PNP history and organisation for the NAPOLCOM exam: how the PNP came to be, and how it is built.

For most of the twentieth century the Philippines had two police forces. The Philippine Constabulary, founded in 1901 under the American administration, was a national force and, from 1935, one of the major services of the Armed Forces. The local police were municipal and city forces, brought together in 1975 as the Integrated National Police under Presidential Decree 765, with the Constabulary as its nucleus and its chief as INP director-general.

The 1987 Constitution ended that arrangement in principle. Article XVI, Section 6 directs the State to establish and maintain one police force, national in scope and civilian in character, administered and controlled by a national police commission. RA 6975 carried that out.

Republic Act No. 6975, the Department of the Interior and Local Government Act of 1990, was signed on 13 December 1990 and took effect on 1 January 1991. It reorganised the Department of Local Government into the DILG and created the Philippine National Police under it, absorbing the Constabulary and the Integrated National Police. The PNP was formally established on 29 January 1991, which the PNP marks as its anniversary.

The same act placed the PNP under the administrative control and operational supervision of the National Police Commission, which it reconstituted as an agency attached to the DILG. It also created, within the Department, the Bureau of Fire Protection and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, which took over the fire and jail functions the Constabulary and INP had carried, and the Philippine Public Safety College.

The National Police Commission exercises administrative control and operational supervision over the PNP. Its lineage runs from the Police Commission created by the Police Act of 1966 (RA 4864), renamed the National Police Commission by PD 765 in 1975, and reconstituted under the DILG by RA 6975 in 1990. RA 8551 in 1998 strengthened it.

Under RA 8551 the Commission is composed of a Chairperson, four regular Commissioners, and the Chief of the PNP as ex officio member. The Secretary of the Interior and Local Government is the ex officio Chairperson; one of the regular Commissioners is designated Vice-Chairperson and Executive Officer. NAPOLCOM administers the entrance and promotional examinations, sets the qualification standards, and hears administrative cases; it is the body whose name is on your Notice of Admission.

The PNP is headed by the Chief of the PNP, who holds the rank of Police General and is appointed by the President from among the most senior officers. Below the Chief are two deputy chiefs (for administration and for operations) and the Chief of the Directorial Staff. National headquarters is at Camp Crame in Quezon City.

The command structure runs from national headquarters to the police regional offices, one per administrative region, then to the provincial and city police offices, and finally to the municipal and city police stations, which are the operating units most citizens meet. Alongside the line structure sit the administrative and operational support units that RA 6975 provides for: among them the crime laboratory, logistics, communications and finance on the administrative side, and the maritime, intelligence, security, criminal investigation, special action, aviation security, traffic and civil relations units on the operational side.