We were assaulted in Taichung People’s Park

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
,
1

We were assaulted in Taichung People’s Park.

Last night (May 4th, 2013), starting at about 9:30, my friends and I were assaulted, harassed, and then forced to apologize to a violent psycho. I wanted to get this out there as a warning and to ask for anyone’s advice as to what to do now. I’ll list a chronology of exactly what happened, followed by some comments.

At about 9:30, me and 8 of my friends (3 foreigners and 6 Taiwanese total) were having some beers in People’s Park by the 711. Suddenly a Taiwanese man with a mullet and glasses walked over, dragging his teenage son, screaming in mixed Chinese and English that his son was trash and he was going to beat him. A crowd began to gather.
One of my friends, a tourist who only arrived in Taiwan a few days ago, shouted for the man to leave his son alone. The man immediately began to scream at us in English, coming very close to us and slapping my foreign friend in the face. A larger crowd gathered, many people took videos and called the police. The man continued to scream at us, and one of my Taiwanese friends screamed back. The teenage son ran away almost immediately. The man refused to leave, but once we began ignoring him he walked away. We thought it was fine. Many Taiwanese who had watched expressed concern for us and pointed out that the man was crazy and best ignored.
After about 20 minutes, the police came. Our Taiwanese friend told them what happened, and several witnesses agreed with us. The police left after about 10 minutes.
Suddenly, about 20 minutes later, the man returned with his wife. She had a camera and filmed while he screamed in our faces, shouted that foreigners were trash and anyone who associated with them was trash, slapped and kicked and manhandled my friends, and refused to leave. Every time he became physical, his wife would turn the camera away. He made lewd gestures and continuously tried to get us to hit him. Nearby Taiwanese and my friends immediately called the police again.
This time, the police took 45 MINUTES to come to People’s Park. Many Taiwanese, expressing sympathy, became bored and left while waiting for them to arrive. Most of my friends and I scattered, with three staying with the psycho and his wife while the rest of us moved to another part of the park and ignored them. The psycho continued to make lewd gestures, mock us, and say that he was better than us because he was Taiwanese and we were foreign trash. He said we were drunk and had insulted him. His wife said absolutely nothing. I think that she edited the video while waiting to erase as much of her husband’s provocative behavior as possible.
When the police came, almost all of the Taiwanese witnesses had left. The police spoke to my 3 friends and another nearby witness. The rest of us watched from afar. They talked for about an hour before taking everyone to the station for 2 more hours. The police said that all evidence pointed to my friends starting the altercation for no reason, because we were drinking beers, my friend said “fuck you” to the man in front of the police, and the one witness they spoke to hadn’t seen the whole incident. My friend who had said “fuck you” was forced to sign a written apology to keep from staying overnight to see a judge in the morning to hear whether he could be sued or not. The man was massively self-righteous and demanded a more sincere apology.

When we talked to the Taiwanese witnesses nearby, every single one told us that the police in Taiwan were useless. I think what the man wanted to do was get us to hit him so that he could sue and get money.
Even though the incident is over, I just want to warn people so that they know that if incidents like this happen, don’t trust the police and just leave. Most Taiwanese people are friendly and kind and I love Taiwanese culture and society, but the police are incompetent and unmotivated.

EDIT:
Hello, I just wanted to send an update.

First of all, we actually did take videos and pictures. These made the man angrier, because he said we were defaming him. The police didn’t care about our videos because they were “too dark”. However, they also didn’t care about the video that the man’s wife took.

  1. The police told us that the man demanded they go to his home with him and reprimand his son, and they did so. So I think perhaps it wasn’t a planned scam, but the second time he came he tried to get us to hit him and make money.

  2. My Taiwanese friend’s father is a policeman. I asked her to ask him, and he said that it was the police’s fault for being lazy. We had to call them twice to come the 2nd time and they took 45 minutes to come to the center of town, despite having already been there and hearing witness statements corroborating our story. They refused to prosecute the man because they said there wasn’t “enough evidence”, despite witnesses telling them what had happened. Overall, my friend’s fathers and our opinions was that they were simply trying to do the least amount of work possible and didn’t bear any real malice.

I should remark that at least the police were polite and had a semblance of fairness. When my friend was attacked by drunks in Korea, he was told by the police that it was his fault for leaving his home country, and they were complete assholes.

