Presidential Decree No. 765

Also known as: PD 765 · The INP charter (the decree constituting the Integrated National Police) · Decree constituting the Integrated National Police (descriptive short form) · The PC–INP decree (the joint command it created)

Government

Definition

Presidential Decree No. 765 (August 8, 1975), long titled “Providing for the Constitution of the Integrated National Police and for Other Purposes,” is the martial-law-era decree by which President Ferdinand E. Marcos established the Integrated National Police (INP) — the national police force of the Philippines from 1975 to 1991, organized with the Philippine Constabulary as its nucleus and the integrated local police forces as components, functioning directly under the Department of National Defense. Invoking the 1973 Constitution’s mandate that the State “establish and maintain an integrated national police force,” the decree consolidated the police, fire, and jail services that Presidential Decrees Nos. 421, 482, 531, 585, and 641 had integrated in stages from 1974, and made the Chief of Constabulary, as Director-General, commander of all its elements. (LawPhil — PD 765)

The decree remained the INP’s charter until Republic Act No. 6975 (December 13, 1990) dissolved the PC–INP structure and merged both into the civilian Philippine National Police activated on January 29, 1991 — the institutional history traced in this wiki’s entry on the Integrated National Police. This entry examines the decree itself: its seventeen sections, its placement of fire and jail services inside the police force, its transfer of local supervisory control to the Constabulary, and its repeal of the Police Act of 1966. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — RA 6975)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A (covered under Integrated National Police)
Wikidata	N/A
DBpedia	N/A
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	“Presidential Decree No. 765” Integrated National Police Philippine Constabulary 1975 Philippines
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

PD 765
The INP charter (the decree constituting the Integrated National Police)
Decree constituting the Integrated National Police (descriptive short form)
The PC–INP decree (the joint command it created)

Examples and Analogies

A charter bolted onto earlier decrees: PD 765 opens by citing PDs 421, 482, 531, 585, and 641, which had already merged city and municipal police, fire departments, and jails into the Metropolitan Police Force of the Greater Manila Area and provincial integrated forces — the decree then gathered those units into one national body, like a holding company absorbing firms consolidated the year before. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — PD 421)
Nucleus and components: Section 1’s architecture — the Constabulary as nucleus, the integrated forces as components — meant every INP headquarters was built on an existing PC headquarters at the national, zone/regional, and provincial levels, jointly staffed by constabulary, police, jail, and fire officers. (LawPhil — PD 765)
The police force that ran fire trucks and jails: Section 2 charged the INP not only with law enforcement but with fire prevention and control and the detention of offenders — a design undone only in 1991, when fire and jail work were separated into civilian bureaus. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — RA 6975)
Verified statutory data:
Signed: August 8, 1975, by President Ferdinand E. Marcos; effective upon approval
Structure: 17 sections, with a preamble citing PDs 421, 482, 531, 585, and 641; Commonwealth Act No. 343 (1938); Executive Order No. 389 (1950); and Section 12, Article XV of the 1973 Constitution
Head: Director-General, ex officio the Chief of Constabulary (Section 3)
Penal clause: obstruction punished by 3–6 years’ imprisonment and/or a ₱5,000–₱10,000 fine, with lifetime disqualification for public officers (Section 13)
Repealed: Republic Act No. 4864 (Police Act of 1966) as amended by twelve earlier decrees, city charters, and the Revised Administrative Code (Section 15)
Superseded by: Republic Act No. 6975 (December 13, 1990)

Usage Scenarios

1. Constituting a National Police by Decree

Sections 1 through 4 are the operative constitution of the force: the INP is established with the PC as nucleus under national defense; its jurisdiction covers public safety, protection of lives and property, law enforcement, and peace and order nationwide; the Chief of Constabulary as Director-General commands all elements; and the Constabulary’s staffs serve the INP in joint headquarters — the legal machinery behind the PC–INP command described in this wiki’s entry on the Integrated National Police. (LawPhil — PD 765)

2. Integrating Fire and Jail Services

The decree’s coverage of fire and jails was explicit: Section 2 includes fire prevention and control and the detention of offenders among INP responsibilities; Section 4 authorizes joint staffing by constabulary, police, jail, and fire officers; and Sections 9 and 10 extend the National Police Commission’s disciplinary and benefit jurisdictions to firemen and jail guards. The arrangement lasted until RA 6975 separated fire and jail services into civilian bureaus under the Department of the Interior and Local Government. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — RA 6975)

3. Transferring Control from Local Governments

Section 9 moved the administrative supervision and control that city and municipal governments held over their police forces, jails, and fire departments to the Chief of Constabulary as Director-General — cutting mayors out of the command chain over their own forces, while the Section 16 transitory clause obliged those same local governments to keep funding salaries, benefits, and logistical support until implementing rules issued. (LawPhil — PD 765)

4. Disciplining and Compelling the Force’s Cooperation

Section 11 armed the Chief of Constabulary with subpoena and subpoena duces tecum powers for INP-cognizable investigations, and Section 13 punished obstruction or interference with the decree or its implementing rules with 3–6 years’ imprisonment and/or a ₱5,000–₱10,000 fine — adding lifetime disqualification from public office when the offender was a public officer. (LawPhil — PD 765)

