While Police Officer Boo was arrested yesterday for falsely closing a missing person case in Jeju, it has been revealed that Jeju police have previously fabricated investigation records or improperly rejected complaints and accusations under the pretext of heavy workloads.
According to the Jeju Provincial Police Agency, in 2024, Police Inspector A at the Seogwipo Police Station was caught on charges of arbitrarily rejecting received cases without the consent of the complainants and accusers, returning them, and falsely entering the details into the Criminal Justice Information System.
It was revealed that in the process, Inspector A even committed so-called "self-approval" by stealing a team leader's ID to secretly access the system and directly approve the rejection.
Police Sergeant B, who belonged to the investigation division of the Jeju Western Police Station, also covered up investigations using a similar method.
Sergeant B unauthorizedly rejected 17 cases that were provisionally received over a three-year period starting in 2019, and it was revealed that he also used a stolen team leader's ID to self-approve the actions during this process.
Seven of the arbitrarily rejected fraud cases were reinvestigated, and the suspects' charges were recognized and forwarded to prosecutors. This kind of improper rejection practice by investigative agencies subsequently led to a revision of the law making the acceptance of complaint and accusation filings mandatory.
There were also cases where investigation records themselves were fabricated.
Police Sergeant C of the traffic investigation team at the Seogwipo Police Station was caught after fabricating 14 traffic accidents involving personal injury within his jurisdiction as simple property-damage accidents.
It is known that three of these cases involved suspects who were either uninsured or violated the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Settlement of Traffic Accidents, which could have potentially resulted in unfair victims.
Such investigation fabrications and false closures of cases appear to have been repeated for the sake of the responsible police officers' working convenience and to relieve work pressure.
As it was recently revealed that the responsible police officer also falsely closed the missing person reports in the case of two missing persons found dead in Jeju, fundamental questions are being raised about the credibility of police investigations as a whole.
(Reported by Lee Hyeon-yeong | Video by E:U | Graphics by Sumin | Produced by SBS Digital News)
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