After Kaoshiung City Mayor Frank Hsieh
Does the increase in robberies in Kaohsiung reflect a sudden deterioration of public safety? Or has it simply exposed underlying public security problems nationwide, which have been deliberately ignored or played down due to election considerations? Or are the rising number of robberies an indication that the police, during the year before the presidential election, had to devote so many resources to political activities and creating a good administrative record for their superiors that they had no time to investigate, much less prevent, crime?
Mayor Hsieh has very good reasons to get angry. He hit the nail on the head when he demanded the police administration stop under-reporting crime. As long as this problem exists, the police will be hard pressed to restore their image and public trust. What's more, there will be no hope of addressing the real problems in public security.
Police under-reporting decreased for a short time after triplicate case forms were introduced, but the problem persists for several reasons. One is that frequent election campaigns have driven the administration to paper over a deterioration in the social order. Another reason is that high-level authorities harbor the superstition that "numbers speak for themselves" and therefore set crime reduction deadlines just to prove their administrative capabilities during their tenure.
In addition, whenever a serious crime occurs, the police immediately announce a sizable reward for information, stress the heavy penalties due the law-breakers and then delegate high-ranking officials to lead the investigation. The officials usually put political concerns above professional ethics setting unrealistic deadlines for solving the case. Such measures have only harmed our social order.
Since the police administration still relies on numbers to evaluate performance, officers develop a "counter solution" to reduce the incidence of crime and raise case closure rates. They either choose to investigate certain cases in order to please those in power or gain some advantage, or they enlarge the scope of their operations when dealing with cases that are easy to solve.
However, in dealing with the average citizen, the police try to dissuade the actual reporting of crimes through poor attitude and service or by capitalizing on procedural mistakes. Officers also make use of the average citizen's unfamiliarity with the law to play down the gravity of serious cases.
In other words, the police are still an instrument of politics. The real situation with regard to the social order is unknown and the police fail to provide professional expertise. A growing lack of confidence in public order is the inevitable result.
Escalating violent crime is directly related to the levels of cruelty, frustration, anger and anxiety in our society.
Take the growing number of motorcycle-riding purse-snatchers. This type of crime actually reflects the failure of several public policies, including education reforms. The authorities are at their wits' end on how to deal with high school dropouts and campus violence. Concern about the future also fuels teen anxiety and anger. Poor family and social education, the loneliness and isolation brought about by the prevalence of the Internet and easily available pornographic or violent programs have also contributed to the deterioration of social order.
However, all these problems can not be solved by the police alone. Therefore, our first priority should be to dispel the myth that "police should be responsible for crime." Only when police are immune to manipulation by politicians and the pressure to number-crunch can their battle against crime really begin.
Kaoshiung City's robbery rate might be under temporary control following the mobilization of police officers to combat the problem, helped out by support from the fifth security maintenance department. But the gangsters will start their dirty business in adjacent counties instead of staying in Kaoshiung. Just adding more officers and cracking down on criminals will be like using a neighbor's field as a drain. The real problems will still persist. Therefore, the different government agencies should start cooperating with one another and try to find a remedy by looking into the source of problem.
Of course, a professionalized police force is not the only weapon in the war against crime, but it is still an indispensable part of it. Perhaps the change in administration gives us the opportunity to relieve police officers of the pressure to under-report crime, to cover up the real state of public security and to go along with political pressure from above. Police self-discipline and a genuine attempt to clean up corruption should be the starting point in our efforts to enhance social order.
Yeh Yu-lan is the director of the Continuing Education and Training Center at the Central Police University.
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