Act No. 70

Also known as: An Act Providing for the Organization of Three Companies of Police for the City of Manila and Neighboring Towns — the long title · The Act creating the Metropolitan Police Force of Manila — the styling used by its amending statute · The Manila police act of 1901 · The founding act of the Manila Police District

Faura's successor at the Observatory, the Captain and the scoring star of Purefoods, and Manila's founding police statute

Definition

Act No. 70 — formally “An Act Providing for the Organization of Three Companies of Police for the City of Manila and Neighboring Towns” — is the statute enacted by the United States Philippine Commission on January 9, 1901, taking effect on its passage, by which the Metropolitan Police Force of Manila was raised: three companies, each of one captain, one first lieutenant, one second lieutenant, eight sergeants, eight corporals, and one hundred privates — 357 officers and men in all — selected from the American Volunteer soldiery serving in the islands and paid in United States currency, from $65 a month for a private to $150 for a captain. (LawPhil — Act No. 70) The Act directed the Provost-Marshal-General, “under the supervision of the Military Governor,” to raise and equip the force, fixed its name, and authorized its use beyond ordinary police duties “in any other part of the Islands” — the founding record this wiki’s Manila Police District entry carries as the birth of the country’s oldest police institution. (LawPhil — Act No. 70, Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

The statute’s life as law was short but its institutional line was long. Seventeen days after enactment, Act No. 77 (January 26, 1901) amended its manpower clause, striking “American volunteer soldiery now serving” and admitting “honorably discharged soldiers and sailors of the United States who are now serving or have served”; the force itself predated the incorporation of Manila as a chartered city, which came only with Act No. 183 of July 31, 1901 — the charter that constituted the city as a municipality under an appointed Municipal Board with city departments including police. (LawPhil — Act No. 77, Supreme Court E-Library — Act No. 183) The Metropolitan Police Force became the Manila Police Department, the Western Police District of the Integrated National Police in 1975, a district of the Philippine National Police from 1991, and again the Manila Police District on July 20, 2005 — the succession the district’s own record carries. (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	No standalone article; the statute is documented within the Manila Police District article (verified this session) (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_Police_District
Wikidata	N/A — no matching entity found in a session search for the act or the Metropolitan Police Force	N/A
DBpedia	N/A — data endpoint unreachable this session (ETIMEDOUT)	N/A
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	Act No. 70 Philippine Commission 1901 Metropolitan Police Force Manila American colonial policing provost marshal	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Act+No.+70%22+Manila+police+1901
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

An Act Providing for the Organization of Three Companies of Police for the City of Manila and Neighboring Towns — the long title
The Act creating the Metropolitan Police Force of Manila — the styling used by its amending statute
The Manila police act of 1901
The founding act of the Manila Police District

Examples and Analogies

A company of soldiers as a police force: the Act copied the army’s anatomy whole — companies, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, privates — so that the first Manila police force was organized, paid, and manned like the volunteer units it was recruited from. (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
A force before its city: the police force of January 1901 predates the charter that incorporated the City of Manila itself in July 1901 — the city’s oldest institution older than the city’s corporate existence, the sequence the district’s anniversary record turns on. (LawPhil — Act No. 70, Supreme Court E-Library — Act No. 183)
A pay scale as a blueprint: the Act’s dollar table — captain $150, first lieutenant $125, second lieutenant $115, sergeant $90, corporal $75, private $65, monthly — put colonial policing on the U.S. Army’s material standard, the professionalizing lever the occupation used across its services. (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
Verified statutory data:
Enacted and effective: January 9, 1901 — “This Act shall take effect on its passage” (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
Strength: three companies; each of one captain, one first lieutenant, one second lieutenant, eight sergeants, eight corporals, and one hundred privates; 357 in all (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
Manpower: members “selected from the American volunteer soldiery now serving in these Islands,” widened by Act No. 77 (January 26, 1901) to honorably discharged U.S. soldiers and sailors (LawPhil — Act No. 70, LawPhil — Act No. 77)
Pay: U.S. currency, $65 (private) to $150 (captain) per month (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
Administration: raised and equipped by the Provost-Marshal-General under the supervision of the Military Governor (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
Name and reach: “Metropolitan Police Force of Manila”; usable beyond Manila duties “in any other part of the Islands” (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
First chief: Brigadier General Arthur MacArthur Jr., military governor, who organized the force with himself as its first chief (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

Usage Scenarios

1. Reading the Founding Statute

The LawPhil text is the primary source for the force’s design — structure, pay, manpower, and jurisdiction — and any study of American-era Philippine policing begins with its three sections. (LawPhil — Act No. 70)

2. Tracing the Institutional Lineage

The Act opens the documented succession — Metropolitan Police Force (1901), Manila Police Department, Western Police District (1975), PNP district (1991), Manila Police District (2005) — the corporate memory this wiki’s district entry carries. (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

