Senior Police Officer 4 Emmanuel Portillo Isiang 

Chief Investigator  

Investigation and Detection Management Section, Surigao del Sur Police Provincial Office 

Lianga, Surigao del Sur  

An English major as the police force’s new detective sounds like the beginning of a pulp novel, but it is a fortuitous path that has brought Senior Police Officer 4 Emmanuel Portillo Isiang to the service of the people of his home province, Surigao del Sur.  

To be fair, the cases he has worked on as a detective – pursuing robbers, assassins, insurgents, drug pushers, and kidnappers – sound like fictional exploits.

But SPO4 Isiang knows that police work isn’t just action heroics.  

But SPO4 Isiang remains grounded in improving the reality of life in Surigao del Sur, as his tireless community outreach work shows.  

Convinced that the cooperation of the community is the key that leads to effective law enforcement, SPO4 Isiang initiated programs such as Pulong-Pulong (Public Dialogues), where the police actively worked on the barangay level to create processes by which citizens can help the PNP in crime prevention.  

There’s also “Isumbong Mo Sa Pulis,” a media-intensive campaign that publicized the police’s tip and crime hotline of the same name in local newspapers and radio stations.  

He’s even gone down to the smallest local business level, visiting neighborhood marketplaces and sari-sari stores to conduct one-on-one discussions on security and crime prevention measures they can adapt.  

As a law enforcement official in a province with both Christian and Muslim residents, SPO4 Isiang has strengthened ties with both communities.  

Muslim community leaders in particular have been the beneficiaries of strengthened ties with the PNP.