Last March, five people with diverse experience of
the police came together in a seminar organized by
the Free China Review to discuss the main problems
facing the force. Numerous reforms have already been
undertaken and more are planned. But the overall
picture that emerges from the seminar is disturbing.
Frederic P.N. Chang, deputy director-general, Government Information Office: "Guaranteeing the security of society is the ultimate goal of all police work and one of the government's top priorities." But in recent years, the rapid pace of change in society and people's lifestyles has also changed the face of crime, making it much more complex. The rising crime rate has made people feel unsafe. Premier Vincent Siew has declared 1998 to be an action year for improving public security, and the government is determined to restore confidence in public safety. We are therefore very pleased to have this opportunity to bring together a number of academics and experts on Taiwan's police to share their knowledge and experience with us.
Ms. Hsieh has long been concerned with juvenile delinquency; we are all familiar with Mr. Yao's tremendous contributions to police reform when he was director-general of the National Police Administration (NPA); Professor Huang and Professor Lin specialize in crime prevention and investigation respectively, while Mr. Chang has a wide range of field experience to draw on as the result of his time as a police detective.
The discussion will cover five areas: changes in the police force since the lifting of martial law, coordination and distribution of responsibilities among law enforcement agencies, the public image of the police, crime prevention, and human rights issues.
Hsieh Chi-ta, New Party legislator and a member of the Legislative Yuan's judicial committee, formerly a judge of the High Court: Before the lifting of martial law, everything here centered on the military. During that period, the police and the army appeared virtually indistinguishable. Not surprisingly--for at that time, most ranking police administrators had originally been in the military. With the lifting of martial law, certain changes were made; but because of the long-standing connection between the two bodies, sometimes we still tend to make comparisons between them when considering their respective powers.
The biggest difference between the army and the police lies in what they're up against. Soldiers must fight to the bitter end until either they or the enemy are killed. But the police face civilians, most of whom are law-abiding. In the discharge of their duties, police officers often have to call upon ordinary people for assistance. The two "sides" thus have to get along with each other, and are not engaged in hostilities in the same way that an army is.
Given that fundamental difference, we have to ask ourselves if perhaps it would be better to draw a sharp distinction between the methods used to recruit and train police officers from the methods used to recruit and train their military counter parts. Military education stresses strict, unified training, as well as total obedience. The police, on the other hand, are there to fight crime and help take care of civilians, and an additional difficulty for them is that they find themselves up against an increasingly pluralistic and everchanging society. Under such circumstances, police officers need to make certain adjustments to their training and work attitude.
At present, police training is mainly the responsibility of the Taiwan Police College and the Central Police University. That system has long remained rigid and unchanged, as indeed is the case in all Taiwan's normal colleges and universities. The students are invariably taught by teachers who themselves underwent precisely the same form of training. This has led to a serious inability on the part of the police to cope with Taiwan's changing environment.
Can these narrow recruitment and training channels be widened? One thing that could be done is increase the number of opportunities for graduates of other universities or colleges to become police officers. If we are to upgrade the quality of police personnel, diversifying sources of recruitment is of great importance.
The average police officer must handle a heavy workload. If my understanding is correct, it is virtually impossible for a policeman to accomplish all his assignments to the letter. If he tried, he would be totally worn out in no time. It's a common place that the police work overtime, are frequently overloaded, and have no fixed holidays. How, then, can we expect them to keep up morale and demonstrate the proper attitude all the time? We need to find ways of rationalizing police work by eliminating unnecessary, time-consuming paperwork and streamlining procedures. The task is urgent. The public expects no less.
Promotion in the police force is another problem. It is hard for officers to achieve further promotion once they reach a certain level. Some are promoted simply because they have a bit of luck, or because they manage to attach themselves to a superior who's going places. If promotion is consistently based on such factors, or on seniority rather than professional ability, that is an obvious discouragement to those officers who are genuinely willing to devote themselves to police work. An officer's professional abilities should be respected and accorded proper recognition.
I have worked in Taiwan's judicial system and I would like to add a few words about my experiences there. I think the police themselves know much better than I do whether confessions are obtained by torture or other oppressive means. I only began to fully appreciate the seriousness of this problem when some of my friends who were also in the judicial system and later became practicing lawyers told me all about it.
The island's criminal procedure code stipulates that convictions may not be obtained purely on the evidence of a confession. There must be further proof. Nevertheless, close study of criminal cases clearly shows that many prosecutors and judges still regard a confession as the most important piece of evidence you can have. That in turn leads the police to believe that as long as they obtain a confession, the crime will be cracked. That way, they won't have to bother about digging for more evidence.
