Club Raids at Xmas!

Discussion Open Forum
1

Ok, this happened Sunday and it may be in the paper today. I’ll try to recount as best I can recall.

The Second Floor (resurrected @live location)
was raided by the police, at NOON yesterday.
All the patrons (300+) were corralled together, first on site, and observed for signs of amphetimine use. Then, all 300 were loaded into police buses, and taken to the police station and made to give urine samples (of which some were lost and those had to retake the exam).
Supposedly, the DJ in town from Manchester, was also arrested, and had run away, but they found him and brought him back to the station.
A foreign friend of mine, who tested positive, is now very unsure of where he stands. No clear answers have been given as to his options in this case. Some have advised him to go home, or leave Taiwan asap and skip out on the charges. Others have told him to stay, and face a jail sentence and/or $30K fine. This person is wondering if that also means deportation, and thinks it may be better to leave now in that event. As usual, the laws applying to foreigners in this case (and probably locals too) seems rather arbitrary.

My question is: Can the police legally pull people out of a club, take them to the station, and give them drug tests??? Isn’t this a breach of civil rights? It seems that no clubs are safe in Taipei from being raided, and if you partake in the drugs associated with this form of entertainment, you’re up shits creek should you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’m also wondering if the city government just happened to need to meet some quota of fine collection this calendar year, hence charging those who tested positive $30K, times 200+, would be a healthy sum. Then again, it could be that the new owners of the club, hadn’t paid off the proper authorities/gangsters!!

The female officer who spoke to my friend told him, ‘It’s just your bad luck, Merry Christmas!’ She seemed to get some sick satisfaction out of this remark.

2

The police have been up to these Gestapo tactics for a while. I remember a couple of raids before and the police rounding up people and testing them.
I would actually like to know the charge they could bring against you if you are tested positive. Possession, using illegal drugs? Is it a criminal offence or something less?

If the police have any suspicion of illegal drug use on a premises, they will haul everyone in. I guess they can justify it by saying if there are drugs or the suspicion of drugs there, then that is why everyone came there.

Civil rights are never taken into consideration by the police in Taiwan. They are always allowing suspects to be filmed in police stations, who in the eyes of the law are innocent till proven guilty, which is a total breach of civil rights. And if you have a complaint about this practice who are you going to take it up with?

There is an Irish guy in Taichung doing some hard time for possession of cocaine. I also heard of an Australian that was deported for possession of Hash about ten years ago. The most likely scenario for your friend is that they will fine him or imprison him, more likely a fine as it is a lot of hassle for the Taiwan justice system to have a foreigner in jail(a fine would be easier) and then deport him, and if he wants to appeal the ruling he can do it from abroad.
I’d skip the country, cause inevitably it will save money and a lot of hassle for in the end you’ll get deported anyway.

3

Thanks for a good post, Alien. I saw the news last night and was wondering exactly what the hell was going on. I got the gist of it alright, but its good to know the unsettling details. It sure didn’t look like a good scene, and I was really surprised to see foreigners being herded on to the police buses along with the locals. I think I will avoid the club scene for a while.

As for the legality of it all, I am clueless, but I suspect the cops have free reign to tackle what is perceived as a “drug problem” however they see fit. Remember, Taiwan is a police state.

Ask me what I miss about home and I’ll tell you, its the “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. Least in Canada you know where you stand whenever big bro’ is involved and you are guaranteed some protections.

4

This topic was touched upon a while ago by Hartzell in the Human Rights Forum:
To pee or not to pee, that is the question…

5

Anyone stupid enough to get high and go to clubs or pubs KNOWN to be police targets truly deserves all they get. Darwinism at work if ever I saw it.

I’m laughing, cos as long as the cops make their quotas so easily, there’s less chance of me and my mates getting caught.

I’ve been doing hard drugs here for years and have never even come close to being nabbed. Neither have any of the people I get high with.

Your friend should have used some common sense.

6
quote[quote]I've been doing hard drugs here for years and have never even come close to being nabbed. Neither have any of the people I get high with. [/quote]

Perhaps such ‘braggadocio’ may land you in hot water yet…

Ever heard of karma, wasted youth? karma?

7

All marf an’ no trahsers, that wasted bloke. Still, he has a point – you have to wonder why anyone with sense would deliberately put himself in such a position. Its not as if these raids have been low profile in the past.

8

Oi Sandman, you were young once…

Remember when new clubs were all the rage? Remember staying up all night and partaking in illegal substances–regularly? Remember when you physically COULD party all night?
I think those are some of your fondest memories as you slide into a long battle against alzheimers…you ol’ curmudgeon!

