Embattled Jeju officer deleted records in cases of missing children, people with disabilities, police say

Police say a Jeju officer deleted or omitted 63 case records, including reports involving missing children and people with disabilities.

The police officer who prematurely closed missing-persons cases in Jeju Island also erased or omitted case registry records of not only adults but also missing children and people with disabilities, police said Wednesday.

The officer, surnamed Bu, deleted or failed to enter 63 records from the missing-person profiling system's case registry list. Several of these were confirmed to involve protected persons under the Act on the Protection and Support of Missing Children, according to the Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Police Agency. 

The act designates children, people with "intellectual, autistic or mental disabilities," and dementia patients as protected groups, since they are especially vulnerable to crime or at risk of death if missing for extended periods. Unlike general adult missing persons reports, reports involving these groups are required to be reported immediately to the responsible police official and to trigger large-scale searches.

Of the 63 records, 15 involved cases that were closed normally after local police located the missing individuals shortly after the reports were filed. But Bu, who was in charge of the missing-persons team, had entered case registries for these 15 cases and then arbitrarily deleted them. Case registries can be deleted only if the missing person is confirmed dead, such as through an unnatural-death finding, and once deleted, they cannot be retrieved. 

Bu worked on the missing-persons team at Jeju Seobu Police Station from March last year through July and closed a total of 298 cases on his own authority during that period, the investigation found. Of those, 141 involved reports concerning protected persons under the missing children act.

Bu was arrested and referred to prosecutors on charges of improperly closing the cases of two adult missing persons reported in May and July. Both were found dead a considerable time after their reports were filed. Bu stated to the effect that "the missing persons were ordinary adults, so I thought about it carelessly, and because there was a lot to handle if the case remained unresolved, I falsely closed it due to the burden of case handover."

BY JEONG HYE-JEONG [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]