Personally, I have grave doubts about the truth of many confessions said to have been made in a number of criminal trials. Is it really human nature to make a confession that will inevitably lead to a jail term or even a death sentence? I think not. In the past we have seen cases of judges, prosecutors, and policemen who violated the law but, as far as I know, none of them ever confessed! Other, more concrete evidence was required and furnished. One is forced to ask why on the other hand the very worst sort of people, rapists, for instance, would admit guilt.
If the extraction of confessions by torture becomes the norm, a very disturbing situation will arise, where the police will be disinclined to put themselves out to search for evidence by resorting to scientific methods, because all they need is the suspect's own confession. That will inevitably result in miscarriages of justice. How are people who have been wrongfully imprisoned going to feel? Will they love and respect society, or will they hate it? Will they seek revenge once they're out of prison? Miscarriages of justice have partly been responsible for the recent deterioration in social order. Relations between the police and criminals will become worse and worse--not a good sign.
Something that puzzled me for a long time was why would the police accuse an innocent person of a crime? Eventually, I found out the reason. There is an incentive at work. Awards are made to officers on the basis of their performance, which in turn is the subject of a scoring system. For instance, the basic score for solving a murder is twenty points. If an officer catches a murderer who was acting alone, that entitles him to an extra fifteen points, or thirty-five in total. But if there are two accomplices involved and the policeman catches them both, his score shoots up to fifty--twenty for the crime, fifteen per criminal.
You don't have to be Einstein to work out that the more people the officer incriminates, the higher his score will be. Under this system, there is a danger that an officer will be tempted to name innocent people, and there is the further problem that it encourages the force to pool manpower to crack major crimes so as to grab high scores while neglecting minor misdemeanors. Some civilians are inevitably going to get hurt.
How can we solve this problem? I suggest that we should start to evaluate police work in another way, using public satisfaction as the barometer, rather than looking at artificial scores. There are a lot of details to be worked out, of course, and there will be obstacles and even failures to overcome. But that's the price of improving the system.
I also think we should be placing greater emphasis on the use of scientific methods when investigating criminal cases. The extraction of confessions by torture was still happening in the United States thirty years ago. But now people have a much greater awareness of human rights and such measures are no longer tolerated. Scientific investigation has taken their place, and it is high time we acknowledged that here by putting similar systems in place.
There is vast room for improvement in our forensic science. Crime scenes are too often contaminated by the victim's relatives, media personnel, or even the police themselves. Courses in forensic science are not available locally, I understand. That should change, and in the very near future.
As to police-citizen relations, it isn't always easy to feel confident that someone who claims to be a policeman is one in fact. Police uniforms, handcuffs, and even police-issue guns can all be purchased here, one way or another. I wonder if some form of warrant card could be issued to the police so that they have indisputable ID. [Astonishing though it must seem, it is a fact that police do not carry official identification in Taiwan.] That would help bolster their authority and secure the trust and cooperation of local residents .
At the moment, there are few channels through which civilians can lodge a complaint against the police. There are so -called "watchdog committees," but they come under the jurisdiction of various police administrative agencies, which means in effect that the police are being supervised by their own. The watchdogs tend to safeguard the interests of those complained about by scaling down the seriousness of complaints or even covering up the facts. I would like to see the creation of an appeals channel outside the existing system, one giving easy access to ordinary people. It is only when the police come under that kind of supervision that they will stop doing whatever they want.
Some people say the police are nothing but hoodlums in uniform. I do not agree, but we do need to think about why such opinions are expressed. There are some very good policemen. Their hard work is well recognized and merits praise. But the point is, how can we improve the image of the police and solve various problems that are inherent in the present system? Winning the trust and respect of the public is very important to the police.
If senior police personnel are conscious of their own deficiencies and mistakes, they themselves must stand up courageously, admit the problems, and initiate comprehensive reforms. Otherwise, the problems that bedevil police administration in this country will never be solved.
Chang Yu-chin, chief of the criminal investigation section, Chungcheng II Station, Taipei Municipal Police Headquarters: The seven sections based at my station are responsible for various kinds of police work. The workload is extremely heavy. They are asked to handle so many traffic violation cases a month, so many unlicensed driving cases, they have to check household registrations--500 households per policeman--every three months, and they have foot-patrol and other duties. For us in the criminal section, of course, our most important task is to solve crimes. It's not our job to chase after traffic violators, but that doesn't mean we work any less. It's quite normal for detectives to work more than ten hours a day, and work for several days at a stretch if there's a major case on. Over the past two days, for example, I've had less than ten hours' sleep.
