Who Will Save the Police? Recognizing the Necessity and Urgency of Enacting the "Police Exercise of Powers Act"

Grand Justices' Interpretation No. 535 explicitly points out that the law "does not authorize police personnel to conduct arbitrary inspections, crackdowns, or random checks regardless of time, place, and target," and that "the requirements and procedures for conducting inspections, as well as remedies for illegal inspection acts, must be clearly stipulated by law." However, current regulations governing the execution of police duties are incomplete, and the relevant authorities should comprehensively review and enact them within two years in accordance with the intent of the interpretation. Although the Ministry of the Interior recently submitted the draft "Police Duties Execution Act" in compliance with this interpretation, during a review meeting at the Executive Yuan, participants strongly questioned that certain provisions infringe upon human rights and involve unconstitutionality. Media criticized the decision-making quality of the Ministry of the Interior as absurd, mocking that the draft was a laughingstock within the Executive Yuan. On the other hand, the police recently launched massive inspections of ecstasy clubs, taking everyone present back to the police station for mandatory urine testing. Some prosecutors were rather disapproving of this police approach of "sweeping up everyone and testing everyone's urine," considering it suspected of violating the principle of proportionality.

According to statistics from the Judicial Reform Foundation, from January to May of this year, police disciplinary violations exposed by the media reached about 60 cases, averaging almost one exposed every two days. If unreported dark figures are included, it is no exaggeration to criticize that the police get into trouble every day. Public distrust of the police is worsening day by day, yet people are also increasingly numb to the endless problems of police discipline. When "police committing crimes" is no longer news, that despair where nothing is more fatal than a dead heart is tantamount to pronouncing the death of the police. Who will save the police?

The police face a dual crisis of distrust from society toward both their system and individuals, trapping themselves in a dilemma. Investigative practices that were once customary and taken for granted—such as inspections, interrogations, tailing, undercover operations, and informants—suddenly became traps causing police to violate the law. Under circumstances of insufficient legal norms, police are still inevitably driven by performance pressure and unable to escape the inertial influence of toxic police culture, forcing police officers one by one to take risks and break the law and commit offenses. While the Police Duties Execution Act safeguards people from unlawful human rights violations by the police, doesn't such a law also remedy the inadequacy of legal norms, giving police clear legal boundaries when exercising their duties, thereby protecting police from unknowingly violating the law and resolving their predicament of not knowing whether to advance or retreat? The necessity and urgency of its enactment are crystal clear.

The Executive Yuan's returning of the Ministry of the Interior's draft "Police Duties Execution Act" is not an obliteration of its necessity to be enacted, but rather an urging of the police system to cast off entrenched habits of departmentalism and not merely attempt to use a legal veneer to legitimize controversial and improper investigative methods that have long existed. It is time to readjust positioning, bravely echo society's high demands for procedural justice, and no longer indulge in the misguided path of achieving case breakthroughs by any means necessary. When the mindset of police exercising their powers is genuinely acting in accordance with the law and taking the protection of human rights as their guiding principle, they will naturally be able to protect themselves and "save themselves and others," without needing outside help. What is worrying, however, is not that the Ministry of the Interior cannot produce a set of Police Duties Execution Act aligned with current trends, but that the police's perfunctory mindset of expediency and disregard for human rights remains unchanged. With "high enthusiasm at the top and cold indifference at the bottom," what can be done even with good laws and fine intentions?

※ Published in: United Daily News