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Laws & Regulations Database of The Republic of China (Taiwan)

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Title: Police Duty Act CH
Amended Date: 2008-07-02
Category: Ministry of the Interior(內政部)
Chapter 1 General Principles
Article 1
This Act is regulated pursuant to Article 3 of the Police Act.
Article 2
Police organizations shall follow this Act when performing police duties.
Article 3
The police duties should be performed around the clock and throughout jurisdictions. General duties are primarily performed by the administrative police; the specific duties are performed and supported by other specialized police.
Chapter 2 Police Duty Organization
Article 4
The police duty organizations is classified into the basic unit, operational unit and supervisory unit.
Article 5
Police beat (Hereinafter referred to as the “beat”) is the basic unit of a police organization. It is under the charge of an individual police officer.
Article 6
Police beats are allocated according to the following criteria:
1. Autonomous district: Basically, each village is planned as a police beat. If the size of a village or neighborhood is too small, two villages could be combined into one police beat. If the size of a village or neighborhood is too large, it could be divided into two or more police beats.
2. Population: Every two thousand residents or five hundred households contribute to a police beat.
The aforementioned allocation of police beats in the preceding paragraph shall be also subject to crime incidence, local characteristics, the number of police force, complexity of tasks, the size of the area, traffic conditions, telecommunications facilities and future trend in development and shall be adjusted accordingly.
As to the criminal investigation police and foreign affairs police, they may also allocate their beats in accordance with the abovementioned criteria.
Article 7
The police stations and substations serve as operational units, responsible for allocating beats, scheduling shifts, and performing and supervising duties.
The standards of the establishment of police stations and police substations are set by the National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior.
When a remote beat is not available for joint duty with other beats, a police post can be set up and staffed with one officer to perform duties alone.
Article 8
The Police organizations at municipality or county/city level, considering the availability of police equipments and the need of police force in densely populated urban neighborhood and suburban neighborhood with special public security concerns, may centralize its resources for mobile utilization instead of establishing police stations and substations in those areas. Police officers are moved into police duty squads at the police precincts and work rotating shifts.
If necessary, police departments can set up security posts in certain areas for guard and security.
Article 9
Police precincts are executive units responsible for planning, commanding, controlling, supervising, and auditing all the duties of every police units under their jurisdictions, along with performing the top-priority duties.
Article 10
Police departments are supervisory units, responsible for planning, commanding, controlling, supervising, and auditing all the duties of every police units under their jurisdictions and may perform prioritized duties directly.
Chapter 3 Types of Duties
Article 11
The types of general duty are as follows:
1. Household Visit: The beat officer visits households on his/her beat to prevent crimes, provide services, and identify social security issues. The Regulations Governing Household Visit shall be enacted by the Ministry of the Interior.
2. Patrol:The police station shall map out the patrol route where the duty officers are assigned to patrols , along with inspecting and questioning suspicious persons, issuing tickets and other general duties to detect and prevent hazards.
3. Stop and Check: The duty officers conduct inspections or traffic stops at public places or designated and specific roads to question suspicious people, enforce laws and traffic regulations or other statutory missions.
4. Guard: Duty officers assigned to certain guard posts which are set at the specific spots of important areas or high- accident locations are required , not only to watch, guard and control but also responds to reports, answer inquiries, direct the traffic and carry out general police duties.
5. Call-Responding at Duty Counter: A duty counter is set at each police station behind which an on- duty is placed to manage calls, complete report, notify the supervisors and convey orders. If necessary, they shall stand in the doorway to the environment and guard the police station.
6. Stand-By: On-duty officers scheduled to stand by inside the police units should be well-uniformed and ready for mobilization in response to emergencies or back-ups for incidents.
Article 12
Household visit is an individual duty that beat officers are in charge. While the patrol, stop-and-check, guard, call-responding at duty counters, and stand-by are general duties , which are performed by duty officers who work rotating shifts according to the duty rosters.
The aforementioned general duties in the preceding paragraph may be rotated patrol according to the number of duty officers and public order situations. Nevertheless, patrol shall be the primary duty to be scheduled.
Article 13
The patrol duties shall be carried out by means of foot patrol, vehicle patrol, mounted patrol, boat patrol, and helicopter patrol, depending on the size of the area, public order situations, geographic and traffic conditions.
Patrol routes shall be divided into fixed course and unfixed course, flexibly adjusted in response to the needs of different beats. Meanwhile, patrolling either upward or backward along the route shall be regularly or irregularly alternated.
Article 14
In the needs of public order, police organizations at every level may assign police officers to mobile squads, utilizing combined force to perform duties of patrol, stop-and-check and raid in designated areas and accomplish the statutory missions such as issuing tickets, preventing crimes, clamping down on illegal activities. Furthermore, the police organizations shall control the reserved police force for mobile utilization.