Solving cases is the best way of preventing them; we've seen too many serial crimes. As Ms. Hsieh has just pointed out, we're evaluated by how many points we get, and a policeman is required to earn a certain number of points in a particular time. The basic rule is that the more serious a crime is and the more it endangers social security, the more points it merits. In practice, it isn't too hard for a traffic cop to catch violators, but hard work doesn't necessarily lead to results in criminal cases.
I can't pretend our evaluation system is scientific. For example, we don't get more points for more dangerous missions, such as chasing the murderers in the Pai Hsiao-yen case [who were armed and desperate], and we get just as many points for easy arrests. Many criminals were once juvenile delinquents, so it's very important for us to educate this group of young people so that they won't turn into hardened criminals. But you don't earn many points for educating delinquents, so most cops don't want to spend time on it.
Promotion is said to be a problem. I don't have any opinion on this myself, but let me just tell you what the local newspapers say. They say that police promotion goes like this: juniors get promoted on ability, more senior officers depend on kuan-hsi--personal relations--for advancement, and those in the upper ranks depend on factions. Now that county magistrates and city mayors are also trying to grab control of personnel appointments at local police bureaus, things are getting even more complicated.
Another thing I'd like to mention is the torture of suspects. Ms. Hsieh believes police commonly torture suspects to get confessions. I don't know the situation before, but as an experienced field officer, I have to say that almost nothing of the kind has happened in recent years. People's awareness of human rights has been rising steadily, and what we can and cannot do is clearly laid down in the criminal procedure code. Upon arrest, a suspect must be read his or her rights--for example, that no interrogation may take place at night, the suspect isn't obliged to answer questions, he or she is entitled to a lawyer and can insist on investigation of evidence favorable to the defense. The code also requires the whole interrogation to be tape-recorded or videotaped. What I'm saying is that the law provides suspects with good protection. A police officer can't torture suspects even if he wants to.
In my experience, a very large proportion of suspects do confess to the crimes they've committed. But as Ms. Hsieh has pointed out, confessions have to be supported by hard evidence. Say there's a burglary but we can't find any fingerprints, witnesses who can identify the suspect, or other evidence. Then we have no case, not even if someone turns himself in and confesses to the crime. There was a murder case like that in southern Taiwan. The suspect confessed, but the DNA test didn't match, so he walked.
Criminals are also sharpening their skills--for instance, they wear gloves so that there's no chance of fingerprints. This makes scientific evidence, such as the results of DNA tests, especially important.
As we come to depend more and more on scientific evidence, there is a correspondingly increased need for the latest equipment. We are upgrading, but there is a logistics problem. Because of the way the budgetary system works here, the budget we are drawing up now is for equipment we plan to buy after July 1999. Purchasing procedures inevitably take time, so it will be nearly two years from now by the time we actually get the equipment--and you all know how fast computers can advance in two years.
We need to improve other equipment, too. Take the bullet-proof helmet, which I have to wear a lot. The attached visor protects my face, but it can also be the perfect cover for bad guys. Everybody looks the same in a helmet, so a cop can mistake a criminal in a helmet for one of his colleagues and be blown away in consequence. Then there's this other kind of helmet that only protects the upper half of your head--you have to spend a gunfight flat on the ground, or your face won't have any protection. When we cops are out there facing bad guys, good equipment is perhaps the most important thing that keeps us alive and helps us get the job done.
Frank Fu-yuan Huang, associate professor and chair of the Institute and Department of Crime Prevention and Corrections, Central Police University: If you stop someone in the street and ask if Taiwan is ready for another nuclear plant, most of the time you won't get an answer, because people think the question is too technical. But if you ask people about crime in Taiwan you'll be there for the next half-hour, although crime prevention is actually a highly technical issue.
People are often confused by statistics. In 1987, there were 89,408 criminal cases in Taiwan. But in 1996, the numbers suddenly surged to 199,641. The critical change came in 1995. In July that year, the NPA decided to give the public the real facts about crime in Taiwan, so they invented a novel way of reporting crimes that involved filling out a form in triplicate. [Before that, it is said, the local police used to cover up a lot of petty crime. Now, when people go to the police, they can ask for a copy of the completed form--hence the resulting jump in the statistics.]
