There has been some discussion of the circumstances under which the police here are justified in the use of deadly force.
The title of the law governing the use of weapons by the police has been translated in various ways. For convenience’s sake, I’ll give it a title I saw on the Ministry of the Interior’s website, “The Statute Governing Use of Arms by the Police.”
This appears to be the text of the part of that law which appears to be pertinent to this discussion, namely Article 4 (from the Ministry of Justice website):
[quote]警察人員執行職務時，遇有下列各款情形之一者，得使用警刀或槍械：
一、為避免非常變故，維持社會治安時。
二、騷動行為足以擾亂社會治安時。
三、依法應逮捕、拘禁之人拒捕、脫逃，或他人助其拒捕、脫逃時。
四、警察人員所防衛之土地、建築物、工作物、車、船、航空器或他人之生命、身體、自由、財產遭受危害或脅迫時。
五、警察人員之生命、身體、自由、裝備遭受強暴或脅迫，或有事實足認為有受危害之虞時。
六、持有兇器有滋事之虞者，已受警察人員告誡拋棄，仍不聽從時。
七、有前條第一款、第二款之情形，非使用警刀、槍械不足以制止時。前項情形於必要時，得併使用其他經核定之器械。[/quote] law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.a … e=D0080042
The following text appears to contain something on the order of a translation of Article 4, from the website of the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U. S. Department of Justice (I cannot vouch for its accuracy in general or its accuracy as a translation):
[quote]Use of force. According to the Law Regulating the Use of Police Arms, conditions under which deadly force may be employed include:
- In the avoidance of an extreme incident and in keeping the social peace.
- To control disturbances or riots that could cause harmful effects on the social order.
- To prevent the escape and the resistance of the convicted offender.
- To prevent the suspect from endangering the full enforcement of police duty, and/or when knowing the suspect may pose a risk of physical harm to others.
- To prevent imminent physical danger to police requiring the use of deadly force.
- To stop a suspect who is carrying weapons and attempting to hurt others and who has not followed a police order to stop.[/quote] bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/WFBCJTAI.TXT
It seems to me that determinations of the appropriateness or not of the use of deadly force on the part of the police might well need to be made case by case, that such determinations might well rely greatly on specific facts, and that the soundness of such determinations might well vary according to how much confidence can be placed in accounts of the facts.