Having dealt with the Korean police a few different times and being frustrated at their ineptness and unprofessionalism each time, the only thing that surprised me when I found out that a criminal suspect murdered a witness AT the police station is that I haven’t heard of this sort of thing more often.
In one instance where I was able to just walk into the station and the room (although separated by glass) where my friend was being questioned, I kept thinking to myself how if I had to sit there and listen to this guy lying through his teeth with that smug little smile and self-righteous attitude, I would pummel him within an inch of his life, knowing I’d have a good second or so head start before the cops could pull me off him.
Officers at the scene said Kim abruptly pulled out a knife from his backpack and stabbed her in the chest and sides several times. A police officer shot him twice.
Police shot him twice. But then there’s this:
The man was injured in his right calf and taken to hospital. “He is not in critical condition,” police said.
As much against the death penalty as I am, this man should be dead. Who knows, maybe the last couple thrusts he got in after he got shot in the leg were the ones that killed her.
But here’s my real question: When the state takes someone into custody against their will, isn’t there an implication that the state is now responsible for this person?
In my view, the police’s unprofessional, outdated, methods should be held just as culpable for the killing of this woman as the actual person that did it.
In the past, I’ve called the police in a situation where I was trying to be quiet to avoid someone trying to attack me and was told “huh? What? Speak up!” before they hung up on me. I had to in fact call the police three times to get them to do anything. I’ve also mis-dialed the ambulance line in an emergency situation and, rather than being transferred, I was told to hang up and call back.
I’ve gone to the police station with a USB drive full of pictures and audio recordings to file a formal complaint against someone for vandalism and had police refuse to touch the USB drive containing the evidence, encouraging me to go home and think about it first.
All of this pales in comparison to a woman getting murdered while sitting in the police station, but it all speaks to a much bigger issue. They may have stopped forcibly coercing confessions out of people since the 80′s (well, maybe not if we believe Cullen Thomas’ account), but in terms of the way they think, the Korean police have a long way to go.
06/06/2009 at 8:33 am Permalink
Another interesting thing about that story is that the murderer later said that he had killed the woman to get rid of a potential witness. Apparently this was a perfectly logical solution to him at the time because he was pissed drunk. On the same day, there was a story about a bunch of guys getting drunk and one of them drowning himself when he tried to get sober by jumping into a lake (or a reservoir, I can’t remember). So remember, kids: soju is ok, ecstasy and pot are bad.
11/06/2009 at 5:35 pm Permalink
How do you shoot a man twice in the calf? Better yet, how do you shoot twice at a man and hit him in the calf?
Who trains these cops? Do they actually train, or just go through 12 months of surviving a theme park based on the “Police Academy” movies?
12/06/2009 at 10:24 am Permalink
I’m not surprised the cop was a bad shot, it’s actually not that easy to shoot accurately when the adrenaline is making your hands shake, and I imagine the drunk dude was right next to the lady (i.e. someone the cop didn’t want to shoot by accident). In any event, the guy should have been searched for weapons and should not have been anywhere near the woman who was giving a statement against him. Very unprofessional of the police to ignore what I would imagine are common procedures.