A recent gang war in Taichung has green and blue politicians pointing fingers and city residents wondering whether the city can sustain its dropping crime rates.
City police have responded to four gang-related attacks in the past 11 days in which a total of 50 bullets were fired.
All the attacks occurred in broad daylight.
Democratic Progressive Party City Councilor Fan Sung-yu (范淞育) has called on Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) to take responsibility, saying Taichung had possibly become the shooting capital of Taiwan since Hu came to office in 2002.
Fan said that Taichung police had wasted assistance from the central government by spending too much time trying to catch drunk drivers and issuing tickets instead of addressing the city's major problems.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) City Councilor Yang Cheng-chung (
Taichung has been combatting recurring gang feuds and violence for more than a decade. Notable cases have included Wu Tung-huang (
Also that year, two people were killed and three wounded when a fight broke out during negotiations at a tea house between boss Lin Ming-hua (
Gang violence in Taichung had decreased between 2005 and last year after Lin's gang and that of rival leader Chang Hsi-ming (
However, two men were injured on March 12 during a shootout in a residential area, which was followed by rifle attacks on a pub and a massage parlor by three suspects five days later, in which 30 shots were fired.
Police said that both incidents were part of a gang war between rival bosses surnamed Liu (
After the Lunar New Year, top gang leaders appeared to be responding to police efforts to orchestrate a truce, but each effort collapsed and was followed by fresh violence.
Director-General of the National Police Agency Hou You-yi (
No sooner had Hou left than gang boss Lin Chen-hsing (
Taichung Deputy Mayor Hsiao Chia-chi (
Hsiao said that despite the recent incidents, crime statistics on the whole had been dropping since the end of last year.
He also said that polls had shown growing satisfaction among city residents, reflecting overall satisfaction with the improvement in public safety.
Hsiao said that the city government was focusing on the problem of gang violence, adding that he had told the police force to do everything possible to solve the crimes.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS