Future candidates for the position of police precinct head will face tougher challenges under a new policy that requires field experience, the National Police Agency (NPA) said yesterday.
“The new policy will be more strict. At present, a senior officer only has to study hard for the exam to become precinct head, provided he or she passes the test,” an agency spokesman said.
“In future, studying hard won’t be enough,” he said.
The spokesman said that under the current policy, those who want to be promoted only need to study hard for the exam. Once they have passed the exam, they just have to wait their turn to become precinct head.
“However, an officer who spends most of their time at work is usually too busy to prepare for the exam. Desk job officers, on the other hand, usually have better chances since they have more time to study,” the spokesman said.
The new policy took effect on Wednesday, when 40 senior officers passed their exams and were announced as candidates for the position of precinct head.
Only nine were desk job officers.
In addition to writing the test, the agency said candidates had to undergo a series of interviews. Six senior officers, including NPA Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞), spent three days interviewing a total of 190 officers, who had passed the written test, to select the final 40 candidates.
The agency said the 40 candidates’ new jobs as precinct directors would be commissioned and that the promotions would take effect after the year-end municipal elections.
“This is a major change in the force’s personnel affairs,” the spokesman said.
Taichung County Police Department Taiping Precinct Deputy Shih Chin-chih (石進智) is one of the 40 officers to be promoted. He said a stricter selection process policy was a welcome development.
“The head of a precinct is very important because this person is usually the commander at the scene — where a protest, an accident or a big event takes place,” Shih said. “If the head is an experienced officer, it will help make the force’s job a lot easier.”
Shih has been a precinct deputy for five years, serving in two precincts. He was also one of the key officers in establishing the Taiping Precinct on June 15, 2007, which became one of the reasons why he decided to take the exam.
“It was really a tough challenge; you need to study and fight crime at the same time. But people around me encouraged me and said, ‘Now that you’ve helped create a precinct, you should become its head,’ so I did,” he said.
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