The National Police Agency (NPA) on Tuesday gave Songshan Precinct Chief Huang Jia-lu (黃嘉祿) a major demerit for an incident that saw Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) trapped in the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei Hotel on the night of Nov. 4.
Huang was punished after protesters managed to surround the hotel where the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait chairman and his fellow delegates were having dinner with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄). At the time, Huang decided not to increase the number of police officers even as the number of protesters began to grow.
The loss of control at the hotel resulted in Chen being trapped inside for more than six hours, the agency said.
The officer who was in charge when the police closed the Sunrise Records store, Beitou Precinct Chief Lee Han-ching (李漢卿), received an oral reprimand.
Part of the crowd protesting Chen’s visit had spilled over to the sidewalk in front of Sunrise Records. Some of the protesters started dancing to music from an album titled Songs of Taiwan, which was being played in the store.
Lee, followed by several other police officers, entered the store, after which the music was turned off and the store’s door closed halfway.
The crowd started to protest and during the standoff CD shelves and the store’s roller door were broken, while store manager Chang Pi (張碧) was slightly injured.
NPA Director-General Wang Cho-chun (王卓鈞) said he did not find Lee’s actions improper in any way, but said his handling of what happened afterward was questionable.
The police and Chang have offered different versions of the incident, disagreeing about why the music was turned off and who made the decision to close the store.
The store’s owner has accused Lee of lying and has asked for an investigation to establish whether police officers abused their power.
Wang told a press conference at the NPA that although he was generally satisfied with the performance of officers during Chen’s visit from Nov. 3 to Nov. 7, the police still needed to make improvements.
“We were simply doing our job to the best of our ability,” he said.
A recently discovered supernova is the brightest and closest to Earth identified in the past decade, and can be observed with basic equipment, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said on Wednesday. The supernova has an absolute magnitude of 14.9 in luminosity and is in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) about 21 million light-years from Earth. It was discovered early on May 20 by Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki, who immediately reported the finding to the International Astronomical Union, the museum said. The supernova was designated SN 2023ixf following the astronomical naming conventions for supernovas, it added. The museum said that it observed
Tropical storm Guchol is moving in a northeasterly direction off the east coast of the Philippines and will not hit Taiwan, but will impact local weather starting on Friday, the Central Weather Bureau said Thursday. The storm would bring a low-pressure system northward toward the vicinity of Taiwan, forecaster Chao Hung (趙竑) said. Northern Taiwan will see intermittent rain showers in the morning, and thunderstorms in the afternoon on Friday, he said, adding that rain would be heavier on the east coast and in the central-southern mountainous areas. Rainfall would continue into Saturday, and would spread throughout Taiwan proper, he
Exiled Chinese democracy advocate Wang Dan (王丹) yesterday denied an accusation by former Taiwanese political worker Lee Yuan-chun (李援軍) that Wang had sexually harassed him in a hotel room in New York nine years ago. There was a huge gap between Lee’s accusation and his own understanding and memory, Wang wrote on Facebook, adding it was hard for him to respond further regarding a “unilateral description” made by someone else. Wang made the remarks after his initial response on Facebook was met with criticism, with people saying he did not directly address the allegation. Lee on Friday wrote on Facebook that he
A man was arrested in Hsinchu on Saturday on suspicion of filming women in the women’s washroom of a shopping mall in the city, local Chinese-language media reported on Thursday. The man was arrested at around noon on Saturday when a woman using a stall in the mall’s washroom noticed a cellphone being held above her from the neighboring stall, reports said. The woman ran out of the washroom and yelled to her husband to help her, after which the suspect – who was dressed as a woman – attempted to flee, but was subdued by other men until police
RSS