Cases reported in 1995 were up one-third on the previous year. [121,523 crimes in 1994 as opposed to 170,264 in 1995.] Many people took such a sudden jump as a sign of seriously deteriorating social order. Lots of surveys held in 1996 showed that the public was losing confidence--one survey found that nearly 80 percent of respondents felt that public order had deteriorated. It's quite right to say that the figures were growing, but that doesn't mean that public order was getting worse. On the contrary, I think public order has been gradually improving. If we compare the violent crime rates for 1996 and 1997 respectively, the 1997 figure was down 20 percent on the previous year. [59.2 percent and 78.7 percent respectively.] If we only look at the figures, we miss the broader picture.
Then again, because the rape rate grew by 14 percent last year, many women's groups got very worked up and called it the most terrifying year in history for Taiwan's women. But I have a totally different opinion. A sex-crime prevention and control law was passed on December 31, 1996, which resulted in more and more women coming forward instead of hiding in a corner after they'd suffered a sexual assault. The numbers certainly grew rapidly in 1996 and 1997, but I believe that they will decline later.
I think we can improve public order in several ways. The best course is to educate people not to want to commit crimes. But that can't be done by the police force or by laws alone. We need to light fires in people's bellies, get them concerned for society, make them want a fairer system. If society is full of negative emotions, it's much harder to solve these problems.
I know three thieves. I've asked them why they stole, and they said that it was hard work. They did research into the best times and identified the most suitable targets: people who go to the south of Taiwan to spend the New Year holidays with relatives. They conceded that stealing wasn't a good thing, but they said that lots of people went in for land speculation, and the law couldn't touch them. I was reminded of a saying of [the great Chinese philosopher] Chuang-tzu: "Those who commit serious crimes like overthrowing a country become emperors; those who commit minor crimes like theft are seriously punished or even put to death." If a given society lacks equality, crime will flourish there, irrespective of how strong the police are or how much legislators criticize.
Another thing we need to do is deter potential criminals. There are three ways to go. First, we should formulate a proper sentencing policy; second, we need to construct an effective policing system; and third, we must get cooperation from local communities.
A proper sentencing policy involves punishing serious crimes rigorously while minor crimes attract lesser punishments. I think that the parole system should not be relaxed too much, and that recidivists should be jailed for longer periods. Sentences of less than twelve months should be replaced by alternative punishments. Our jails are overcrowded by as much as 16 percent, including those who are sentenced to less than a year in jail. I think such a short period is useless as a means of reforming a criminal anyway. It's no real threat. It gives inadequate opportunities for education, it gives the prisoner no time to learn anything good, but it's quite long enough for him to learn several techniques that will help him commit more crimes once he's out.
I remember a case where a man in his seventies was sentenced to a prison term of six months because he'd illegally built a structure at the back of the Grand Hotel. He begged not to be put in jail, but the judge insisted that most old men were very stubborn and nothing short of jail could change them. What can possibly be achieved by jailing such an old man for six months? The only effect is to make him hate the government.
The best way of creating an effective policing system is to create a modern police force. Training, equipment, and structures all need to be modernized. Teaching the police scientific techniques is of course important, but knowing how the criminal mind works is even more useful. I've been on two profiling courses, where we were taught how to track down criminals through their "psychological traces"--the clues they leave behind at the crime scene apart from physical and chemical trails.
As regards equipment, we eventually hope to catch up with Japan. There, more than 10,000 criminal cases a year are reported through the 110 [emergency phone] system. On average, the Japanese police take just five minutes forty-six seconds to arrive the scene of the crime. How can they be so fast? They have access to a satellite system and other advanced equipment. I want us to be the same.
The force here also needs to be restructured. In Japan, 260,000 police officers are able to adequately serve a population of about 200 million. Here, we have 80,000 officers serving approximately 21 million people. Our distribution of manpower is clearly a problem, and that's why the 1st, 4th and 5th Peace Preservation Police Corps will soon be broken up and their personnel reallocated away from their current centers in a bid to strengthen local forces.
When modernizing the police, community policing is the way to go. In the last century, a policeman was required to be fit and sturdy and that was all. He didn't have to learn much. Then somebody thought to re-equip the police, so a lot of expensive new stuff was bought. Then somebody else thought to inquire whether all that fancy equipment had done anything to bring down the crime rate. When they asked the public what they thought, the answer came back: "Although the police are very well equipped and respond swiftly, they're basically people who sit behind glass windows."
