[Letter to the editor]Bungling police

After a week-long intense manhunt, the police finally arrested a suspect in the recent assault of two Marines. In spite of a red alert and ensuing massive operation by a joint force of police and military, it was later discovered that the suspect had been crisscrossing the country without being checked.
The police misidentified the perpetrator; they thought he was an ex-Marine, costing them precious time during the initial investigation and manhunt. This error caused many innocent ex-servicemen to be wrongly searched and probably humiliated.
Once again, the failure to properly communicate exposed a serious flaw in the cooperation between police and the army.
It is disturbing to see the same scenario played out again and again: a crime is committed; there is a clumsy effort at gathering evidence from the scene; a delayed manhunt allows the criminal time to elude arrest.
It is even more deplorable to see the police boast of arresting the culprit when they in fact nabbed him because a citizen had tipped them off. The police ought to know better than to boast of such a fiasco.
Kim Eui-Yong, Changwon, South Gyeongsang