Expert urges use of vantage points to deter crime, save manpower

Taipei, Dec. 27 (CNA) Taiwan's police could make greater use of an "overwatch" strategy to increase psychological pressure on potential criminals and keep police officers from wearing out, a defense expert said, as more police are being deployed in public spaces in the wake of a deadly knife attack.

President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) have instructed police to increase their use of visible policing (vispol) in crowded places to prevent attacks similar to the one on Dec. 19 that left four people dead, including the attacker.

In an article published Friday on the website of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the institute acknowledged that the vispol strategy was effective at deterring attacks.

He said the strategy, which creates psychological pressure on potential perpetrators, is commonly used at airports and other transportation hubs in the United States and Europe.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration's Visible Intermodal Protection and Response program and the U.K. police's Project Servator, for example, both emphasize highly visible and unpredictable deployments to counter terrorism and other crimes, Su wrote.

The downside of the strategy, however, is that the intensive deployment of police officers can wear them down and leave them exhausted, Su said, especially in places like Taiwan where officer numbers are already low.

• Analysis: Taipei knife attack reveals gaps in Metro police deployment

An autopsy of the Dec. 19 attacks, which occurred in or near Taiwan's MRT system, found that mass transit police were slow to respond because of manpower shortages and scheduling issues that left many stations without any police presence.

Though manpower is now being increased, Su said there was a less human-intensive way to execute the vispol strategy.

"What is more crucial than the number of officers deployed or patrol density is how to be seen," Su wrote.

For transport hubs, which are symbolic and high-density critical infrastructure, security effectiveness often depends on whether elevated vantage points are used effectively," he wrote.

Guidelines such as the International Civil Aviation Organization's Aviation Security Manual and the U.K.'s Airport Security Planning Quick Guide recommend that visible officers be positioned on upper floors and mezzanines, in observation corridors or at intersections of passenger flows, Su wrote.

From these locations, officers can observe large areas while remaining visible to travelers at multiple levels, achieving psychological deterrence and broad surveillance without impeding movement, according to Su.

For potential attackers, the sight of officers positioned above conveys the message that they are already being observed, often enough to deter or delay an attack, Su said.

Compared with ground patrols, officers stationed at elevated points can also detect suspicious loitering or other patterns, making this approach particularly effective against lone-actor attacks, according to Su.

Importantly, it achieves a "low-disruption, high-deterrence" effect without checkpoints or an oppressive atmosphere, a method commonly seen at major international airports, Su wrote.

By enhancing visibility through vantage-point deployments, the need for extensive foot patrols can be reduced, conserving manpower while reinforcing the perception of order and safety, he wrote.

This approach offers a reference for metro systems, railways and security planning for large-scale events such as New Year's celebrations, he wrote.

Though Su believed deploying police officers at higher vantage points could save manpower, the problem of the general lack of police officers in, for example, Taipei's Rapid Transit Division, might also have to be addressed.

The division is responsible for covering 117 stations but can only deploy 80 officers in the field at a time.

To deal with the more general manpower shortage, Samuel Lin (林書立), an assistant professor in Ming Chuan University's Department of Criminal Justice, said technological fixes, such as AI surveillance, tracking systems, and scenario simulations, could all enhance overall security without using manpower.