In other words, the best and most advanced equipment had served to isolate the force from the very people it was designed to protect. What we need to see now is more involvement with the general public. Community policing, in other words. Ever since Mr. Yao became NPA director-general, there have been a lot more foot patrols over the New Year period. Foot and bicycle patrols are the mainstays of community policing.
The problem is knowing how to get the community to cooperate. In 1969, they conducted an interesting experiment in Los Angeles. The police "abandoned" a car on the street. Nobody touched it for a week. Then somebody broke one of its windows, and after that the car was dismantled and stolen, bit by bit, in just four hours, until eventually only a single tire was left. They called it the broken window syndrome--if there are signs that nobody cares about a community, the crime rate in that community will rise. Now Chen Chin-hsing, [one of the kidnappers and murderers of Pai Hsiao-yen] once hid in a suburb of Taipei. He chose a hideout that already had a broken window--Taiwan's own version of the broken window syndrome. If the police can't get people to cooperate, crime prevention is hard.
Take another example. According to a study we conducted, some banks are more likely to be robbed than others. It all depends on the number of video monitors and the height of the counters. So, we recommended that several banks install more monitors, even fake ones, as a means of deterring potential robbers. One bank in Taipei county refused, saying they had insurance. A month later, sure enough, that bank was robbed. Why bother to conduct studies if nobody cares about the results?
In order to stop convicted felons from recidivism--this is most important--we need to work on any mental problems and provide them with sound occupational training. Some of the training that goes on in our jails is highly impractical. For example, teaching prisoners how to make plastic flowers. I once asked a thief how much money he could steal at one time. He told me that several million NT dollars was normal, but on a good day it was possible to grab more than ten million. For people like that, it's a case of easy come, easy go. It's totally unrealistic to expect them to earn a living by making plastic flowers after they get out of jail. There should be a better rehabilitation system. These people need to be reincorporated into our society, not isolated.
If we want a better image with the public, in the end we have to pay more attention to the quality of the service we provide. Another study that we carried out showed that the public's feelings toward the police can be summed up in one word: ambivalence. Of course, no police force can ever earn a 100 percent good image rating, because it's in the nature of their job that they sometimes have to step in and prevent people from doing what they want. But the public also realizes that you can't do without a police force.
It's not unlike the situation with regard to school deans. Most students have ambivalent feelings toward them, too. We once did a survey where respondents were asked to identify the person they most wanted to see whenever they felt unsafe at night. The overwhelming response was: a policeman. But you wouldn't necessarily say that if you'd ever been fined. What the police have to do is try to get closer to the civilian population, and the best way to do that is to put more emphasis on service.
Lin Mao-hsiung, chair of the Department of Criminal Investigation, Central Police University: First of all, I'd like to take Ms. Hsieh up on one point: the graduate school at the Central Police University has already been opened up to students coming from other colleges and universities. We want students who've majored in various fields such as information technology, medicine, and tax administration to study at our school and then join us in solving criminal cases. I think this is a good start for revolutionizing police work in Taiwan.
But we're taking other measures too. Computer crime is a growing problem, and we've arranged to trade our experience of it with our counterparts at a US college, where among other things we hope to learn how to plan courses on the prevention and investigation of such cases. We're also inviting experts to teach the techniques of both monitoring and preventing monitoring--equally important these days, when many cases of peeping Tom video crimes are coming to the fore.
But these initiatives shouldn't be limited to students. I would like to see ranking policemen, precinct chiefs and so on, come back to school for re-education. Many people have the impression that some of these officers show a marked lack of ability when they investigate cases. I also think there's room for improvement in the way they handle street rallies and demonstrations.
But at present the majority of policemen aren't interested in further education. We open classes for leading police cadres on a regular base, but I know that most of the officers who attend have been ordered to take part. There are a few exceptions. Last year, our school invited a famous expert to lecture on investigative skills. On the first day, officers came because they were told to. But over the next few days, some of them began to take a genuine interest and realized they still had things to learn.
Those lectures drew attention to a number of things that are essential but often neglected by Taiwan's police officers. For example, in Taiwan, the police aren't careful enough about preserving the integrity of the crime scene. It'll be some time before all the island's officers learn to investigate cases professionally, and I think it's very important for the incumbent NPA director-general to keep education in the forefront of everybody's minds.
