A Jeju police officer accused of falsely closing a missing-person report on Jang Mi-ran, 37, will be sent to prosecutors on the 1st. The Jeju Provincial Police Agency plans to announce the results of its investigation into the case the same day.
Police said on the 1st that the agency will refer to prosecutors an officer surnamed Boo, a senior patrolman with the Jeju Western Police Station who has been arrested on charges including dereliction of duty and obstruction of official duties. Boo is accused of receiving a missing-person report on Jang, closing it falsely and deleting related records from the national missing-person profiling system. The agency also plans to hold a briefing summarizing the investigation, including the alleged motive.
Boo is accused of receiving a report in May from Jang's boyfriend that she was missing while working a night shift, then closing the case on his own about two hours and 30 minutes later by claiming that "contact has been made with the subject." He was later found to have listed Jang as a "traffic accident casualty" on the management list of the missing-person profiling system, a support system for handling missing-person reports, and deleted the data.
While assigned to the missing-persons team at the Jeju Western Police Station from March 10 last year through July 23 this year, Boo closed 298 cases on his own, and in 63 of them he either failed to enter the case into the profiling system or deleted the record, police said. Some of the 63 cases were received and cleared by other units.
An earlier police review found that Boo closed 235 cases on his own during his 16 months on the missing-persons team, excluding the cases that were not entered or were deleted. That is more than other officers who served over comparable periods, one of whom closed 137 cases and another 37.
The briefing is also expected to disclose the findings of a full review of the 298 missing-person cases Boo closed. That is expected to reveal whether there were additional instances in which he falsely closed a missing-person report.
No one other than Boo has been booked in the case so far. But with the National Police Agency conducting an internal inspection of supervisors and fellow officers, decisions are expected on whether to impose disciplinary action or refer them for criminal investigation.
Attention is also turning to the prosecution's investigation. Once the case is handed over, prosecutors will conduct a month of supplementary investigation directly. Ahead of the abolition of the prosecution's investigative authority on Oct. 2, prosecutors plan to summon Boo based on the police case file and focus on establishing his motive and any additional false closures. The Jeju District Prosecutors' Office designated the chief of its first criminal division as the lead prosecutor on the case on the 24th of last month and formed a dedicated investigation team drawn from the division.