3. Comparing City and Constabulary

Act No. 70’s city force and the insular constabulary raised later in 1901 began the dual structure of Philippine policing — a municipal force for the capital and a national force for the islands — whose merger-and-separation history runs to the present PNP. (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

4. Fixing Institutional Anniversaries

The Act’s January 9 date is the corrected foundation of the force’s anniversary, kept since 1983 after decades on July 31 — the anniversary discipline this wiki’s district entry records. (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

Strategies

Transplant the military template: the Act did not invent a police form; it re-used the company structure, rank ladder, and pay grades its manpower already knew — the fastest way to stand up a force in an occupied territory. (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
Legislate the name into the statute: fixing “Metropolitan Police Force of Manila” in Section 1 gave the institution a legal identity that would survive every later renaming, the anchor the district’s historians worked back to. (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
Correct fast: within seventeen days the Commission amended the manpower clause to widen recruitment — legislative maintenance at the speed the new police force’s needs demanded. (LawPhil — Act No. 77)
Build the reserve into the charter: the clause allowing deployment “in any other part of the Islands” made the capital’s police a deployable reserve, not merely a municipal patrol — the elasticity later Philippine police organizations inherited. (LawPhil — Act No. 70)

Security and Safety Measures

The pay scale as professionalization: fixed U.S.-dollar monthly pay, from privates at $65 to captains at $150, was the statute’s instrument for a full-time, regularly paid force — the material foundation of disciplined policing. (LawPhil — Act No. 70)
A defined manpower standard: selection from the American Volunteer soldiery — then, after Act No. 77, from honorably discharged U.S. soldiers and sailors — set a service record as the entry requirement, the professionalism test the era allowed. (LawPhil — Act No. 70, LawPhil — Act No. 77)
Civilian succession under later charters: Act No. 183 placed the city’s police within a Municipal Board’s departments weeks after the force’s founding, the first step of the long transfer from military provost-marshal administration to civil government that ended in today’s civilian-supervised PNP. (Supreme Court E-Library — Act No. 183, Wikipedia — Manila Police District)
The archival safeguard: the anniversary correction of the 1980s — from July 31 to January 9 — shows the force using its own records to fix its founding, the record-keeping discipline that keeps institutional memory honest. (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

Historical Context

Act No. 70 belongs to the Philippine Commission’s first legislative wave, when the islands were still under military government: its machinery is expressly military — the Provost-Marshal-General raising the force “under the supervision of the Military Governor,” and Arthur MacArthur Jr., the military governor himself, organizing the three companies with himself as first chief, the finding the district’s records work established against an older “Curry” attribution. (LawPhil — Act No. 70, Wikipedia — Manila Police District) The force was manned from the American Volunteer soldiery, and the manpower clause was widened by Act No. 77 on January 26, 1901. (LawPhil — Act No. 77)

The same Commission year built the civil frame around the force: Act No. 183 of July 31, 1901 incorporated the City of Manila as a municipality with an appointed three-member Municipal Board and city departments including police. The 357-man force then lived through the name succession the district’s record carries — Manila Police Department, Western Police District of the Integrated National Police in 1975, PNP district from 1991, and Manila Police District again on July 20, 2005 — with its true founding date, January 9, correctly commemorated since 1983 after long observance on July 31. (Supreme Court E-Library — Act No. 183, Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

Challenges and Controversies

The Anniversary That Was Wrong

The force kept July 31 as its founding anniversary until records work established January 9, 1901 — the date of Act No. 70 — first correctly observed in 1983; the old date coincides with the July 31, 1901 enactment of the city charter, Act No. 183, and the blur between charter day and police day stood for decades. (Wikipedia — Manila Police District, Supreme Court E-Library — Act No. 183)

“MacArthur, Not Curry”

The same records research that fixed the founding date also settled the first-chief question — MacArthur, the military governor, organized the force with himself as its first chief, displacing an earlier attribution to an officer named Curry. (Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

An American Force for a Filipino City

By statute and by amendment, the force’s ranks were to be American volunteers and then honorably discharged American soldiers and sailors — a colonial police whose manpower clause made no provision for the city’s own residents, a design reversed only as the department Filipinoized: the first Filipino chief, Antonio C. Torres, took office in March 1936 in the district’s record. (LawPhil — Act No. 70, LawPhil — Act No. 77, Wikipedia — Manila Police District)

The Act’s Silent Afterlife

None of Act No. 70’s operative provisions — its company structure, its dollar pay scale, its volunteer manpower — survived the reorganizations that followed; its standing is foundational rather than operational, carried today by lineage and anniversary rather than by any live statutory text. (LawPhil — Act No. 70, Wikipedia — Manila Police District)