As already pointed out, the image of the police is closely bound up with the incentives they're offered. I believe that much money is allocated to paying rewards and not enough goes to cover the investigation budget. And you often find the lion's share of any reward money going to superiors rather than subordinates, even though they're the ones who should get the credit for solving the case. I think that's ridiculous.
The situation in the United States is different. There, officers are reimbursed every cent they spend on an investigation. The financial incentives are much lower. Instead of large sums of money, US police officers are rewarded with medals--honors that are held in high regard--and only the real hero gets one.
If the police are serious about improving their reputation, they'll have to abandon their authoritarian attitudes, which have prevailed in Taiwan for far too long. Authoritarianism used to pervade Taiwan from top to bottom. Nowadays, however, the police are inevitably going to find themselves challenged, because Taiwan has become democratic. The police mustn't think they're a privileged sector of society, or that it's still open to them to hide skeletons in closets. The more they reveal about the process of investigation, the better their image will become. In recent years, the media have been exerting pressure on the police and urging them to bring everything into the open. That's good for the police.
As authoritarianism is dismantled, the police must learn to become more professional. Policemen used to be pretty self -assertive, tending to exact confessions by means of torture. They could crack cases without having to collect proper evidence. That saved trouble, but only at the expense of professionalism, and it caused a lot of complaints. Today, there are lingering elements of authoritarianism in the force. Unless they change their attitudes, I'm afraid the public will continue to distrust them, and those who have been wronged may seek revenge in the future.
It still worries me that a lot of policemen seem to have no respect for the job. Some of them just sit around the office, waiting for five o'clock to come. They'd never think of working overtime. Some of them dress sloppily in public, chewing betel nuts and generally looking slovenly.
Yao Kao-chiao, until 1997 director-general of the National Police Administration: It's been six months since I resigned as director-general of the NPA, and in my entire forty years of police service I never felt so relaxed as I do now. When I was a police officer, I never got to bed before three in the morning. I usually made do with two meals a day and managed to go home once a fortnight. But even then, all I had time to do was grab a quick bite with my family before rushing back to the office.
If you really want me to discuss the problems concerning the police, I have to tell you that I could speak for eight hours a day for a week, and it still wouldn't be enough. Those problems are even more complex than outsiders imagine. For example, leadership.
I have studied in Japan on two occasions, first at Police University and then later as a graduate law-school student. I observed that in Japan, high-school graduates were eligible to apply for a place at a district police college. Despite that, however, nearly 75 percent of applicants were university graduates. And each year, a handful of people who had passed the national examination for officials of higher rank would be made senior officers in charge of police stations, although they were only 26 or 28. Nearly all of them were graduates of Tokyo University law school.
At Police University, there were ninety students in our class. We were all university graduates. My classmates had attended district police colleges after graduating and then worked their way up through the ranks. I was 31 then, and one of the youngest ones--most of my classmates were at least 33. Some of them were 37 or 38.
On one occasion I said to my classmates, "You and the guys who passed the national examination are all university graduates, but whereas you are in your thirties and are still only inspectors, they are precinct chiefs although they're only in their twenties. Where's the justice in that?" Their answer surprised me. "Yes, we are all university graduates," they said. "But those others passed the national examination for officials of higher ranks, and we couldn't. Who can we blame? Only our selves." They went on to tell me why they thought Japan's police administration was number one in the world, saying that it was all because of the ones who had passed the national examination, their leaders. "Without them," they said to me, "we would not be what we are today."
During martial law, out of every hundred applicants to Central Police University, only about three gained admission. I know of one case where a police officer's son graduated from the Central Police University and was eventually promoted to inspector, but because his father was merely a graduate of Taiwan Police College, he was never eligible to achieve his own son's rank. Of course, there isn't a single country in the world where every police officer can make inspector, any more than there could be an army where all the soldiers became officers. But now the door is open to everyone, including graduates of Taiwan Police College. They know that this is the only real route to promotion, so why don't they apply to take the exam?
I graduated from only the second class of Central Police University. A mere eighty students were accepted; the rest had to go to Taiwan Police College. After graduating, they started on the lowest rung of the ladder. After two years, however, they became eligible to take the entrance exam for the Central Police University. There's no restriction on the number of times in his career a police officer can apply, up to age 52. If he still can't hack it, nobody's to blame but the officer in question. Outsiders don't understand this, so they tend to misinterpret. In fact, the opportunity to become a senior police officer is always open to everyone.