  1. We will be contacting the embassy and are thinking of contacting media outlets (it’s already been on the Taiwanese-language news, apparently). However, MORE THAN ANYTHING, I just want to teach what I learned SO THAT THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN TO ANYONE ELSE. I had no idea what was happening, it was so unprecedented in my six-month experience in Taiwan. In retrospect, I wish we had walked away but we really thought the man would just give up and leave at first, and when he came back we wanted to wait for the police to prosecute him for hitting us.
    So, the lessons:
    Walk away from confrontations
    Don’t expect the police to behave anything like they would in the West
2

I guess the motto is not to get involved. Let the Taiwanese in the group get involved. Most Taiwanese are wary of getting in the face of other Taiwanese because nobody knows each others background (read gangster connections).

But if a foreigner is involved. He/she is automatically on the losing side. Because they know that YOU wont have ANY connections with the mob.

So YOU are fair game.

The mob is entrenched in Taiwan society. Thats why most Taiwanese would rather avoid a confrontation with another Taiwanese where possible. It usually goes no further then verbal.

I would just say that being foreign dont get involved with something between two TAiwanese.

Unless one of the Taiwanese is your friend and his/her life is in danger.

So basically you saw someone about to beat up their kid. You should call the police, rather then confront the person.

IF a taiwanese person in your group confronts the man, you still need to not be directly confrontational with the man.

It was weird that he was screaming at his son in Taiwanese and English. Why the english? Unless it was a set up of some sort.

p.s. in todays world where everyone has cellfones, get people in your group to record as well. So the police dont just have the mans WIFE’s video. You will have YOURS.

The man was about to beat his teenage son in a public park where there are tons of Taiwanese people. The thing to do is to avoid them. Let the taiwanese people sort them out.

The fact that he was speaking any english meant that he was trying to provoke one or more of you and he succeeded didnt he?

If he was not meaning to do that, he wouldnt have said anything in english. And he wouldnt have his WIFE standing by conveniently recording everything? And deleting the parts that supports the husband?

Doesnt that whole thing smell like a set up? And how convenient the son ran away? I suppose he never got hit once right?

Taichung is the capital of Gangster land in TAiwan. By the way. The guy couldve been a gangster type who ran a pub and thus could speak some english and also maybe he hated foreigners?

Or worse yet, he could be foreign affairs police and thats why the police didnt come back real fast.

You have to understand many things in Taiwan are NOT at FACE VALUE.

3

100% correct. This was a complete setup (and quite frankly, it started off transparently so) and the police were probably working with the guy to extort money from you. What you could have done is make an awful screaming fuss and insist you were going to sue everyone in the room for everything under the sun. Note that this is what the psycho was doing. Reason: that’s the way it works. If you sit calmly, you’re obviously guilty and trying to hide something. If you make an enormous noise, it’s proof of your innocence. However, in Taichung, the police and judiciary ARE the mob. Elsewhere, they’re just incompetent. Such tactics could backfire.

As tommy said, walk away. Although justice has been known to be done, occasionally, the law in Taiwan is basically fucked. Have nothing to do with it.

4

Thank you for your reply. Looking back, I think it probably was a setup. At the time, it was so foreign to everything that has ever happened to me in Taiwan that it wasn’t as clear. However, if so the man got nothing except publicly humiliated, and the police were too apathetic to be complicit. I will also say that of all of the many Taiwanese witnesses, everyone was telling us that they’ve never seen anything like this happen before.

5

Yes i would say this was very strange and unusual. Still , lesson learned right?

Avoid getting in the face of a Taiwanese unless you have no other recourse. Because you are carrying a knife in a gun battle if you do.

6

Amazing restraint not slapping this prick. Well done. He was right though, you are just a dirty foreigner and he is a glorious Taiwanese. :unamused:

7

Also notable that you don’t say F U in Taiwan without the chance of getting sued by some prick. I’m not sure it’s a setup since they didn’t prosecute this bit, still bloody weird though.

Somehow you and your friends made the guy lose face by criticizing him so he got his crazy wife to back him up for revenge I guess.

8

100% correct. This was a complete setup (and quite frankly, it started off transparently so) and the police were probably working with the guy to extort money from you. What you could have done is make an awful screaming fuss and insist you were going to sue everyone in the room for everything under the sun. Note that this is what the psycho was doing. Reason: that’s the way it works. If you sit calmly, you’re obviously guilty and trying to hide something. If you make an enormous noise, it’s proof of your innocence. However, in Taichung, the police and judiciary ARE the mob. Elsewhere, they’re just incompetent. Such tactics could backfire.

As tommy said, walk away. Although justice has been known to be done, occasionally, the law in Taiwan is basically fucked. Have nothing to do with it.[/quote]

Pretty much what finley says. I would say 80% of the police in Taiwan are either corrupt, useless in a really dangerous situation, or both. In Taichung that number may be 95%. If you’re lucky, you get good officers, but you’re only lucky about 20% of the time. It is best to just walk away in these situations.

