A Study on the Field Response-Type Execution Activities of Police Officers

This study examines the relationship between police officers'field-response execution activities and specific risks under the police law, and examines thelegal characteristics of police officers' field-response execution activities in the current police research method that reviews books, papers, and precedents in Korea, Japan, and Germany onthis topic. The following legal characteristics can be recognized in that the police officer'son-site response execution activities are power measures performed for the direct purpose ofexcluding specific risks identified and obtained by the police officer at the scene. First, sincepolice officers' field-response enforcement activities are the authority to take action toeliminate specific risks, the exercise of this authority should be suspended immediately whenthe specific risk is resolved, and its continuation is not justified unless there are specialprovisions in other individual laws such as the Criminal Procedure Act. Next, as long as thepolice officer's field-response execution activities are judged to be reasonable and legitimatebased on the time the action was taken, even if the actual specific risk was found to have notexisted after the fact, it is not necessarily considered illegal. In the end, police officers' on-siteenforcement activities aimed at maintaining public safety and order and controlling risks inthe future are feared to violate the basic rights of the people, so how to properly harmonizethese two propositions, achieving police objectives and guaranteeing the basic rights of thepeople, is one of the important tasks of our police law.