Bill Proposed to Reduce Sentences for Accidents Occurring During Police Officers' Duty Performance

Assemblyman Lee Byung-hoon Proposes Partial Amendment to the Police Officer Duty Execution Act

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] A bill has been proposed to allow sentence reduction for accidents occurring during the normal performance of police duties.

On the 15th, Congressman Lee Byung-hoon (The Democratic Party of Korea·Gwangju Dong-gu Nam-gu Eul) announced that he had proposed the "Partial Amendment to the Police Officer Duty Execution Act."

The current "Act on 119 Rescue and Emergency Medical Services" prevents the suppression of firefighters' rescue and emergency activities by allowing sentence reduction or exemption when a person in need of rescue or emergency medical care is injured or killed due to rescue or emergency activities, provided that the duty performance was unavoidable and there was no gross negligence on the part of the rescue or emergency personnel.

However, the "Police Officer Duty Execution Act" does not provide grounds for sentence reduction for accidents caused by negligence of police officers during duty performance.

In fact, in January, an accident occurred in Gwangju Metropolitan City where a police officer chasing a motorcyclist who violated traffic regulations hit and injured an elementary school student crossing a crosswalk.

The police station in charge of the case stated that although the police officer was performing official duties, since the accident occurred due to a signal violation in a school zone, punishment seemed inevitable.

The proposed amendment includes provisions to allow sentence reduction or exemption by considering the circumstances, similar to firefighters, when police officers perform their duties normally without gross negligence.

Congressman Lee said, "Among netizens who learned about the incident, there are many concerns such as 'How can you catch a criminal while obeying all the signals?'" and added, "Within the normal scope of duty, it is necessary to encourage active duty performance by police officers to maintain public peace and order."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.