Law and order must be more than a media show.
The return of the National Police Agency? elite Wei-an Special Police Commando unit to Taichung City and wide-scale checks on particular industries seem to signal the government? determination to uphold law and order.
The question is whether such action will result in any real and lasting improvements after the Wei-an Commandos leave Taichung.
One benchmark that could be used to judge whether any lasting improvements have been made is the same one as that used by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Before Giuliani took over as mayor, he was a federal prosecutor, a job where he made a name for himself through several high profile cases against organized crime.
His tough style became the foundation for his candidacy for New York mayor and he won the mayoral election in 1993 by running a campaign focused on public order.
After his inauguration on Jan. 1, 1994, Giuliani surprised everyone by not focusing on organized crime, but instead taking aim at smaller and less serious violations of the law, such as cleaning up subway graffiti and demanding that police officers patrolling the subway stop graffiti artists from displaying their wares.
Initial polls showed that New York residents found this approach unacceptable, but as time passed, and the results were undeniable and the decision to focus on graffiti first became one of the cornerstones for improved public safety.
The idea was that leaving graffiti on walls created a permissive environment that would encourage even more people to do the same, until things in the subway span out of control.
At the same time, by demonstrating an inability to deal with the graffiti problem, the police were in effect encouraging an increase in law breaking.
A clean subway made people feel more at ease, and demanding that the police prevent graffiti, forced them to patrol the subway more frequently, which in turn made it easier to detect and prevent more serious illegal behavior. The result was that the New York subway was no longer a frightening place to be.
This explains why maintaining law and order must never be just a convenient or temporary slogan put on as part of a media show.
Law and order requires long-term, visionary planning and implementation. It is also one area that allows us to separate the real leaders from mere politicians.
Returning to recent events in Taichung City, a forceful suppression of crime by the Wei-an Special Police Commando unit might indeed have a certain deterrent effect, but it is still not part of a?苞o-ordi限nated national clean-up. The obvious response to such a campaign is for criminals to take temporary refuge somewhere else, only to return once the media loses interest.
Not only is this unhelpful in terms of achieving a lasting and meaningful improvement in public order, it will also inevitably push the danger into other areas and perhaps encourage new alliances between different gangs.
This is exactly why the Wei-an unit has been deployed to Taichung City several times over the past 11 years without creating any permanent improvement in law and order.
The current campaign seems to be yet another example of such ?hock treatment?and based on past experience it won? be the last.
Wu Ching-chin is an assistant professor in the Department of Financial and Economic Law at Aletheia University.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
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