Prosecutors said they would not indict a police chief who was accused of forcibly closing a record store during protests surrounding the visit of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last year.
Former Beitou Precinct chief Lee Han-ching (李漢卿), who was in charge when police closed the Sunrise Record store, had been accused of forcibly entering and conducting a search of the store without a warrant.
Chief Prosecutor Huang Mo-hsin (黃謀信) of the Taipei District Court said an investigation had established that a sales clerk at the store had voluntarily turned down the music and pulled down the shutter after being asked to do so by police.
Prosecutors quoted Lee as saying that he went into the record store to ask if the music was coming from there, not to search the place. A young clerk then turned the volume down and, when he saw the crowd and police shoving each other, began to close the store’s front roller shutter.
Lee said someone yelled that he was about to be crushed under the gate, whereupon police officers tried to push the gate back up.
On the night of Nov. 4, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Ambassador Hotel in Taipei, where Chen was attending a dinner banquet hosted by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰).
Part of the protesting crowd spilled over onto the sidewalk in front of Sunrise Records.
Some protesters started dancing to music from an album titled Songs of Taiwan, which was being played inside the store. Some time later Lee, followed by several police officers, entered the store. The music was soon turned off and the store’s door closed halfway.
The crowd protested and during the standoff, CD shelves and the shutter door were broken, while store manager Chang Pi (張碧) was slightly injured.
Although the National Police Agency gave Lee an oral reprimand for his handling of the matter, a few weeks after the incident he was promoted to Shihlin Precinct chief.
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