Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he needed to do some “soul-searching” about controlling his temper, following a sharp U-turn on Friday over the removal of a city district police chief.
Ko had initially called for Neihu District Police Chief Chang Mang-lin (張夢麟) to be removed over the handling of a case of alleged illegal logging, only to change his mind after new evidence emerged.
“I feel that it is inappropriate to pass judgement before the case is fully reviewed,” Ko said.
When asked whether he would formally apologize for previous statements, Ko said it was a “good question,” which would have to wait until after the results of the investigation were finalized. He acknowledged that he had “blown his top” and needed to be more level-headed.
Ko reiterated that he continued to find it “unbelievable” that the lumber in question was fallen “floating wood” that somehow “floated” from Taitung County to the Neihu District mountainside.
Under the Forestry Act (森林法), “floating wood” refers to wood of any size felled by natural disasters that floats outside of government owned land. The wood can be claimed by private citizens if left unclaimed by the government for more than one month.
At a closed meeting on public safety on Friday, Ko was reportedly furious when Chang said the police department had allowed the logs to be taken off the mountainside after confirming with the Forestry Bureau that they were “floating wood.”
Following reports quoting Forestry Bureau officials as saying that photographic evidence suggested the logs were in fact “floating wood,” Ko said that his understanding might have been biased by reliance on photographs provided by Taipei City Councilor Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜) of the Democratic Progressive Party — who initially publicized the logs’ discovery.
“My guess is that there were both ‘floating’ and illegally logged wood, with both sides taking photographs of whatever served their position,” he said, adding that he would need to see the final investigation results to be sure.
Ko added that any punishment meted out after the investigation concluded should be “proportional” to the offense committed.
Ko’s earlier criticism of the Neihu police chief was castigated yesterday by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Wang Hong-wei (王鴻薇), who called his statements “humiliating” and the latest in a string of irresponsible statements.
Ko earlier courted controversy for admonishing former Xinyi District Police chief Lee Te-wei (李德威) on national television over Lee’s handling of the protection for Falun Gong protestors outside of Taipei 101.
Police Family Care Association CEO Wu Yun-chi (巫芸綺) called for the mayor to issue a public apology, stating his remarks had harmed police morale.
Meanwhile, media reports emerged quoting Sijhih District’s (汐止) Xingshan Temple (興善宮) chairman Wang Chao-ching (王朝卿) as saying that the wood had been donated to the temple by a devotee in Taitung County following Typhoon Talim in 2012 and temporarily stored in Neihu.
Local media reports also claimed that the logs had been sourced from a factory in Miaoli County’s Sanyi Township (三義), where it was discovered that they were cheap Asian fir instead of valuable cypress as originally reported. Neither the temple nor the factory could be reached for confirmation.
The Neihu District Police Office said the owner of the logs held a permit for the collection of “floating wood” in Taitung County, but had provided no proof of having registered the logs. It added that, while the office had consulted the Forestry Bureau on whether the logs were “floating wood,” there had been no judgement made on the type of tree.
Forestry Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Hung-chih (楊宏志) said that cypress logs would have required registration with the Taitung County Government, but not fir lumber.
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