Statement on the 2nd Anniversary of the National_Sun_Conference on Judicial Reform - Taiwan Police Working Rights Advocacy Association

At the National_Sun_Conference on Judicial Reform, the Taiwan Police Working Rights Advocacy Association and the Judicial Reform Foundation once again raised chronic issues in police performance evaluation and educational systems. They urged the establishment of a Performance Evaluation Committee and an Education Committee to improve the National Police Agency's insular and self-satisfied status quo. Amidst the calls for and waves of judicial reform, the Police Workers' Association called on the government to improve the educational environment for police colleagues, and most importantly, their law enforcement environment. To this end, they invited members of various legislative caucuses to participate in this press conference, hoping that the public sector would truly recognize that what police officers have long needed is not merely the replenishment of manpower and equipment, but rather that our law enforcement requires proper systems and comprehensive educational resources as a backing.

Two Years Since the National_Sun_Conference on Judicial Reform, the National Police Agency Is Still Playing Games

Two years after the resolutions of the National_Sun_Conference on Judicial Reform, the National Police Agency has passively handled the resolution contents, failing to establish the Police Performance Management Committee and the Police Education and Training Committee. Rank-and-file officers have continuously suffered in silence, unable to reflect practical needs and difficulties to policy makers. Under the pretext of reviewing the performance system, the National Police Agency held annual project and evaluation (review) plan review meetings, but the actual results were fundamentally "cut corners." These meetings lacked input from experts outside the police system, failed to disclose the composition of members, did not adopt democratically elected rank-and-file representatives, and did not make the resolution contents public. The National Police Agency is addicted to operating behind closed doors yet fears a guilty conscience, attempting to muddle through with black-box meetings. This once again proves that the National Police Agency cannot be trusted. The Association believes that the resolutions of the National_Sun_Conference on Judicial Reform should be jointly observed by all administrative agencies. As the superior authority of the National Police Agency and the Ministry of the Interior, the Executive Yuan's condoning of its subordinates' law-breaking and rule-violating behavior is unacceptable. The Executive Yuan should directly instruct the Ministry of the Interior to establish the two committees in accordance with the resolutions, so as to set things right and live up to the people's expectations for the National_Sun_Conference on Judicial Reform.

The National Police Agency's Performance System Cuts Corners, Deceiving the Nation's Rank-and-File Police and the Public

The Police Workers' Association demands that the National Police Agency implement the composition of the "Police Performance Management Committee" and the "Police Education and Training Committee" within two months, especially since the Agency has procrastinated for two years with still no progress. The Agency convened annual project and evaluation (review) plan review meetings to review the performance system, but the result was that the revised contents were not made public for social credibility, and substantively it was old wine in a new bottle. It failed to address the fact that the system encouraging frontline personnel to violate the law in exchange for performance rewards fundamentally violates the principle of the rule of law. Not only is it legally without basis, but in practice it also indirectly coerces frontline personnel into violating the rule of law to meet the astronomical performance figures demanded by superiors. Over the past two years, multiple controversies over illegal investigations caused by police personnel striving for performance clearly show that there is a distinct causal relationship between poorly designed performance systems and law-breaking by frontline officers. Yet the National Police Agency has never comprehensively reviewed this, "individualizing" the issue as a problem of frontline officers. As long as the National Police Agency refuses to face the problems of the performance system, frontline police and the people remain at risk of illegal infringement every single day. The Police Workers' Association hereby makes a solemn plea for the National Police Agency to confront the true crux of the performance system, stop playing the tricks of operating behind closed doors and self-satisfaction, and honestly face the calls of the nation's rank-and-file police and the people.

