Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) yesterday condemned the Taipei City Police Department for targeting ordinary people and even the media in a recent report instead of acknowledging its own violent behavior.
The department filed a report earlier this week that reviewed police performance during the visit of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last month and their handling of various protests against Chen.
Chien, who posted a copy of the report on her Web site on Tuesday, condemned the department for ignoring its own violent acts against the protesters while pledging to purchase more barricades and asking the media to refrain from getting near protest sites.
“The police should not be bodyguards for anyone. They are the people’s servants, and they should never try to stop the media from reporting what is happening,” she said yesterday at the Taipei City Council.
The police report suggested that the police should have “separated the media” from the protesters before they dispersed the protesters from sites so the work of dispersing the crowd could proceed more smoothly.
The report also suggested that the police should receive more training on how to disperse the crowd and the media.
“It’s unbelievable to learn that after reviewing its own performance, the police decided that the proper measure should be to disperse the media first,” she said.
Chien urged the department and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to stop targeting the media and the protesters and instead cultivate the police’s sense of democracy.
In protest against police brutality during Chen’s visit and the police’s failure to acknowledge its abuse of power, Chien and several DPP Taipei City councilors, including Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄), Liu Yao-ren (劉耀仁) and Huang Hsiang-chun (黃向群), held an event next to the Wuchang Street (武昌街) police station last night.
The councilors played Taiwanese songs and condemned the police for abusing their power to protect Chinese officials.
Chien lashed out at Ma for encouraging police officers to target their own people, and said the DPP’s Taipei City caucus will continue its investigation into police brutality to identify guilty officers.
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