By Lee Kyung-min
An increasing number of police officers are demanding use of stronger force including firearms in suppressing violent civilians, a move triggered by the death of an officer who was stabbed by a knife-wielding drunk last week.
In a post uploaded on the National Police Agency (NPA) website, an officer called for a law to prevent the recurrence of such a tragic death. “A law should be in place to guarantee lawful execution of duty by law enforcement authorities,” the officer wrote. “We should set up a law in memory of our deceased fellow officer Kim Sun-hyun.”
Over 10,000 people read the post and over 40 responses were in support of the opinion.
Similarly, an officer in Busan posted a message titled “How long will the police officers be left to die?” The prevalent notion that attacking law enforcement officials will result in no harsh punishment contributes to the ongoing abuse and mistreatment of public servants, he wrote.
“Courts do not impose harsh sentences in a case where a private individual was indicted for assaulting a police officer, which largely affects how the public perception is formed when they have a violent encounter with us,” he said.
The flood of such emotionally charged posts followed the July 8 death of Kim by a knife wound to the neck in Yeongyang County, North Gyeongsang Province. Kim was stabbed by a man surnamed Baek, 42, whose mother called police asking for help saying her drunk son was breaking furniture.
Kim and his partner surnamed Oh, 53, were armed with a .38 pistol and a taser gun, respectively, but neither could draw their weapons, out of fear of personal and professional consequences that would follow, a shared concern among police officers who define a gun as “an object that should be thrown, not drawn.”
Officers also say “Once you open fire, you are bound to go bankrupt.” They also commonly say using a gun means writing a report followed by internal inspection.
The sarcastic attitude reflects many precedents in which their senior officers were held personally accountable, without the institutional support for recognizing they were on official duty. In most cases involving a civilian injured by a law enforcement officer, the burden of compensation falls on the officer who incurred the physical damage. A low-level officer in Seoul paid 53 million won out of his own pocket after injuring a civilian that required five weeks of hospital treatment.
The Police Science Institute, supervised by the NPA, showed 97 percent of those surveyed said they were reluctant to draw firearms due to such “unfavorable” outcome expected. A separate survey showed three officers died on duty following attacks from subjects they tried to subdue, while 2,541 officers sustained injuries between 2013 and 2017.