Almost by accident, Tsai enrolled in the national police university three decades ago. Today, the 48-year-old heads up the New Taipei City Police Department’s Women and Children Protection Brigade. In 2017, the Ministry of Health and Welfare awarded her a Purple Ribbon, an annual honor for contributions to safeguarding women and children against violence.
“I never planned to be a police officer. When I was in high school in Penghu [an archipelago county off the west coast of Taiwan proper], my classmates and I were advised to pursue teaching. I was accepted into Taichung Teachers’ College but one of my friends asked me to sit the entrance exam for the Central Police University [CPU] to keep her company. So we flew to Taipei City to take the test. In the end she failed and I passed, even though I wasn’t the one who was taking it seriously. CPU invited me into their training program. It was 1989 and I was one of 19 women out of a total 298 students who were accepted. I gave it a try and liked it, so I decided to stay on even though the Taichung college kept sending me reminders to come and register there.
Police training suited me. Our lives were strictly regimented. It was just like being in the military, but that was fine by me. I’d been on athletics teams since elementary school, so I could handle the physical training. Students at CPU have to study judo, and I also took additional classes in taekwondo.
In 1993, not long after I started working at Zhonghe Precinct in Taipei County [now New Taipei City], I took on my first criminal case. It concerned the kidnapping of a little boy. I liaised with the victim’s family and advised them on how to talk to the kidnapper.
In 2004, I became the head of Anping Police Station [in New Taipei]. It was the first time a woman had held such a position in the county and just the second time in the nation after a woman who had headed up a station in central Taiwan for a few months 10 years earlier. I knew it would be a great challenge, but I was willing to give it a go and I believed I was competent enough for the job. But my husband wasn’t happy about it. He’s also a police officer and he knew what it would mean for our family. I had to stay at the station pretty much around the clock. I spent most nights there and even weekends. He was off investigating big criminal cases and came back late or worked away from home. That meant our son had to stay with me. He would even sleep at the police station alongside me during the three years I was chief.
(Photo by Chin Hung-hao)
My relationship with my husband was tense and I was also under a lot of pressure at work. Usually I’d get to bed very late at night because I had so many things to do and then I also had to drive my son to school the next morning. I got the feeling that my subordinates—nearly all of them were men—had doubts about whether I could do the job as a woman. But I stuck it out.
The most memorable moment of my career happened in 2005 when I was station chief. My colleague was frisking a suspected drug dealer when the man pulled out a gun. I grabbed the weapon off him and helped the others subdue him. Later we realized the clip had come off in his pocket and the gun wasn’t loaded, but still it was essentially a life-and-death situation!
Traditionally, people think women aren’t as good at police work as men. Indeed, the majority of criminals are men and physically they’re more powerful than women. But there are advantages to being a woman in the police service. For example, suspects are less cautious in front of women and it’s easier for female cops [in plainclothes] to approach them, thus giving other members of the force an edge in apprehending them.
My family life returned to normal in 2007 when I started heading up the field operations division at the Women and Children Protection Brigade. Women account for about half of the brigade’s 40 staff. While I’m now able to take time off like in any normal job, the work is just as important. The brigade handles cases like child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence. Sometimes the victims are very young, less than 12 years old, or have mental disabilities.
In recent years, we’ve been tasked with taking the initiative in identifying children at risk such as those in danger of being neglected, trafficked or even killed. We reach out to homes where there’s a history of drug problems or where one or both parents have spent time in prison. We don’t wait for someone to come to the police first.
In November 2017, I received the Purple Ribbon Award for our efforts but there’s no end to the work the brigade must do to safeguard vulnerable women and children.”
—interview by Oscar Chung
Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw