ANALYSIS/Taipei knife attack reveals gaps in Metro police deployment

By Lee Chieh-yu, CNA staff writer

When 27-year-old Chang Wen (張文) set off smoke grenades and stabbed bystanders inside the Taipei Main Station's MRT station and near MRT's Zhongshan Station, police were slow to respond, raising questions about the Taipei MRT system's security.

A major issue, according to Taipei City Councilor Yu Shu-hui (游淑慧), was that at the time of the stabbings in Taipei Main Station, no metro police officers were deployed at that MRT station, pointing to a possible manpower shortage.

But Yu argued that a scheduling gap was an even more important culprit in Chang's ability to get away unimpeded from the MRT Taipei Main Station.

Long response time

According to a Taipei Metro report, Chang entered the Taipei Main Station's MRT station via the M8 entrance at 5:23 p.m. and proceeded to threw smoke grenades and stabbed random passengers, killing one and injuring three. (All told, his attacks would leave three people dead and nearly a dozen injured.)

Chang then changed clothes and made his way through the Tamsui Line concourse and Taiwan Railway and high-speed rail waiting areas before entering the underground Zhongshan Metro Mall at 5:30 p.m.

Rapid Transit Division police officers did not arrive at the MRT's Taipei Main Station until 5:33 p.m., by which time the suspect had already fled and was moving on to his next destination -- the Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near the MRT's Zhongshan Station.

With no officers deployed at the MRT Taipei Main Station when the attacks took place, officers had to be deployed from Zhongshan Station using the MRT, the division said in a written response to CNA questions.

Daunting task

According to the division, the Taipei Metro covers 117 stations and carries more than 2 million passengers a day, yet has only 80 police officers on duty in the field per shift.

Police patrols are therefore scheduled on a staggered basis to ensure a rapid response across the system, the division said, but Yu, the city councilor, disagreed.

"This is clearly not a staggered arrangement," Yu said in a phone interview with CNA. "It was a gap in coverage created by offset scheduling."

Yu, a councilor with the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), said Taipei Metro police have two types of duties -- patrol and fixed-post -- with two officers assigned to each.

"All four positions were off duty at 5 p.m. that day," she said, and the next shift did not begin until 6 p.m.

Limited resources, highly dispersed network

Wang Po-chi (王伯頎), a professor in Ming Chuan University's (MCU) Department of Criminal Justice, said in a phone interview with CNA that the 5 p.m.-6 p.m. hour is a peak period when no such gap in coverage should theoretically occur.

Yet while the one-hour gap was concerning, Wang said, it was not entirely unexpected because the Taipei MRT station network is highly dispersed, and police resources are limited.

The Taipei Metro spans both Taipei City and New Taipei City, and all 117 stations along the metro lines fall under the jurisdiction of the Rapid Transit Division.

Because officers patrol multiple stations using the MRT, it takes time to reach incidents that can occur several stations away. Yu said that on average it takes about nine minutes for the metro police to arrive at the scene of an incident.

Further complicating operations in the Taipei Main Station in particular is its complex structure because it combines the MRT, the regular rail system and Taiwan's high-speed rail system, Wang said.

Three different police departments -- the Rapid Transit Division, the Railway Police Bureau, and the Taipei City Police Department -- share jurisdiction within different parts of the station, which can delay reporting and tracking.

Chang Hui-chieh (章惠傑), an assistant professor in MCU's Department of Criminal Justice, suggested that all police departments hold joint drills to establish a response mechanism for dealing with a random attack.

The drills should also include the public to teach people how to protect themselves before police arrive.

AI-aided surveillance

In the immediate aftermath of the Dec. 19 attacks, the Rapid Transit Division decided to increase the number of deployed officers to 320 from 80 to deal with the shortage, the Rapid Transit Division said.

But Samuel Lin (林書立), an assistant professor in MCU's Department of Criminal Justice, said short-term increases in personnel can cause fatigue and do not solve underlying issues and that technology might be a better option.

He suggested that AI surveillance, tracking systems, and scenario simulations could all enhance overall security.

Yu said the city plans to upgrade existing surveillance cameras at major traffic metro stations by opting for AI-integrated cameras, which are capable of proactively detecting objects resembling knives or firearms and identifying abnormal human behavior.

The AI network, expected to be implemented starting next year, would alert police and track suspicious individuals, helping offset limited manpower, Yu said.

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