Police Education Is Closed and Authoritarian; The Police Workers' Association Calls for Openness and Diversity

Furthermore, since the Police Workers' Association sounded the alarm on reviewing police education and training, the National Police Agency and practitioners of police education have not only failed to squarely face the various modern ills of police education and training, but have even persisted in outdated propositions from the martial law era, such as the "Guidelines for the Spiritual Education of Cadets and Students of the Central Police University," which demand obedience to leaders. The Association believes that police education must eradicate such authoritarian remnants deeply rooted within police education, and comprehensively open up to reform and keep pace with the times, rather than having various current police educational institutions carve out their own turfs in in-breeding, which has led to training and education falling behind the pulse of the times and society. Police education and training should maintain an open mindset to interact with the outside world, and consent to the specific training and educational reform proposals submitted by the Police Workers' Association to the Ministry of the Interior, making training and education closer to the reality of duty execution and preventing rank-and-file police and the people from being exposed to the risk of illegality.

Specific Reform Demands

1. Regarding the Police Performance System

   1. The formulation of police plans and performance metrics should establish foundational principles and procedural regulations.
   2. Items that carry risks of illegality, actually create operational hazards, or belong to passive indicators (such as "number of occurrences") should be moderately reduced or even prohibited from evaluation or baseline allocation; if baseline numbers must be established, their evaluation methods and calculation bases should be made public and subject to review.
   3. Countermeasures or regulations should be proposed regarding improper management behaviors stemming from the performance system (denial of leave due to performance, malicious scheduling of duties, malicious transfers).
   4. The legality of rewards and punishments associated with the performance system should be reviewed. Punishments based on achievement rates that fail to account for jurisdictional characteristics or punishments incurred because a case was solved by another jurisdiction all suffer from the problem of "a lack of causal equivalence in the reasons for reward and punishment," and should be comprehensively reviewed.
   5. Legal scholars or a third party (the Police Performance Management Committee) should inspect and review whether relevant performance planning lacks evaluation in legal interpretation and application, or even involves items that require breaking the law to achieve or are fundamentally unauthorize by law for police agencies (such as the "detention rate" evaluation in the An-Ju Project, and matters involving non-police-governing laws in third-party policing). Evaluations and statistics should also be conducted on the actual situation of current frontline police personnel utilizing laws related to warrantless coercive measures.
   6. Human resource assessments should be conducted for the formulation of performance, holding prior discussions on exactly how much manpower is needed. If past performance required achieving an average 12-hour work shift, then future workloads should be moderately reduced. Based on opinions synthesized from a 2018 survey of frontline police personnel, the Association asserts that all current performance baselines should be reduced to 50% of their current levels.

2. Regarding Police Education and Training

   1. Curriculum planning and practical duty applicability of education and training should be comprehensively reviewed, and training reform proposals should be accepted.
   2. Practical training on existing equipment and their usage should be implemented, alongside the perfection of equipment.
   3. Education and training on the international concepts of police force classification, also known as the use-of-force continuum, should be implemented, avoiding an overemphasis on empty hands or service firearms.
   4. While this case includes promoting the protection of rights for current police school students, the Central Police University and the Taiwan Police College appear to place themselves outside the scope of judicial reform. Management issues at the Central Police University and the Taiwan Police College have raised questions among current students; their school administrations should respect student autonomy in accordance with the University Act and establish a reciprocal communication system.
   5. Abolish educational policies with authoritarian legacies, such as the "Guidelines for the Spiritual Education of Cadets and Students of the Central Police University."

3. Regarding the Implementation of the Two Committees

   1. To implement the resolutions of the National_Sun_Conference on Judicial Reform concerning the two police reform items—the "Police Education and Training Committee" and the "Police Performance Management Committee"—the Association demands participation in the formulation process of the committee charters, demands information transparency and rank-and-file participation, and requires the two committees to complete drafts and be established within two months.
   2. The holding of the "Project and Performance Review Meetings" and the "Education and Training Committee" should be expanded in scope, and announcement procedures must be implemented so that frontline police personnel are informed of the selection process for rank-and-file representatives.
   3. The Association maintains that the National Police Agency should regularly coordinate with the Association and explain relevant regulatory contents and reform progress. The Association will continue to monitor whether the National Police Agency implements reforms.