The Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief information officer Col. Jean Fajardo announced on Monday, that the moratorium on banning visible tattoos for aspiring police officers and personnel has been lifted as of July 3.
The visible tattoo ban is part of Memorandum Circular 2024-003, which was temporarily halted due to the moratorium. Lifting its delay would mean that guidelines on the non-bearing of tattoos would be enforced immediately, especially for new applicants.
Fajardo emphasized that those who are interested in joining the PNP service through recruitment or lateral entry, including those entering the PNP Academy (PNPA), are prohibited to have visible tattoos.
Meanwhile, current PNP personnel with existing tattoos are required to submit a declaration on the number, size, and location of their tattoos. The information provided on the submitted document would be added to their health profiles.
Officers would be given three months to have the visible tattoos removed. However, the PNP’s technical working group has yet to issue their rules on removing visible tattoos. Police officers will be the one’s to shoulder their own expenses for the removal as the PNP Health Service do not have any existing equipment for that purpose.
In the past, discussions on the removal of visible tattoos for active personnel were brought up due to medical concerns. According to the PNP, unauthorized tattoos include: ethnically or religiously discriminatory and offensive tattoos; racist, sexist, and tattoos associated with unauthorized and banned groups.
Those who fail to comply with the new regulation’s three-month rule, excluding those with valid medical reasons, will be subjected to investigation and may face adminstrative sanctions.
