Camp Crame
Camp General Rafael T. Crame () is the national headquarters of the Philippine National Police (PNP) located along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Quezon City. It is situated across EDSA from Camp Aguinaldo, the national headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Prior to the establishment of the civilian PNP, Camp Crame was the national headquarters of the Philippine Constabulary, a gendarmerie-type Military police force which was the PNP's predecessor. Camp Crame was named after the first Filipino Chief of the Philippine Constabulary, Brigadier General Rafael Cramé. History Establishment In 1935, the Philippine Constabulary struck a deal with the City Government of Manila to exchange its Gagalangin barracks compound in Tondo (now the site of Florentino Torres High School) for a large tract of land in the New Manila Heights (now part of Quezon City). Part of this tract became Camp Crame, Camp Murphy (now Camp Aguinaldo), and Zablan Field, site the Philippine Constabulary Air Corps (PCAC, now Barangay White Plains in Quezon City). Camp Crame was named after Brigadier General Rafael Crame, a grandson of former Spanish colonial era Governor-General Don Joaquín Rafael de Crame, who had been appointed the first Filipino Chief of the Philippine Constabulary in December 1917. Pre-independence years The Philippine Constabulary was reorganized numerous times during the Philippines' commonwealth era, being dissolved and reconstituted as the nucleus of the Philippine Army at one point, and then reestablished as a police unit under the Army when the Commonwealth's new state police proved too difficult to manage and had to be dissolved. Camp Crame was where the PC's General Strike Force was organized under Brig. Gen. Guillermo Francisco in 1939. Philippine Constabulary Headquarters After World War II, Camp Crame was used as the headquarters of the Philippine Constabulary, which service command was then considered part of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). During the Marcos regime As the headquarters of the Philippine Constabulary, Camp Crame became the site of five of the Marcos regime's most infamous detention facilities for political prisoners: the Men's Detention Center; the Women's Detention Center, the PC (Philippine Constabulary) Stockade; the MetroCom (Metropolitan Command) Detention Area; and the CIS (Criminal Investigation Service) Detenton Area. In the hours just before Martial Law was officially announced on the evening of September 23, 1972, the Camp Crame Gymnasium became the site where the first hundred or so political prisoners - those caught from a list of about 400 journalists, educators, politicians, and others on a list of “National List of Target Personalities” who were labeled "subversives" because they had openly criticized Ferdinand Marcos - were brought before they were moved to other facilities such as Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija or the various detention centers in Fort Bonifacio. The prisoners brought to Camp Crame included former President Sergio Osmeña's son Sergio Osmeña III, Senators Soc Rodrigo and Ramon Mitra, businessman Eugenio Lopez Jr., teacher Etta Rosales, lawyer Haydee Yorac, and a plethora of writers and broadcasters including Amando Doronila of