5. Repealing the Old Police Statutes and Being Repealed in Turn

Section 15 swept away Republic Act No. 4864, the Police Act of 1966, as amended by PD Nos. 1, 12, 12-A, 12-B, 170, 421, 448, 482, 531, 580, 585, and 641, together with city charter police provisions and the Revised Administrative Code’s relevant portions; sixteen years later RA 6975 did the same to the decree’s creation, merging the PC and INP into the Philippine National Police. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — RA 6975)

Strategies

Integration by decree, in stages: the Marcos government first consolidated Greater Manila’s forces under PD 421 (1974) and the provinces under the 1974–75 decrees, then used PD 765 to nationalize the whole — centralization completed without legislative deliberation, in the martial-law manner examined in this wiki’s entry on Martial Law in the Philippines. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — PD 421)
Dual-hatted command: lodging the Director-Generalship in the Chief of Constabulary (Section 3), while Section 5 kept the PC a major service of the Armed Forces, fused the military and police chains into one hierarchy answerable to the President through the Defense Secretary (Section 7). (LawPhil — PD 765)
Absorbing the civilian regulator: Section 8 transferred the National Police Commission to the Department of National Defense with the Secretary as concurrent chairman, and Section 9 parceled out NAPOLCOM’s operational functions to the INP. (LawPhil — PD 765)
Nationalizing the payroll without paying for it: Section 6 made INP members employees of the National Government, while Section 16 left local governments carrying the actual costs during the transition — national control on local money. (LawPhil — PD 765)

Security and Safety Measures

Single chain of command for public safety: Section 2’s assignment of crime prevention, investigation, arrest, detention, fire control, and public-safety duties to one force, and Section 3’s unitary command, were designed to eliminate the fragmentation of roughly 1,500 local forces. (LawPhil — PD 765)
Military discipline as the regime’s safeguard: building the INP on the Constabulary nucleus subjected civil policing to Armed Forces discipline and the President’s command under Section 7 — the loyalty mechanism of the martial-law state, criticized after 1986 as the system’s core defect. (LawPhil — PD 765, Wikipedia — Integrated National Police)
Penal protection of the integration: Section 13’s criminal sanctions against obstruction, with lifetime disqualification for public officers, protected the reorganization from local official resistance. (LawPhil — PD 765)
Career-service status: Section 6 placed policemen, jail guards, and firemen in the civil-service career category even while exempting them from standard wage classification. (LawPhil — PD 765)
The eventual civilianization: the durable safeguard proved to be legislative reversal — RA 6975’s placement of the successor Philippine National Police under a civilian interior department, the direct answer to the decree’s militarized design. (LawPhil — RA 6975, Wikipedia — Philippine National Police)

Historical Context

PD 765 was signed on August 8, 1975, three years into martial law, as the capstone of the decrees that had begun amalgamating local police, fire, and jail services with PD 421’s Metropolitan Police Force in March 1974. Its preamble invoked the Constabulary’s statutory pedigree — Commonwealth Act No. 343 of 1938 and Executive Order No. 389 of 1950, sketched in this wiki’s entry on the Philippine Constabulary — and the 1973 Constitution’s mandate for an integrated national police, fusing the fragmented local services into a single DND-controlled force commanded by the Chief of Constabulary. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — PD 421, Wikipedia — Philippine Constabulary)

The decree governed Philippine policing for over fifteen years, through the professionalization measures of the late 1970s and the transition after the 1986 People Power Revolution, under which the PC–INP continued to operate. The December 1989 coup attempt discredited military policing, and Republic Act No. 6975 of December 13, 1990 ended the decree’s system: the Constabulary and the INP were merged into the Philippine National Police activated at Camp Crame on January 29, 1991, with fire and jail services spun off to new bureaus — the constitutional order dismantling the last major martial-law security structure. (LawPhil — RA 6975, Wikipedia — Integrated National Police)

Challenges and Controversies

Rule by Decree

PD 765 never passed a legislature: it was decreed under martial law, justified by a constitutional provision of the 1973 Charter itself installed under disputed circumstances. Its wholesale repeal of the Police Act of 1966 and of city charter provisions — the work of Congress and of the cities themselves — by presidential fiat remains the standing illustration of how the martial-law period reorganized the state without legislative deliberation. (LawPhil — PD 765)

Militarization of Civilian Policing

The decree’s placement of the INP under the Department of National Defense, with the Chief of Constabulary — a serving general leading a major AFP service under Section 5 — as Director-General, is the structural controversy of Philippine police history; critics treated the “national police” as a militarization of civil policing, and RA 6975’s civilian redesign is the legislative verdict on that critique. (LawPhil — PD 765, LawPhil — RA 6975)

The Stripping of Local Control

Section 9’s transfer of administrative supervision and control from city and municipal governments to the Chief of Constabulary — while Section 16 kept the same localities paying and supplying their police, jails, and fire departments — removed the local accountability built into city charters, an arrangement reversed only by the post-1986 local-government framework. (LawPhil — PD 765)

The Record of the Force It Created

The INP the decree constituted accumulated, over its sixteen years, documented accusations of violence, abuse, corruption, and illegal activities severe enough to force repeated government disciplinary and image-improvement programs — the human-rights record that frames both the 1987 Constitution’s civil-liberties restoration and the 1990–1991 decision to dismantle the PC–INP, as recorded in this wiki’s entries on the Integrated National Police and Martial Law in the Philippines. (Wikipedia — Integrated National Police, Wikipedia — Philippine Constabulary)