The government should work with Internet service providers to establish a suicide prevention mechanism, which would allow police to quickly react to emergency cases, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Li-feng (李麗芬) said.
National Police Agency data showed police and fire departments have received 2,046 reports of people expressing an intention to commit suicide online.
Ninety-five of those cases were reported to police via the 110 police hotline.
Photo: CNA
Psychiatrist Kuo Cheng-fu (郭振賦), who offers online live sessions for people seeking counseling, said one of his clients said that he wanted to kill himself in a session.
Although he quickly informed the live broadcast platform operator as well as police, authorities often have trouble finding the person, Kuo said.
“I called 110 and I was connected to the New Taipei City Criminal Investigation Bureau,” Kuo said. “However, the online operator usually works with the Taipei City Criminal Investigation Bureau. I asked the online operator to provide my client’s user information to the New Taipei City bureau so that they could investigate, but the operator said: ‘You cannot ask me to disclose user information because of one telephone call.’”
“The National Police Agency Command and Control Center is in charge of answering all 110 calls, which gathers information from people reporting suicide cases. If necessary, police then ask online operators to provide the users’ billing information or assist in locating the users through mobile positioning systems,” Lee said.
“Police often receive tips from netizens who do not know the person who has said they want to commit suicide, which makes it difficult for police to identify which precinct should handle the case,” she said, adding that police could miss the critical time needed to help people amid administrative procedures.
Some entry-level police officers do not have adequate experience or skills to evaluate if people are in immediate danger, Lee said, adding that they have trouble determining if they should take action right away.
“Only some of the online operators have user care guidelines or lay out the procedures that they will follow to prevent suicides, and they do so out of a sense of responsibility. However, their mechanisms have proven inadequate because they are not closely linked with government resources and lack standardized operating procedures that are founded on suicide prevention theories,” she said.
Lee called for the establishment of a suicide prevention mechanism by the government and online operators, adding that there should be a course to train people on how to identify suicidal threats.
She also asked the Command and Control Center to study the possibility of forming a team to investigate suicide threats.
The government should have more effective strategies in combating the issues generated by the rise of online live broadcast, particularly those who use the technology to announce their intention to commit suicide, Lee said.
The center said that the National Police Agency and Facebook have established an emergency contact mechanism to help prevent suicides.
However, the time difference remains an issue as Facebook’s headquarters is in the US, the center said, adding it has tried to shorten processing time despite the time difference.
People should report suicide threats, including the name, telephone numbers, addresses and work places, and send photographs so that the correct precinct can investigate, the center said.
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