Constitutional Review on the Current Autonomous Police System

Abstract

The current autonomous police system has entered its fourth year of implementation. This is a dramatic change in the paradigm of police organization. There is also a positive evaluation that the establishment of the system is being promoted relatively smoothly, centering on each city and province police committee and the council of city and province police chairmen nationwide. However, various problems are also raised, and improvements must be made to properly reflect the problem consciousness in order to establish the autonomous police system more successfully. The police's original mission to improve and develop the autonomous police system and the ideology of decentralization and political neutrality for the completion of local autonomy under the constitution should not be diluted or damaged. Police activities often lead to the exercise of public power that limits or imposes obligations on the people's freedom, property, and body, requiring clear and strict human rights protection and procedural fairness at all times. At the same time, there is a possibility that the police organization's authority to appoint personnel will be monitored, so political neutrality must also be strictly observed. If these requirements are met properly, the autonomous police system will be a complete model of local autonomy guaranteed by Constitution, and will be able to establish itself as a trusted autonomous system that combines local residents' rights and regional customized security services, eradicating local indigenous corruption, securing distribution of police power and political neutrality, linking local administration and security administration with financial support from local governments, smooth cooperation between national and autonomous police, strengthening resident representatives' participation in security administration and strengthening democratic control, and differentiating local security responsibilities from existing national police.