In the nearly four years since its creation, the National Police Agency’s (NPA) Counterterrorism Center has only been used for 38 days for counterterrorism training exercises, the National Audit Office said in a budget report on Thursday last week, calling on the agency to increase usage of the costly facility.
The NT$550 million (US$19.69 million) center in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District (新屋) — intended for use in simulating terror-related scenarios to train police and national security forces — opened in March 2017 after years of setbacks.
Its facilities include training grounds for urban combat, climbing and rappelling, hostage rescue and antiterrorism combat, as well as a multipurpose building, dormitory and cafeteria.
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
Although the Ministry of the Interior approved the project in 2003, the groundbreaking ceremony was not held for another eight years.
Scheduled for completion in 2014, revisions and difficulty in finding contractors delayed the start of construction another four years until 2015.
However, the center has been underutilized in its first 960 days of operation from March 21, 2017, to Nov. 30 last year, the office said in its report for this past fiscal year.
During this period the center was only used 38 days for counterterrorism drills, or 3.96 percent of the time, the report said.
Only four joint antiterrorism exercises were held during the period: one each in 2017 and 2018, and two in 2019 for a total of four days, it added.
The Military Police Special Services, Coast Guard Investigation Branch and other special forces held seven drills between them, one each in 2017, 2019 and last year, and four in 2018, it said.
These seven exercises lasted a total of 34 days, training 844 officers, it showed.
By facility, the dormitory and antiterrorism combat training ground were used five times each, the hostage rescue facility was used four times, and the climbing and urban combat facilities were used three times each, it said.
The center has mostly been used for general police training rather than specialized counterterrorism response, it said.
Police training sessions were held 398 days over the period — 79 in 2017, 137 in 2018, 99 in 2019 and 83 last year — training 2,861 officers in total, it said.
The number of people trained at each facility ranged from 1,029 to 2,803, while the percentage of days used ranged from 29.17 to 36.98 percent, it added.
Although training police at the center increases its overall usage, it does not fulfill the original purpose of the facility, the office said, adding that it has already sent the NPA a formal request to hold more counterterrorism drills.
The NPA said it would continue conducting counterterrorism trainings at the center, including joint drills with security and police forces.
It also vowed to make better use of the center by inviting special forces and police departments from neighboring counties to conduct training drills, thereby providing additional opportunities for observation and exchange.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching