Investigation into police requested for mishandling of Osong flooding

The government on Friday requested an investigation into police officers suspected of misconduct in responding to the recent deadly flooding of an underpass in Osong-eup of Cheongju, North Chungcheong.

Commissioner General Yoon Hee-keun of the National Police Agency on Friday pays respect to victims of the flooding of an underpass in North Chungcheong at their joint memorial altar set up at the North Chungcheong provincial government building in Cheongju. [YONHAP]

The government on Friday requested an investigation into police officers suspected of misconduct in responding to the recent deadly flooding of an underpass in Osong-eup of Cheongju, North Chungcheong.

The Office for Government Policy Coordination said it filed requests for probes into six police officers to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office after finding they allegedly committed major faults when handling reports made to the 112 emergency hotline.

The government suspects the police did not visit the accident site before the underpass flooded, despite two reports being made to the police.

“We detected some major faults by the police when dealing with 112 emergency hotline calls,” a statement from the office said, adding that the police also falsely reported to the Prime Minister’s Office regarding their response to the accident.

“We requested an investigation by the prosecution instead of the police for the sake of the public’s trust.”

The statement added that the suspected police officers’ testimonies regarding their response contradict each other.

The office first launched an investigation into the North Chungcheong police earlier in the week after they confirmed two emergency reports had been made to them, at 7:02 a.m. and then at 7:58 a.m., before the underpass flooded at around 8:40 a.m. last Saturday.

The callers asked the Heungdeok Police Precinct in Cheongju to evacuate Osong residents and urgently requested they restrict access to the underpass.

The 112 Emergency Dispatching and Operations Command Center also confirmed that the first 112 emergency hotline call, made at 7:02 a.m., specified the location as the Miho River bridge and the second call as the Gungpyeong-2 underpass, which is the one that flooded.

Despite the calls, however, the police were not dispatched to any of the sites but still reported in their system that they visited and dealt with the emergency report.

Police first arrived at the accident site at around 9:01 a.m.

“The police under investigation explained that they went to the Gungpyeong-1 underpass after receiving the second report, but it appears that they actually did not,” a government official said.

Police previously testified that they went to the Gungpyeong-1 underpass instead of the Gungpyeong-2 because the caller did not specify the exact location.

President Yoon Suk Yeol also reportedly rebuked the police’s inappropriate response to the accident during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, pointing out that every possible personnel should have been deployed to deal with the floods.

A rescue team on Sunday searches for bodies in the bus that was submerged in a flooded underpass in Osong-eup in Cheongju, North Chungcheong. [KIM SEONG-TAE]

Last week’s heavy rain killed 46 people in the country as of Friday at 6 p.m. — 24 in North Gyeongsang, 17 in North Chungcheong, four in South Chungcheong and one in Sejong.

Fourteen of them died in the flooded underpass in Osong.

A total of 17,940 people were evacuated across the country, and 2,200 of them have still not been able to return home.

Police on Friday continued their search for four missing people — three in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang, and one in Busan — deploying every available personnel as another round of heavy rain is expected to hit the country over the weekend.

According to the national weather forecaster, rain will fall over the weekend and continue through Monday.

The greater Seoul area is expected to see anywhere from 50 to 100 millimeters (2 to 4 inches) of precipitation over the weekend, and parts of northern Gyeonggi may experience over 150 millimeters of rain.

BY CHO JUNG-WOO, PARK TAE-IN [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]