Chapter 4 Duration of Duties
Article 15
A normal working day is a period of 24 hours, starting at 00:00 and ending at 24:00. The period of time from 00:00 to 6:00 is the mid-night shift; from 18:00 to 24:00 is the night shift, and the rest of time is the day shift. The time to restart the tour of duty is authorized by each police department to designate.
A normal tour of duty is eight hours a day. If necessary, it can be extended and the length of duties is subject to the situation. Duty officers are scheduled two days off a week but they might be canceled in case of emergencies. Those police officers may be required to stand by at police organizations to respond to situations.
The aforementioned shift-length extension, day-off suspension, or standing by to perform duties shall be made up afterwards.
Article 16
The arrangement of the period of duty normally four hours on duty and eight hours for break in between; other arrangements may also be adopted if necessary.
During the period of duty, the duty officers shall be scheduled to perform different duties and each one is 2-4 hours depending on the available police force and workload. In special circumstances, the length of certain duty shall be shortened or extended. Nevertheless, the household visits, shall be basically scheduled 2-4 hours in a tour of duty, to balance the duty officer’s workload.
Duty officers shall get eight consecutive hours’ sleep and the length of mid-night shift for a duty officer shall not exceed four-hour limit unless there are special missions to fulfill.
Chapter 5 Duty Planning
Article 17
The duty planning and supervisory units shall set a duty-arrangement standards which must properly plan the grouping, alternation of duties, and length of shifts for line officers to perform rotationally, and comply with the following rules:
1. The duty hours must be circadian coverage without any lapses.
2. Varied duties, alternately scheduled based on the necessity, shall enable every officer to work rotating shifts averagely.
3. The labor and rest in a tour of duty shall be even to help duty officers recover spirit and physical strength.
4. Standby police force shall be adequately controlled on a frequent basis in order to fill in for absences and assist in handling unexpected situations.
5. Every police officer must have time for further educations or in-service training.
The aforementioned arrangement of duties in the preceding paragraph shall follow the three-shift rotation system or other shift pattern if it is deemed adequate to meet actual needs. When operational units are staffed with three to five police officers, the half-day alternation system may be adopted. If there are only two police officers, the whole-day alternation system may be adopted; and duty in the mid-night shift could change into on-call and staying in workplace.
Article 18
The operational units, shall schedule the roster in accordance with the aforementioned rules, considering the security situations and available force, on a daily basis, and submit the rosters to the supervisory authority for reference. Any changes in the roster should be reported as well.
Article 19
When police departments must carry out individual duties and general duties separately to meet the circumstances’ needs, the precincts, stations and substations shall be respectively mobilized as duty units in which police officers were assigned to household visits If necessary, they may expand the beats and assign other police officers to rotationally carryout the general duties.
Article 20
If police departments or precincts have set up various police squads / teams, they shall assign police officers, depending on the needs of mission, to perform each of the specific duties to maximize the coverage of duties from point and line to plane, by which an overall duty effectiveness can be achieved.
Article 21
When duty organizations must alter their ordinary service assignments because of unexpected special, situations, duty officers shall perform their duties according to their supervisor’s order.
Article 22
The duty command center of police organizations at every level are in charge of dispatching, commanding, and controlling their respective police force to carry out various duties and solve problems. In case of major disasters, accidents, or other incidents within the jurisdiction, they may request for assistance from non-subordinate police forces or those from the neighboring police units.
Article 23
The equipment and duty gears are equipped and distributed to police officers based on necessities.
The specifications of the aforementioned equipment and gears in the preceding paragraph shall be regulated by the National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior.
Chapter 6 Roll Call
Article 24
Roll call shall be conducted before the shift officers carrying out duties. Roll call are classified into the following type:
1. Base roll call: conducted at station and sub-station level.
2. Joint pre-duty: briefing at precinct level.
3. Special operation roll call: conducted before a special operation or emergent tasks.
Article 25
Roll-call shall be conducted as follows:
1. Inspection of personal grooming and duty gear.
2. Announcement of important policies and orders.
3. Review on previous shift’s incidents and highlight of the priorities in the current shift.
The pattern, time and frequency of the aforementioned roll-call in the preceding paragraph shall be regulated by the respective police departments, depending on those field units’ operational conditions.
Chapter 7 Duty Supervision
Article 26
Police organizations at departmental level shall develop a system of supervision, rewards and punishments in order to motivate the duty officers, to provide them guidance on duties and to audit their duty performance.
Duty supervision shall be stepped up at dawn, in the evening, during storms, rains or snows, on important holidays, and in special areas.
Chapter 8 Supplementary Provisions
Article 27
Requirements under this Act shall apply when respective specialized police authorities carry out their exclusive duties.
Article 28
Police organizations at departmental level shall stipulate their own enforcement rules and submit to the supervisory police authorities for the approval of practice.
Article 29
This Act shall come into force on the date of promulgation.
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