Police workloads should be simplified and performance evaluations reformed to reduce arbitrariness, the Taiwan Policemen’s Work Rights Promotion Association said yesterday during a small protest outside the National Police Agency in Taipei.
About 15 protesters shouted slogans demanding limits to works encompassing “mountains and seas” of conflicting obligations, before passing on a list of what they said were unreasonable responsibilities to an agency official.
They cited examples ranging from checking vegetable market prices, to enforcing smoking and pollution regulations, to going door-to-door at scooter repair shops to encourage owners to reject requests to make vehicles louder.
“Making the modifications is not even illegal — so there is nothing we can do if shop owners reject our request,” said association director Shih (施) — who requested to be identified only by his last name — calling for campaign responsibility to be returned to transportation agencies.
“Police and firefighters are similar in that lots of other agencies try to shift certain tasks to us because we are on duty around the clock and have a lot a contact with everyday people. However, while it might be possible to do one additional task ‘in passing’ while carrying out our regular duties, there are so many tasks being pushed our way that there is no way to realistically perform them ‘in passing’ without detracting from our regular duties,” National Association for Firefighters’ Rights president Yang Shih-wei (楊適瑋) said at the protest.
Agency plans for new hiring to reduce personnel gaps were criticized by the policemen’s association president Yeh Chi-yuan (葉繼元), who said he doubted that overtime could be reduced without more substantial reforms.
“Increasing the number of officers would not improve the situation, because work would just keep increasing as numbers go up — other agencies would just keep coming up with additional tasks for us, while our internal performance evaluations continue to be set higher,” Yeh said, adding that commanding officers view exceeding performance targets as crucial to promotion.
“It is like an arms race — each police station is competing — so you see things like a station achieving 700 percent or 800 percent of different objectives. However, commanding officers end up benefiting, not the public who might have their cases ‘eaten’ or rejected if they do not correspond to a commanding officer’s focus.”
Much of the energy of police is ultimately wasted because cases are sent to public prosecutors, who often drop them and decline to prosecute because of poor-quality police work, he added.
The policemen’s association members called for performance evaluation targets to be set by a special management committee in which frontline police officers are allocated at least half of the seats.
The policemen’s association director Hsiao (蕭), who requested to be identified only by his surname, called for greater flexibility in determining case targets, on the grounds that case numbers are difficult to predict.
Police stations sometimes reject or target cases for fear of increasing the base against which their targets are calculated, he said.
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