A string of daytime gunfights among gangsters in Taichung City streets recently prompted the National Police Agency to order the deployment of 40 SWAT team members yesterday.
It was the fourth time in 11 years that special service police members have been stationed in Taichung to help maintain law and order.
Taichung City Police Bureau Director Hu Mu-yuan (胡木源) said the SWAT team would conduct spot checks of major streets around the city day and night in a high-intensity campaign to deter organized crime and improve public order.
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said the recent spate of street shootings in broad daylight were ominous signs that public order was getting out of control, but he hoped the deployment of the SWAT team would help deter similar incidents.
The mayor said that since he was elected to office nine years ago, he has spared no effort to clamp down on illegal businesses.
To date, the number of illegal businesses in eight controversial lines of business has dropped from 399 to eight, he said, adding that public order has steadily improved over the years.
City councilors, however, disagreed. Over the past nearly nine years, the city's police budget had increased from NT$3 billion (US$92.5 million) to NT$5 billion and the number of police officers had expanded from 2,500 to 4,052, they said.
However, many city dwellers are still haunted by daylight gunfights on the city's streets, they said.
Every time there's a shooting incident, the mayor declares war on gangsters and organized crime, but those declarations have failed to yield any satisfactory result, they said.
They said Jason Hu should consider stepping down if he could not fix the problem and let somebody else deal with it.
The mayor rejected the city councilors' demand, saying that quitting would amount to surrendering to the gangsters.
“We will do our best to prevent a recurrence of similar shooting incidents,” Hu said, adding that to him every bullet fired by gangsters was like one fired at him.
Hu Mu-yuan denied that social order had deteriorated. He said the city's criminal incidence rate used to be double that of the national average six years ago, but the ratio has dropped and was in line with the national average last year.
Progress has been made, and the city police will double their efforts to make further improvements, he said.
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