Police to issue reports on the state of public order

The National Police Administra-tion (NPA, 警政署) yesterday said that starting Monday a team of senior officers will evaluate public order in each county and city and announce the results of their ongoing investigation every three months.

Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) hosted a press conference at the NPA yesterday morning and said that it is the administration's responsibility to inform citizens of the state of public order.

The NPA will use five colors -- blue, green, purple, yellow and red -- to indicate the level of public order in different cities and counties.

Blue will represent the best level of public order with the lowest crime rate. Red means citizens and police in the city or county should be on alert.

"It will also be an important bit of information for government chiefs," Yu said. "As for the public, residents will be able to know whether they are living in a safe area."

NPA Director-General Wang Chin-wang (王進旺) said that a team led by the administration's deputy director-general and inspectors will be responsible for the evaluation project.

Under the plan, county and city police chiefs would be punished if the evaluation of their jurisdictions is not satisfactory.

"If the team gives a `red' color on two consecutive evaluation reports for the same county, the county police chief would be put on a probation list or be trans-ferred to another precinct," Wang explained.

He also said that the NPA's evaluation will take into account a poll conducted by the Cabinet's Development and Evaluation Commission (行政院研考會).

"To make it a fair evaluation, we need the public's opinions as well," he added.

"The evaluation is not fair enough to reflect the truth without a third party's point of view. An opinion poll will help us realize how people feel about police efforts to control crime."

However, the NPA was worried that some police stations would avoid recording and reporting crime in order to claim a low crime rate and obtain a better grade in the evaluation reports.

A senior police officer at the NPA said it's possible some crimes will go unreported, but added that the administration's inspectors will do their best to prevent that from happening.

"We're aware of that problem already and our inspectors will do whatever it takes to avoid that situation," the officer said.

"However, since we haven't carried out an evaluation like this before, we cannot guarantee anything, either. But we will definitely adjust our policy from time to time to address such problems," he said.