Police to add 9,000 patrol officers amid public safety concerns

Police Commsioner General Yoon Hee-keun outlines the organizational restructuring plan at the police agency in Seoul on Monday. [NATIONAL POLICE AGENCY]

The police announced an organizational restructuring plan on Monday with the goal of securing a minimum of 9,000 additional officers patrolling the streets to prevent heinous crimes.

Under the plan, the police will reduce 2,900 desk jobs.

A majority of 2,600 positions will be relocated to 28 mobile patrol units set up at all provincial and city police agencies.

Each station will have approximately 97 officers.

These patrol units will be responsible for public safety, particularly in areas vulnerable to crimes such as crowded places and parks.

The remaining 300 officers will be assigned to special prevention tasks, including managing individuals on the sex offender registry.

"The goal of the reshuffling is to transform the police organization to focus on crime prevention," said Yoon Hee-keun, the police commissioner general. "We will maximize the public safety capacity in the field by reducing the number of officers working on administrative management and deploying them to the field."

The central police agency will establish a new crime prevention department to oversee the entire operation, including 112 emergency dispatches, alongside the management of substations and precincts.

The community safety bureau will undergo restructuring, with some of its divisions, including crime prevention policy, placed under the newly created crime prevention department.

The community safety bureau will then merge with the traffic bureau, and the cyber investigation department will merge with the investigation bureau.

The provincial and city police agencies will create 16 units of mobile detective squads consisting of 1,300 officers from major crimes.

These squads will not only patrol but also be involved in investigating major crimes. The mobile detective squad system, which operated until 2004, has been downsized over the years.

The major crimes officers will particularly focus on patrolling crime-prone areas. According to the government, as of last year, there were over 143,000 police officers spread across 2,043 substations and precincts.

The Commissioner General had previously emphasized the need for more patrol officers, which he currently estimated at 30,000 officers.

The lack of a sufficient police force has raised concerns, particularly this year, as there has been a rise in random attacks in public.

In July, 33-year-old Cho Sun attacked four people with a knife in an alley in Sillim-dong, resulting in one fatality. In August, more than a dozen people were injured in a knife attack by 22-year-old Choi Won-jong at a mall connected to a subway station in Bundang.

Two people were initially struck by the car driven by Choi before he entered the mall, and they also died. Additionally, in August, 30-year-old Choi Yoon-jong raped and assaulted a woman at a park in Sillim-dong with a brass knuckle, and the victim did not survive.

The government last month announced reviving the conscripted police system, which was phased out in 2017 and finally abolished in April.

However, it had to backtrack due to strong opposition including the military, which is also facing a significant shortage of soldiers due to the shrinking population.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]