The Taipei City Police Department was yesterday accused of being uncooperative in a lawsuit filed against police officers who allegedly used excessive force during a demonstration against a Chinese official’s visit last year.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) and Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正) made the accusation at a press conference in Taipei.
Huang said the foundation had requested that the department identify the police officers who had been called in as reinforcements during the demonstration so that they could testify in court in a case that alleges the Taipei City police used excessive force against demonstrators outside the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei on Nov. 5 last year during the visit of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
Huang said the foundation provided clear photos of the people involved to the Taipei District Court earlier this year, but the department did not reply to the court until June 5, when the department said it could not identify any of the people in the photos.
Lin said the department was being uncooperative in an attempt to protect the police officers involved.
“We also helped demonstrators file several lawsuits against police officers in central and southern Taiwan. Some of the pictures [in these cases] were more blurred [than the pictures given to the Taipei Police Department], but police departments in central and southern Taiwan managed to identify all the officers in question,” Lin said.
In response, Lin Chin-hsiang (林金祥) of the Taipei Police Department said the department would comply with the court order to identity the police officers.
Chiu Kuan-yu (邱寬愉), deputy director of the Public Order Division of the National Police Agency, declined to comment on the legislator’s accusation.
“We are a democracy. This is an ongoing legal case. It is inappropriate to talk about the case in public,” Chiu said.
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