National Police Agency (NPA) Deputy Director-General I Yung-jen (伊永仁) may have declared Thursday’s one-day anti-fraud campaign a success, but some members of the public were not so sanguine.
More than 11,600 police officers and 22,450 volunteer police or community patrols were stationed at 13,655 ATMs around the country to distribute anti-fraud flyers from 8am to midnight on Thursday as part of the campaign.
I told a press conference on Thursday that the campaign had been effective, as the number of cases reported to the 165 anti-fraud hotline had dropped significantly, while several local police stations announced a handful of arrests.
People questioned at some ATMs, however, were not as enthusiastic.
Interviewed at an ATM in Taipei, Mat Wang (王家俊) said: “It’s a joke, because it’s not going to help in the long run. Why don’t they make Nov. 12 an anti-fraud holiday and get rid of [the Republic of China’s founding father] Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) birthday [holiday]?”
These sentiments were shared by Andrea Chang (張嘉倫).
“I did see police at the ATM near my office. The intentions were good, but it’s not likely to have a big impact in the long run, as the criminals probably just took Thursday off,” she said.
Internet users agreed, saying that the number of fraud cases fell because “fraudulent organizations just decided to take the day off.”
“Stationing officers by ATMs or asking them to hand out flyers while carrying guns or having the Minister of Justice dancing to advertise anti-fraud information are the stupidest moves in history,” said “Cathelion” on the networking site Plurk.com. “Why can’t they have the officers actually go after the criminals instead?”
“Anti-fraud today, what about tomorrow?” Plurker “Geoffrey0720” wrote.
“Maybe it will be showtime for criminals, as officers are going to be too tired tomorrow,” Cathelion replied.
A blogger named “Ghost” called the campaign “uncreative,” adding: “Isn’t it the job of the police to arrest fraudsters instead of standing by ATMs? Can such a display really work?”
“Ghost” compared the exercise to elementary school teachers checking if students brought handkerchiefs to school, even though no one ever used them.
“This is exactly the government’s mentality — just like elementary school kids bringing handkerchiefs to school, the government is putting the police on display to show the public that they’re working hard to stop fraud,” “Ghost” wrote.
Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said the results of such campaigns were not worth the manpower spent on them and the ministry would “consider whether future [anti-fraud] campaigns should be carried out in the same way.”
A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the campaign was devised in July by former minister Liao Liou-yi (廖了以), who is now secretary-general of the Presidential Office, and that the ministry had to go along with it whether it wanted to or not.
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