9

If you get a chance to know a policeman that’s a good backup for dealing with trouble like this. I once got invited to lunch at a traffic stop in Taichung by some cops, I probably should have gone to ‘make friends’ but I really don’t like police much.

10

If you see something bad going on (a person or animal getting abused, for example), you have 3 choices: 1) ignore it, stay out of it. 2) call the cops. 3) get directly involved in stopping it from continuing. If you choose option 3, however, you had better be prepared to back it up with more than words. Personally, if i saw a man stomping on his wife or a defenseless animal, I would choose option 3. Maybe it’s a bit reckless, but I just couldn’t live with myself not doing something while in the moment. I don’t know how bad the situation looked with the son, so I can’t say what I would have done.

Nevertheless, if you guys weren’t willing or able to physically back up exchanging words, then everyone should have just gotten out of there after the initial exchange. And if you choose option 3 and it comes down to a real fight, my advice is the same for in Taiwan as in any other country: take care of business quickly and get the hell out of the area before the guy’s friends or the cops have time to show up. If he whips out his phone take it and break it over his head and finish up your business and get out. I don’t endorse violence, but if it works out that way time is not your friend. You guys should have chased him off kicking him in the ass while he ran away then finished your beers at home, or just called the cops and distanced yourselves

11

[quote=“headhonchoII”]Also notable that you don’t say F U in Taiwan without the chance of getting sued by some prick. I’m not sure it’s a setup since they didn’t prosecute this bit, still bloody weird though.

Somehow you and your friends made the guy lose face by criticizing him so he got his crazy wife to back him up for revenge I guess.[/quote]

giving the finger (as well as ‘FU’ I assume) falls under public insult law here and carries a $3K fine (this is what I was told by someone).

12

What would happen if one of the OP’s friends filmed the maniac pushing one of the people in their group, and that person pushed back or possibly slammed the guy to the ground?

If the initial assault is captured on film, what are the chances that a person who resists that assault with a similar or higher level of violence would be able to claim self-defense and not be prosecuted in Taiwan?

What I’m really asking is, can you attack someone who strikes you first in Taiwan without being prosecuted?

13

Tomas- I have heard that the law here is the same as in Korea- there is no such thing as self-defense unless the person is obviously trying to kill you. Everyone was saying not to fight back. Also, we actually got it on video of him kicking my friend, but the police didn’t really care that much, they seemed to just want to resolve it peacefully with the least work possible. They were polite but apathetic.

14

go to a different police precinct and charge that man with assault with your vid evidence.

15

Me thinks fighting back to defend yourself is justifiable up to a certain extent. If your response was way more damaging it could count against you.

say he shoved you and you hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Or he kicked you but you are a kungfu expert and you landed a solid kick that broke his leg or some such.

once violence is used, things can get real ugly. You would have to call your thugs to negotiate with their thugs. Thugs will have to call up their police friends. As i said, prevention is the best, because the cure is tough.

16

[quote=“Tomas”]What would happen if one of the OP’s friends filmed the maniac pushing one of the people in their group, and that person pushed back or possibly slammed the guy to the ground?

If the initial assault is captured on film, what are the chances that a person who resists that assault with a similar or higher level of violence would be able to claim self-defense and not be prosecuted in Taiwan?

What I’m really asking is, can you attack someone who strikes you first in Taiwan without being prosecuted?[/quote]

No, cops will always look for the easiest, ‘both parties are to blame’ solution to make the problem go away. If one party is particularly annoying and keeps pushing the agenda, then the powers that be will lean more to their side so everyone can save face (even though one side has donned a disgusting mask).

The squeaky wheel gets the grease in Taiwan. This is why retelling of the situation to the cops goes from Mandarin to Taiwanese when foreigners are involved, in traffic accidents or personal disputes.

In many local people’s minds (and some cops) the basic premise is that none of this would have happened if the foreigner had never come to Taiwan so the foreigner has some blame regardless of what transpired, because if nothing else he/she doesn’t understand Chinese/Taiwanese culture. For the cops who don’t see it this way, you (as a foreigner) are seriously ‘mafan’ and a pain in the ass to deal with, so getting a quick, face saving resolution for all parties is the goal. And NO ONE saves face is the foreigner ends up ‘winning’.

Charlie Sheen would hate it here.

17

Problem with beating/slapping/ball-snapping somebody on the street, for whatever reason, is that you could be minding your own business the next day/week/month/year, when he spots you. And he’s armed, or he’s with his buds. Result - you get bottled, bashed with a bat, kicked around till comatose by a bunch of thugs.

