The National Police Agency (NPA) on Tuesday gave Songshan Precinct Chief Huang Jia-lu (黃嘉祿) a major demerit for an incident that saw Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) trapped in the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei Hotel on the night of Nov. 4.
Huang was punished after protesters managed to surround the hotel where the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait chairman and his fellow delegates were having dinner with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄). At the time, Huang decided not to increase the number of police officers even as the number of protesters began to grow.
The loss of control at the hotel resulted in Chen being trapped inside for more than six hours, the agency said.
The officer who was in charge when the police closed the Sunrise Records store, Beitou Precinct Chief Lee Han-ching (李漢卿), received an oral reprimand.
Part of the crowd protesting Chen’s visit had spilled over to the sidewalk in front of Sunrise Records. Some of the protesters started dancing to music from an album titled Songs of Taiwan, which was being played in the store.
Lee, followed by several other police officers, entered the store, after which the music was turned off and the store’s door closed halfway.
The crowd started to protest and during the standoff CD shelves and the store’s roller door were broken, while store manager Chang Pi (張碧) was slightly injured.
NPA Director-General Wang Cho-chun (王卓鈞) said he did not find Lee’s actions improper in any way, but said his handling of what happened afterward was questionable.
The police and Chang have offered different versions of the incident, disagreeing about why the music was turned off and who made the decision to close the store.
The store’s owner has accused Lee of lying and has asked for an investigation to establish whether police officers abused their power.
Wang told a press conference at the NPA that although he was generally satisfied with the performance of officers during Chen’s visit from Nov. 3 to Nov. 7, the police still needed to make improvements.
“We were simply doing our job to the best of our ability,” he said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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