When youthful Taipei City police officer Lai Chih-yan (賴智彥) was stabbed to death in the line of duty early last month, at first it looked like a simple case of negligence by a rookie officer with just a few months on the force.
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Lai was stabbed more than 10 times in the neck and back on Nov. 9 by a suspect he had arrested and was holding in the back of his police car as he drove to a police station in the Taipei City suburb of Dazhi (大直).
The suspect had not been searched upon arrest. Lai also neglected to handcuff the man to the rail in the police car in accordance with standard operating procedure.
Although all the evidence initially pointed to a tragic failure to follow procedure by Lai — who had not long graduated from college and had received only one year of training before being sent out onto the streets — the “evidence” in this case turned out to be incorrect.
While Lai had indeed been careless and had not searched his killer for weapons when arresting him, the reason the suspect was not handcuffed and was able to brutally kill the young officer was not down to any oversight by Lai, but by his employers.
The police, it turns out, did not have enough handcuffs to go around.
Reports in the next few days exposed the severity of the problem. According to the Neihu News Network, the Taipei City Police Department has just 3,500 pairs of handcuffs for more than 7,000 officers. Of these, 2,789 pairs were bought by the officers themselves, the NOWnews Web site said. Other reports put the ratio of officers to handcuffs at a pitiful seven per pair.
Whatever the correct figures, it turns out that all officers are expected to buy their own cuffs.
While we don’t need any reminders of how useless many of Taiwan’s cops are (oh, you do? Well how about www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCfXZfSH6Qk), it’s still downright scandalous to send these young men out on the mean streets without the proper equipment.
It would be like sending brave, young soldiers to battle Islamist insurgents without proper vehicles or body armor — and no sane country in the world would do that, would it?
The death of officer Lai understandably sparked a public outcry and the Ministry of the Interior quickly announced it would extend training for non-police academy recruits, while the police and private companies responded by promising to remedy the lack of handcuffs. The Taipei City Police Department announced it would spend NT$1.56 million (US$48,000) on handcuffs and ankle chains.
Still, the phrase “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted” springs to mind, and none of this explains the lack of cuffs in the first place or why such an inexperienced officer was tasked with looking after an obviously dangerous criminal.
Had most of the cuffs been acquisitioned by superior officers and legislators, wrapped in pink fur and used for kinky bedroom antics during extramarital affairs, perhaps?
Only those in power know the real reasons behind the present cuff dearth. But it wasn’t always this way.
Up until 1986 every graduating police officer was awarded his or her very own pair of cuffs and a baton, but this was halted when the central government stopped providing a budget for such inessential equipment.
Matsu give me strength — a quick Web search shows that these things only cost about NT$400 per pair, probably less if you buy in bulk. Is a policeman’s life not worth such a miniscule outlay?
Meanwhile, on the subject of inexperienced officers, one disgruntled Taipei officer told the China Times that the offices of the Zhongshan Precinct (中山), of which Dazhi is a part, are full of paper-pushing senior cops kicking their heels while waiting around to pick up their pensions.
Why would you want to go out on patrol when you can stay in the office and pick up the same pay, he asked?
Now I’m no scientist, but does this apparently increasing number of lazy, good-for-nothing cops have anything to do with the proliferation of Dunkin’ Donuts and Mister Donut stores around the Taipei metropolis in the last few years?
Food for thought, Mr Mayor.
Whatever happens, when they eventually distribute all these new handcuffs to Taipei’s beleaguered boys in gray, I beg the authorities to keep one pair spare for this pressing task: cuffing recently appointed Central News Agency (CNA) chairman Joe Hung (洪健昭).
The appointment in October of the 77-year-old Hung — a veteran CNA journalist, former Republic of China representative to Italy and fellow at the National Security Division of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) National Policy Foundation think tank — was the latest part of the government’s efforts to “professionalize” the nation’s media, a process that resulted in Reporters Without Borders dropping Taiwan from 36th place to 59th in this year’s press freedom report.
Either that or nobody else fancied the job, and who can blame them?
I’m not personally familiar with Joe, but reading his inane ramblings conjures up images of Nat Bellocchi’s evil twin.
Now, Joe is no Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward, but when it comes to his writing we can still say the pen is mightier than the sword.
Just a couple of sentences of one of Joe’s blinkered, ultra-nationalist propaganda pieces would be enough to stun a marauding African elephant at 20 paces.
I was rather hoping that his new sinecure at CNA would mean he would be too busy to write his weekly columns for the China Post, but it seems the opposite is true.
He has even begun writing features and news stories for the organization he leads, the latest being a bizarre item on the peace developing between “Amoy” (Xiamen) and “Quemoy” (Kinmen) (www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/china-taiwan-relations/2009/12/10/235899/Peace-prevails.htm). Whatever your politics, it is truly painful to read.
While tracking down more of Hung’s work I found the Web site RealClearWorld.com, which posts every single one of Joe’s musings along with other, less nonsensical works on Taiwan.
The worrying thing is that the site — owned by the same people as RealClearPolitics — not only uses Joe’s work, but also posts China Post editorials and places them in the same bracket as those from publications such as the Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
How much is the China Post paying them, I wonder?
Some of Hung’s masterpieces include an August piece blaming everyone and then no one for the 700 or so deaths during Typhoon Morakot, and a sorry piece where he not only denounces the Dalai Lama as a “political monk,” to borrow a phrase from Beijing, but also proceeds to give the Tibetan spiritual leader a lesson in Buddhism.
I find it hard to believe the people who post this claptrap on their Web site read it, or think this is somehow representative of the best commentary Taiwan has to offer, but if they do then Matsu help us.
Maybe I should add a couple of straitjackets to that order of handcuffs.
Got something to tell Johnny? Get it off your chest: Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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