People in their 20’s like to go dancing (etc) and I firmly believe they shouldn’t have to worry that they’re going to be arrested when they go out to clubs to have fun. I don’t reckon it’s the kind of thing that happens in your hometown, nor my own.
I also believe that the police are exercising a bit too much biased bravado when they haul in club patrons. They should be concentrating on rounding up some of those plentiful theft rings,
illegal taxi driving bandits, rapists, betel nut mafia lords, etc…

9

i was one of the foreigners at the second floor when if was raided. the next day, i packed up a year’s worth of my belonging, emptied my bank account, said goodbye to my lover and friends, and flew to bangkok, where i am now.

it’s possible that my urine tests came out all right. i’d rather wait it out in bangkok than face an unspecified fate at the hands of taiwan’s erratic legal system. i will return to taipei, if possible.

my big question now is: how do i find out the results of my urine test? can i just call the police station to ask for my results, or will that arouse suspicion? who do i call and what should i say? alien: you said that your friend tested positive. how did he find that out?

any advice would be appreciated.

10

Busted,
You flee the country immediately after the sweep and are holed up in Thailand and you want to know if you tested positive for drugs?
Seems to me that you already know the answer to that question.
Enjoy Thailand.

11

My dad always told me:

If you’ve made a home, don’t go on to the roof and shi*t on it.

It’s gonna stink up the place.

12

busted,

not sure how he found out originally, maybe he just KNEW he was positive. he also told me that only 20 out of that 300 actually tested positive! but then there was some sort of ‘piss passing’ going on among the locals waiting in line, so perhaps they were getting piss from the outside, or maybe the officers, even…
selling and buying pee? who’d a thunk it.

someone told me that it is better to stay here and await court date rather than flee, and risk not being allowed back in. the idea is to tell them that you didn’t know, that someone must have put it in your drink.

another said it’s better to flee, and not risk getting a criminal record which could be a blight on your passport for years to come.

you made your choice to split (which seems to have ‘guilty’ written all over it), and he made his choice to stay and face the charges. he’s also hoping to get some legal council from a Canadian official.

we’ll see who comes up smelling sweeter at the end of this rancid affair.
let us know how it goes trying to get back in.

13

Changes may be on the way for those lousy cops…
See this article in Taipei Times:

Time to legalize police procedures

14

alien: good luck to your friend. it was a toss-up decision for me, as well. there’s pros and cons to both leaving and staying. hanging around waiting not knowing what was going to happen was driving me crazy. if he’d like to keep tabs on the situation (i know i would), pass on my e-mail at godisadj25@yahoo.com cheers. i might have some info him.

15

also: a taiwanese friend called the police to ask for the urine test results. a snooty police officer claimed it would be a long time-- maybe a month, maybe not before chinese new year. this is quite strange considering we were told at the station that it would be a couple days, and the china post already reported a number of positive results (more than 20).

do i really need to wait that long to find out my results? really, my results could turn out either way. has anyone recieved confirmation from the police about their results?

16
quote[quote] a snooty police officer claimed it would be a long time-- maybe a month, maybe not before chinese new year. this is quite strange considering we were told at the station that it would be a couple days [/quote]

Oh yeah, and during that month, they’ll accept bribes from some people to change the results, and assign that positive pee to other poor souls instead, who haven’t a pot to piss in…

It’s got a very strong ammonia odor, this whole business, and it pisses me off!

17

Some months ago the Taipei chief of police said (in an article complaining about their inability to control the drug problem) that they were only allowed to test people if they had a reasonable suspicion that they were taking drugs.

Now of 20 out of 300 people tested positive, that’s less than 7% which seems hardly like a reasonable suspicion. ‘He was at a nightclub so he was probably on drugs’? Looks like dancing is thought of as a crime. What if you’re totally stright, hve to work the next morning, and you don’t want to spend 10 hours in the station and have your photo in the Taipei Timese the next day? If this isn’t a huge violation fo human rights, what is? Wasn’t it just last week that the High Court (or was it Juducial Yuan) ruled that police weren’t allowed to bust in and search places like that?

This topic has been touched on many times before. Wouldn’t someone who can read Chinese and understands the legal system please find out?

If I am straight and get hauled off to the station could I refuse? At what point would be the best? At the club or when I was asked to piss into the bottle? What if I’d actully taken drugs. What if I refused to give the ID and or name, or said my ID was at home and gave them a fake name or address or pretended to be so drunk I didn’t know my address or something?

Bri

18

are the urine test results in?

the china post says the results have been in for days. the police deny this, and say it could take months.

anyone know?

19

How pishing it is! I can not believe that, one can not go out and be secure! Whats wrong! 2nd Floor doesnt seem to be a Yao Tao club! Anyways, how pishing.

Sorry for what happened to your friend Alien, hopefully everything turns out well.

20

i heard from a friend that it said in the newspapers that they are NOT PROSECUTING the drug users involved in the bust, only the drug dealers. it’s secondhand info, and i can’t confirm it. does anyone have any information regarding this? perhaps someone in town could call up the police with some inquiries and post the info here. this is very important information to a lot of people. cheers.