"How are we supposed to subdue a knife-wielding suspect with a light wand?"
Officer A, a member of a Seoul mobile police unit deployed for public-safety patrols, traffic enforcement and the pursuit of high-priority suspects, carries only a red LED light wand — known among officers as a "bulbong" — on duty. Neither A nor his colleagues are issued Tasers, and even ordinary collapsible batons or handcuffs are out of reach. They perform demanding work in which danger can erupt at any moment, yet they are essentially given no self-defense equipment.
"There may be differences by region or unit, but it is common for even a collapsible baton or handcuffs to be issued one per team rather than to each officer," A said. "Patrols may be one thing, but when we are searching for serious offenders, shouldn't we at least be given practical self-defense gear?" He added, "If a violent felon comes at you with a weapon, an unarmed officer is helpless."
After public anxiety surged over the fatal stabbing of a high school girl in Gwangju, the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) announced plans to step up patrols and stop-and-search operations. But frontline officers are dismissing the measures as a textbook case of "armchair policymaking," saying the agency is calling for tougher stop-and-search enforcement without even providing basic self-defense tools to the officers carrying out the patrols.
On the 5th of this month, Jang Yun-gi stabbed a 17-year-old girl, identified as A, multiple times on a sidewalk along a main road in front of a high school in Gwangsan-gu, Gwangju, as she was heading home from studying. Three days later, KNPA Acting Commissioner General Yoo Jae-sung convened a nationwide video conference of police commanders and unveiled countermeasures.
The centerpiece of the response is stop-and-search. Police said they will conduct stop-and-search operations targeting individuals suspected of carrying weapons or behaving suspiciously. They also said that when 112 emergency calls are received involving public threats or weapon possession in public places, police will issue Code 0 or Code 1 — the highest emergency dispatch levels — and for major incidents, the police station chief will personally respond to the scene to take command.
Frontline officers are balking. Conducting stop-and-search of suspected weapon carriers without basic equipment, they say, is tantamount to a suicide mission. Although the issuance and quantity of weapons vary by metropolitan agency or individual unit, many officers are still being deployed to the field with nothing more than a light wand. Given that public sentiment toward stop-and-search is already unfavorable, officers worry that approaching suspicious individuals without self-defense equipment could leave the police themselves in harm's way.
"An officer walking around without a weapon is no different from a civilian in uniform — essentially a walking CCTV camera," one officer said. "Without clear standards and a defined scope for stop-and-search, officers could even face all sorts of complaints and lawsuits." Another officer said, "Even now, when conducting a stop-and-search, we often have to practically beg people to hand over their IDs to verify their identity. The plan to send police station chiefs to the scene of major incidents is just another way of shifting responsibility onto the chiefs and the staff at district stations, substations and mobile units." On the Code 0 dispatch policy for weapon-related calls, the officer added, "We are already responding to similar reports as Code 0 top-priority dispatches. It's hard to tell whether this is a measure genuinely designed for public safety or just a stopgap to temporarily calm people unsettled by the Gwangju stabbing."
Criticism has also been leveled at the other key measure — beefed-up patrols. Police plan to mobilize local officers, regional preventive patrol units and mobile units dedicated to public-safety policing, and to work with civilian crime-prevention volunteers and private security firms to focus patrols on areas with few people and CCTV blind spots. The KNPA also pledged to strengthen preemptive measures targeting high-risk mentally ill individuals.
But the prevailing view is that cooperation with civilian crime-prevention volunteers is unrealistic. "Civilian patrol volunteers have been deployed in various places for the past three years, but most members are elderly residents or local small-business owners," one officer said. "Even if it is framed as a patrol concept, if these people actually encounter someone wielding a weapon, the result will only be more victims."
Officers also voiced frustration over the scope of police duties, saying they are being forced to fill gaps left by other agencies that have effectively walked away from issues involving the mentally ill. The Ministry of Health and Welfare is the lead agency responsible for preventing situations such as mentally ill individuals causing disturbances in public or standoffs with people threatening to jump from heights. But specialists from the responsible ministry rarely show up to actual standoffs with suicide-attempt subjects. Although professional persuasion, transfer and counseling should occur in sequence, police end up handling every stage themselves — from receiving the call and dispatching officers to persuading, rescuing, protecting and transferring the subject. "The problem is that the police are handling everything related to mental illness," one frontline officer said in frustration. "The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health and Welfare should manage high-risk individuals while the police focus on strengthening their incident-response capabilities. Instead, the police are shouldering all of it."
Officers are also calling for self-defense gear or weapons to be issued not only for cases like this stabbing but also for routine rallies and demonstrations. "Mobile units would have a hard time stopping politically motivated attacks or knife violence against rally participants amid today's intensified political polarization," A said. "Some suggest using the long batons or short batons stored on police buses, but those are made of plastic. They may work for subduing unarmed offenders, but in a physical struggle with someone wielding a blade or blunt weapon, an officer's life could be at risk." A added, "Because no major attacks targeting police have occurred so far, the practice of not issuing weapons to conscripted riot police seems to have spread to regular police officers as well. It's a kind of complacency about safety."