When martial law was in effect, the police came under Taiwan Garrison Command, which made policy and took the big decisions relating to police matters. All the police could do was carry out orders. Even station chiefs had to listen to the local military commander, regardless of his age. During that time, most ranking police officials were transferred across from the army. There was never any continuity. Every two or three years there'd be another set of transfers and the people taking over had to start all over again.
In that era, policemen didn't earn very much and they lacked social status, so it was very difficult for the Taiwan Police College to recruit new students. So they made a regulation which said that if an officer succeeded in recruiting two high school graduates from his district, a merit point would be added to his record. I was chief of Taipei County Police Headquarters then, and since my men gained more merit points than any other force in Taiwan, I was myself awarded a huge number of merit points. I feel it's more of a disgrace than an honor.
When it comes to discipline and public security, I think the quality of police manpower is the most important factor. But not all of today's approximately 81,900 policemen are graduates of the Central Police University or the Taiwan Police College. The number of graduates from these two schools is only about 67,000, of which only 10,000 are Central Police University graduates. Some people say that the quality of the personnel in the [Ministry of Justice's] Investigation Bureau is better than that of the police, because IB investigators are all college graduates. I can tell you now that graduates of Central Police University are definitely better than anyone you'll find in the Investigation Bureau.
When I was principal of the Taiwan Police College, I discovered that some of my students couldn't even count from one to ten. How could I trust those people with a firearm? Nobody knew for sure whether they'd kill people or protect them, if they were allowed to become policemen. In the end we had to ask their parents to take them home. Then we trawled through those students' entrance exam papers to try and figure out how they'd been allowed in in the first place. The standard for admission wasn't very high. In composition, for example, students could get a grade just by filling the page up with repeated slogans. The questions in other subjects were all not so much multiple-choice as single-choice. The students we took on during the martial law period were like that. Since martial law was lifted, I really don't know how they manage to keep order in Taiwan.
Some ranking officers suggested that I should dismiss any policemen who fell below the standard. What, all of them? I remember when I was in charge of the case of the [murdered] Taoyuan county magistrate, the biggest local gangster was a police officer who'd been kicked off the force. Mass dismissals solve nothing.
I came around to the view that the key to the whole problem was devising a fair system of promotion and providing enormous opportunities for re-education. So I successfully applied to the Cabinet for permission to allow a quota of officers at the entry level to attend the Taiwan Police College for one year's training, and then be awarded the same qualification as a college graduate.
Originally, the maximum age limit was 38. I increased that to 50. I ask you: In which country of the world do policemen have a similar opportunity to keep their jobs and salaries while at the same time studying for the equivalent of a college degree?
Many of our entry-level officers never dared to attempt the Joint College Entrance Examination. I always encouraged those officers in particular to seize this opportunity. Last year, about 6,000 of them did. If they finish the course, a year after they get the qualification they can go on to apply to Central Police University for a further two-year course. As long as a policeman is under 52, he can keep on applying until he gets in.
In the past, there were only twenty-five such openings a year. Six could be admitted without taking an entrance examination, leaving only nineteen places for all policemen in Taiwan. So last year I asked the Cabinet to increase the quota to 175. I understand that the number of such openings has recently been raised to 315.
Once an officer has earned a diploma under this scheme, he will be promoted to inspector. I always urged junior officers to remember that if they were successful, they had the chance to go on to the Central Police University for the two-year course, again keeping both job and salary. If the numbers of students attending the university could be increased in this way, we could stop recruiting to Taiwan Police College for a while.
The trouble is that even the most junior officers don't do so badly--they make about NT$50,000 (US$1,543) a month. Let me give you an example. When I was leading the 7th Peace Preservation Police Corps, there was a specialist on our staff. He had a master's degree from National Taiwan Ocean University. After graduating, he passed the Higher Civil Service Examination and joined my corps, drawing a salary of NT$30,000 (US$926) a month. He felt pretty upset, because a graduate of Taiwan Police College could be earning NT$60,000 (US$1,852) a month. So he studied for a special police exam and passed. After nine months' further training, he's now a member of the 7th Peace Preservation Police Corps and earning NT$60,000 a month.
Now if they cut off that avenue for people like him, I'm afraid we'll end up saddled with officers like the ones we had to put up with under martial law, and we just can't afford that.
I once got a call from a woman who told me that she'd seen two cops asleep in a patrol car parked on an embankment. I looked into the case and found out why they were there. They'd stopped somebody in the street, and he'd asked them which law gave them the right to detain him. Our two dumb friends were appalled--so appalled and frustrated, in fact, that they decided their only course was to go off duty and have a nice rest. That wasn't the only case, not by a long shot. Let me ask you this: what good would it do to recruit more and more officers if their quality is on a par with what I've just described?
