JEJU — Police have opened an investigation after finding that a Jeju police officer who falsely closed a missing-person report for 37-year-old Jang Mi-ran had also falsely closed 25 additional cases. The investigation found that the officer closed the cases falsely because he felt burdened by the extra work that would come from leaving missing-person cases open.
At a briefing at 10:30 a.m. on the 1st, the Jeju Provincial Police Agency said the assistant inspector, surnamed Bu, told investigators that "the missing person was an ordinary adult, so I took it lightly. When a case is left open there is a lot to take care of, so I falsely closed it because of the burden of handing the case over." Police added that "profiling analysis found that a motive of professional negligence, amid accumulated workload pressure and fatigue over growing responsibility, was the main factor behind the conduct."
Police believe the officer's avoidant personality worsened the string of false closures. According to police, Bu had felt burdened by his duties since being assigned to the missing-persons team in March last year, working night shifts alone. Normally, leaving a missing-person report unresolved brings no burden or penalty to the individual officer. But Bu, described as introverted and avoidant, believed that an unresolved case could burden the next officer to take it over, and he is said to have had weak problem-solving skills, such as asking other officers on duty for help.
Asked why Bu falsely closed Jang's missing-person report, entered "died in a traffic accident" as the reason and deleted the information from the missing-persons profiling system, police said he "has stated that he did so out of fear that the false closure would be discovered later." The circumstances differed in the case of a man in his 60s, identified as B, whose report Bu also closed falsely but whose information he did not delete. In that case Bu entered "whereabouts found," a choice police say was shaped by the fact that the person who filed the report had visited the police station and consulted another officer before calling 112. Deleting the information would instead have raised the chance that the false closure would come to light.
Police said that of the 298 cases Bu closed while working on the missing-persons team at Jeju Western Police Station from March last year through July, they identified 25 additional suspected false closures beyond the Jang and B cases. Ten of those were closed arbitrarily without any check on the whereabouts of the person reported missing. All of those missing persons have since been confirmed safe. In the remaining 15 cases, the whereabouts of the missing person had been confirmed, but Bu entered false reasons such as "died in a traffic accident" or "unnatural death" into the profiling system and deleted the records. Police plan to widen their full review to determine whether Bu also mishandled missing-person cases in the criminal investigation team where he worked before joining the missing-persons team.
So far police have not booked anyone other than Bu. "From the standpoint of the missing-persons team and the criminal investigation chief, they trusted Bu because he made his internal reports through the 112 system," police said. "We received the suspected false cases identified in the first round of the full review and will continue the investigation."
Bu is accused of falsely closing a case on his own about two and a half hours after receiving a report during a night shift in May from Jang's boyfriend that she was missing, logging that he had "made contact with the subject." He then listed Jang as a "traffic accident casualty" in the management list of the missing-persons profiling system, a police support system for missing-person reports, and deleted the data. On July 2 he falsely closed the missing-person case of B using a method similar to the one used in Jang's case. Police became aware of Bu's conduct during the search for Jang, conducted a pre-booking inquiry on the 11th of last month and formally booked him on the 14th of the same month.
Police found Jang's body on the morning of the 24th of last month at a palm tree farm in Hallim-eup, Jeju City. On the 25th of last month, the Jeju District Court issued an arrest warrant for Bu on charges of dereliction of duty, forgery and use of public electronic records, and obstruction of official duties by deception. Police sent him to prosecutors in custody on the same day as the briefing, after questioning him about 10 times.
