A police station in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, split a single theft case into 51 separate cases before sending them to prosecutors, who then canceled the filing, raising questions about whether the move was intended to inflate case-handling statistics.
According to the Gimcheon branch of the Daegu District Prosecutors' Office and other sources on the 26th, a worker in his or her 40s at a supermarket in Gumi stole about 700,000 won worth of goods over 51 occasions in March. The Gumi Police Station, which investigated the case, divided it into 51 theft cases and referred them to prosecutors, but the prosecution canceled the filing.
An official at the Gimcheon branch said of the cancellation, "Because the case is still under investigation, we cannot disclose details, but compared with similar matters, it is rare to see a case filed in dozens of separate parts."
When repeated offenses by the same suspect at the same location are referred case by case, the number of cases processed appears larger in statistics than it actually is, prompting criticism that performance management may have played a role.
The Gumi Police Station denied this. An official at the station said, "It is clearly true that we made a mistake," while drawing a line against the allegation of inflating performance figures. "The guidelines for recording theft incidents used internally were revised in 2016. Under those guidelines, multiple offenses occurring at the same location must be organized as a single case citing the initial incident and then referred to prosecutors, but we confirmed that the staff member in charge was not familiar with this," the official said.
The official added, "We are internally reviewing training and other steps to prevent a recurrence," and said, "This was a mistake stemming from unfamiliarity with the guidelines, not an inflation of performance figures."
Police maintain that the case was a simple error caused by the official's unfamiliarity with the guidelines. But given that the internal guidelines revised in 2016 have been in effect for nearly a decade, it is also possible to argue that the matter cannot be attributed to one individual's mistake alone. It has not yet been confirmed whether the split referral was limited to this case or whether similar instances exist.
