President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday ordered the National Police Agency (NPA) to come up with detailed regulations to help police avoid “gray areas” in the line of duty.
Gray areas refer to ambiguous relationships and connections with organized crime figures developed by police in the course of investigations.
“Police shall maintain their clean reputation and protect human rights to win back public respect,” Ma said.
PHOTO: TSAI TSUNG-HSIEN, TAIPEI TIMES
The president made the remarks during an NPA event celebrating Police Day yesterday morning, during which 28 officers from precincts around the country were awarded for outstanding performance. Ma said he would encourage and support the police, especially now that their public image has been tarnished by recent crimes involving police officers.
“Public trust is the government’s most valuable asset, but corruption is a most powerful corrosive,” Ma said.
The president said he understood the need for police to establish certain connections with the underworld during investigations, but that officers must follow rules when doing so.
Gray areas should not become an obstacle or a trap for officers, he said.
Ma said that while crime rates have dropped in the past two years, the public does not feel any safer.
“One or two corruption cases involving police officers have made in vain everybody’s hard work [to improve the public image of police]. We need change,” Ma said.
Meanwhile, Taichung City Councilor Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) made public a case yesterday involving a police inspector from Taichung’s Fourth Precinct who allegedly engaged in “outrageous behavior” while drunk on May 31.
Huang, who said the information came from a secret informant, added that the inspector was seen “stripping off his clothes and beating co-workers at the precinct.”
“Ironically, the officer is an inspector and he is supposed to make sure that other officers do not do anything stupid,” Huang said.
The Democratic Progressive Party councilor said the informant said “a two-stripes-two-stars inspector from the Fourth Precinct was drunk, walked into the precinct, yelled and beat his co-workers and then stripped off all his clothes.”
In response, the precinct made public video footage taken during the incident yesterday, which confirmed that the inspector, surnamed Yao (姚), was off duty that day and was drunk. Yao showed up at the office at about 10pm and yelled at others without apparent reason. He also beat other officers when they tried to stop him from misbehaving at the station. The video did not show Yao stripping or running around naked.
“He was on his day off. Other officers realized that he was drunk when he returned to the station and tried to stop him. That was what you saw in the video clips,” precinct deputy director Chen Yi-tseng (陳益增) said.
Chen said it was fine for the inspector to drink with friends on his day off, but he should not embarrass himself and the precinct only three days after gangster Weng Chi-nan (翁奇楠) was murdered in the company of four off-duty police officers.
The officer will receive a major demerit and will be transferred, Chen said.
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