Inquiry finds officers in Seoul had didn't make use of satisfactory crowd management for an anticipated Halloween crowd of 100,000.
South Korean police are looking for costs of involuntary manslaughter and negligence in opposition to 23 officers – together with regulation enforcement officers – over public security failures they mentioned had been accountable for a crowd crush within the capital, Seoul, that killed 159 folks in a well-liked nightlife space.
Son Je-han, who headed the Nationwide Police Company’s particular investigation into the tragedy, mentioned on Friday that his workforce will now ship the case file to prosecutors following the conclusion of an investigation into the occasions of that evening.
Regardless of anticipating a crowd of greater than 100,000 for Halloween festivities in October 2022, Seoul police had assigned fewer than 140 officers to the capital’s busy nightlife district Itaewon on the day of the crush and most had been targeted on monitoring drug use and violent crimes, which specialists mentioned left few sources for crowd security.
The outcomes of the 74-day police investigation introduced by Son largely confirmed what was already clear – that police and public officers didn't make use of significant crowd management measures for the anticipated numbers of Halloween revellers and basically ignored emergency calls positioned to police hotlines that warned of a swelling crowd hours earlier than the state of affairs turned to a lethal crush on October 28.
Greater than 500 investigators regarded into the position of district officers, police, hearth and different emergency providers to “unravel the lethal accident”, South Korea’s official Yonhap Information Company reported on Friday.
Officers additionally botched their response as soon as folks started to fall over and had been crushed in a slender alley clogged with partygoers, Son mentioned.
“[Their] inaccurate judgement of the state of affairs, the sluggish distribution of details about the state of affairs, poor cooperation between associated establishments and delays in rescue operations had been among the many overlapping failures that brought on the excessive variety of casualties,” Son mentioned at a information convention in Seoul.
Yonhap reported that after the primary individual fell over, crowds unaware of what was happening continued to push down the alley for 10 minutes, resulting in the crush and large lack of life.
“As crowds piled into the alley, crowd density shot as much as 10.74 folks per sq. metre … on the hardly 4-metre-wide bottleneck path, leaving many ‘pushed backwards and forwards by crowds with their toes above the bottom’,” Yonhap reported, quoting a spokesman for the investigation workforce.
Among the many 23 folks advisable for indictment are Park Hee-young, mayor of Seoul’s Yongsan district, and the district’s former police chief Lee Im-jae. They're two of six individuals who have already been arrested in reference to the incident.
It's unclear whether or not the outcomes of the police investigation can be sufficient to calm public anger in South Korea and additional calls for for presidency accountability.
Opposition legislators and a few family of the victims have demanded investigations into extra high-profile figures, comparable to Inside and Security Minister Lee Sang-min and Nationwide Police Company Commissioner Common Yoon Hee-keun, who've additionally confronted calls to resign.
“We have now so many questions unanswered,” Lee Jong-chul, head of a bunch representing the bereaved households, instructed reporters as he arrived at a prosecutor’s workplace in Seoul on Friday.
“We got here right here to present a sufferer’s assertion, anticipating a greater, expanded investigation.”
Nonetheless, Son mentioned the particular investigation workforce will shut its inquiries involving the Inside and Security Ministry, the Nationwide Police Company, and the Seoul Metropolitan Authorities, saying it was tough to ascertain their direct duty.
Some specialists have referred to as the crush in Itaewon a “man-made catastrophe” that might have been prevented with pretty easy measures, comparable to using extra police and public employees to watch bottleneck factors, imposing one-way stroll lanes and blocking slender pathways or briefly closing Itaewon’s subway station to forestall massive numbers of individuals transferring in the identical course.
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