Another thing I want to complain about is that our officers still don't have all the powers they need to nab crooks. Our criminal law code was drafted in 1935, so it's been in force for sixty-three years now, and the part concerning the rights of the police when interrogating criminals still hasn't been revised. Actually, the police have no right to interrogate suspects; that job is reserved to district prosecutors. What a waste of manpower! A prosecutor's place is in court, arguing with the defense attorney.
And another thing. In many other countries, the police have the right to apply to a judge for a wiretap warrant, allowing them to monitor a suspect's phone calls. But here, not even a senior police chief can do that. He must first report his intention to his superiors, then he has to apply to the prosecuting attorney for permission to borrow a wiretap device from the Investigation Bureau.
Look at what happened in the Pai Hsiao-yen case, for example. [Pai Hsiao-yen, 17, was kidnapped and then brutally raped and murdered by three men. Attempts to trap the kidnappers were foiled by a media circus that caused much disquiet in Taiwan.] The three suspects called [Pai Hsiao-yen's mother] on a mobile phone to tell her where to deliver the ransom. We sent our men over to the Investigation Bureau to monitor the call. They had to tape it and then try to play it back to us at police HQ down an ordinary telephone line. We could hear enough to realize that the rendezvous was to be in a particular part of Taoyuan, but that was it. A bunch of us, including me, spent a lot of time trying to figure out what we'd heard.
In the meantime, reporters waiting outside the mother's residence got the whole call as clear as a bell, using their own bugging devices. They immediately dispatched reporters to the rendezvous, while another group got ready to tail us. How can you expect the police to do their job under such circumstances?
There are many other rights that should be given to police so that they can do a better job. But unfortunately, anyone who stands up to fight for these reforms gets eliminated. I'm a living example of that--and seeing me "killed in action" scared off those who sympathized with my aims. [Yao was a casualty of the public outcry over the failure of the police to make prompt arrests in the Pai Hsiao-yen case.] This is very different from the situation within the judicial system, which Ms. Hsieh mentioned earlier. Not even the president of the Judicial Yuan has the right to interfere with or influence individual judges. But you ask any police section chief--like Mr. Chang there--if his superior tells him to keep quiet about something, is he going to dare open his mouth?
There's been a lot of talk about our evaluation system. There has to be something of the kind in any organization, or you end up with a bunch of people who simply don't deliver, month in and month out. It isn't easy to establish a fair system, and I agree that the current one needs to be revised. In fact, I've been advocating that ever since I was a lowly station chief, but I could never get anyone to take it seriously. When I became director-general of the NPA, I set up a team to look into it. We collected data on overseas police systems and even asked statisticians to help. I don't know what's happening with that, now that I'm no longer with the administration.
I think the three most important elements in successful police work are a willingness to take responsibility, a sense of honor, and a desire to serve. The police have the responsibility to protect the lives and property of citizens. Their sense of honor should ensure that they never take bribes. And the police need to change their mindset, so that instead of merely controlling people, they serve them.
In my years as a local cop, I always made serving people my highest priority. When I was the director of the Kaohsiung Municipal Police, I started a patrol service--if a family went on a trip they could call us and we would patrol their houses twice an hour. I told our vehicle patrols that if they found a woman walking alone at night in a remote area, they were either to take her home or call her a cab and then phone later to check if she'd got home safely. A citizen could also ask for a police escort if he was going to the bank with a lot of money. And if we found that some careless citizen had forgotten to lock his car doors, we would lock them for him and leave a note reminding him to be more careful next time.
One more thing--when I was on the point of leaving the NPA, one high-ranking officer was pushing for "community police teams," a project involving the creation of 3,000 such volunteer teams throughout Taiwan. I experimented with some thing similar more than twenty years ago, and I discovered there was no way it could be made to work. I don't think anyone here would be willing to patrol their community or neighborhood after an exhausting day at work. I tried to push this community policing idea in Kaohsiung, Taipei county, and Taipei city, but none of them came to anything. Maybe the civilian volunteers were curious and willing to give it a try at the start, but their enthusiasm soon faded.
Actually, the only real help citizens can give us is by calling us whenever they see anything or anyone suspicious in their neighborhood. Even 80,000 police officers aren't enough to keep the peace by themselves. They need the public to work with them.