstanding credibility and command respect from their rank and file.