That’s one my reasons for staying out of street scraps. I don’t want to walk around watching my back all the time…

18

It was not a set up but an accepted sequence of events which both the police and the nutjob would be familiar with. The man took his son to the park to publicly beat him. The man had lost control and wanted to regain control. So he took his son out to regain control. Unsurprisingly the public were not up for that. So he went into the next mode of 'i’ll slap someone else instead. Who can I slap?" That is one of the nasty things about Chinese culture, all the slapping and spitting. It is like they can’t cool down once they choose to go rogue. But I see it in many other cultures too. For example, don’t rile up a drunk Brit on a train.

Anyway, so your man is out there and he has lost his cool and everyone can see that. So he decides to just be a prick to someone else to regain control. He fails. He has to go home and face his wife. That poor woman. He rants and raves and she and he both know he has not got face, he lost his face down at the park. Well, fuck, he wants his face back, and he wants his wife to see him go get his face back. So he marched her down there to watch him get his face back.

Now… Taiwanese police, what the fuck are they supposed to do? They have some fucking twat slapping the crap out of people and they have some people being reasonable. Taiwan police logic seemingly weirdly dictates that they are better off trying to get the people who are already being compliant to be even more compliant. They are aware that Mr Slappy has lost his shit and that Taiwanese laws are pretty, can we say, plastic. It is, to my mind, their way of saying, ‘look this guy is a fucking prick and if you dont drop it he will continue to be a prick.’ Of course they should crunch him to the floor in a headlock and scream blue fuck into his ears, like they do in the UK and then people would see that and think, ‘shit, I had better not ever get slap happy.’ But they don’t. Don’t ask me why, but they don’t. So it is a cycle really. The baby is pampered because it is honestly easier to just let the baby cry it out than smack it on the arse and tell it to grow the fuck up.

19

[quote=“Baas Babelaas”]Problem with beating/slapping/ball-snapping somebody on the street, for whatever reason, is that you could be minding your own business the next day/week/month/year, when he spots you. And he’s armed, or he’s with his buds. Result - you get bottled, bashed with a bat, kicked around till comatose by a bunch of thugs.

That’s one my reasons for staying out of street scraps. I don’t want to walk around watching my back all the time…[/quote]

Yup even Taiwanese people dont accuse other Taiwanese people with playing FAIR, cuz they DONT.

They are sweet and nice, but you push the wrong buttons and things can INSTANTLY escalate.

You want to play hard, you had better be the biggest MOFO around .

Cuz they play for KEEPS once its ON !

20

[quote=“superking”]It was not a set up but an accepted sequence of events which both the police and the nutjob would be familiar with. The man took his son to the park to publicly beat him. The man had lost control and wanted to regain control. So he took his son out to regain control. Unsurprisingly the public were not up for that. So he went into the next mode of 'i’ll slap someone else instead. Who can I slap?" That is one of the nasty things about Chinese culture, all the slapping and spitting. It is like they can’t cool down once they choose to go rogue. But I see it in many other cultures too. For example, don’t rile up a drunk Brit on a train.

Anyway, so your man is out there and he has lost his cool and everyone can see that. So he decides to just be a prick to someone else to regain control. He fails. He has to go home and face his wife. That poor woman. He rants and raves and she and he both know he has not got face, he lost his face down at the park. Well, fuck, he wants his face back, and he wants his wife to see him go get his face back. So he marched her down there to watch him get his face back.

Now… Taiwanese police, what the fuck are they supposed to do? They have some fucking twat slapping the crap out of people and they have some people being reasonable. Taiwan police logic seemingly weirdly dictates that they are better off trying to get the people who are already being compliant to be even more compliant. They are aware that Mr Slappy has lost his shit and that Taiwanese laws are pretty, can we say, plastic. It is, to my mind, their way of saying, ‘look this guy is a fucking prick and if you dont drop it he will continue to be a prick.’ Of course they should crunch him to the floor in a headlock and scream blue fuck into his ears, like they do in the UK and then people would see that and think, ‘shit, I had better not ever get slap happy.’ But they don’t. Don’t ask me why, but they don’t. So it is a cycle really. The baby is pampered because it is honestly easier to just let the baby cry it out than smack it on the arse and tell it to grow the fuck up.[/quote]

very true, but the guy will get his one day when he messes with the wrong person. Just let that person be Taiwanese, guys. Don’t be the foreigner trying to teach him a lesson. Things can get all weird .

The only time you should actively defend yourself or people you are with is if your life is in danger. And then do what you have to do, worry bout it afterwards, like the Taiwanese do.

But dont pull that switch because its like jumping out of a plane. Theres no going back.