The Ministry of the Interior released statistics yesterday showing Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) had kept his promise to reduce the crime rate, but opposition legislators questioned the figures' validity.
In February, Yu said he would resign if he could not reduce the crime rate between last month and next month.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The ministry reported 39,776 criminal cases last month, down some 4,000 cases from last March's 43,794. The number of cases solved last month also increased from last year's 21,625 to 23,769.
Yu said that the National Police Administration's hard work was the main reason for this "excellent" result.
KMT and PFP legislators, meanwhile, questioned the truth of the figures.
"To achieve the goal, lots of reported cases have been kept off the record. This might lead to excellent figures, but it is damaging to our public security," PFP Legislator Chin Huei-chu (
KMT legislative leader Liu Cheng-hung (
"This is either the result of Yu's magic trick, or the result of creating false statistics," Liu said.
Administration statistics show the crime rate has been slowly increasing over the past 10 years.
In 2000, there were 1,976 criminal cases per hundred thousand people, while there were 2,196 criminal cases per hundred thousand in 2001 and 2,246 per hundred thousand last year.
Sandy Yeh (葉毓蘭), director of the Continuing Education and Training Center at Central Police University, said that not putting reported cases on the record has been a longstanding practice because of the evaluation system used for police.
"We always evaluate police based on the number of cases solved, which is actually inappropriate," Yeh said.
The ministry adopted several measures in an effort to reach Yu's goal. It formed a rapid-reaction anti-crime force, increased police patrols, conducted extensive inspections of security at financial institutions and cracked down on major criminal hideouts.
Yu also asked the Criminal Investigation Bureau to give him detailed reports on major new criminal cases, the success rate in busting criminal activities and other developments every day before 8:30am.
Yu said that no reported cases would be avoided, adding that local police chiefs would be forced to step down if they fail to put cases on the record.
"We should evaluate our police force's performance from the perspective of quality but not quantity," Yeh said.
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