A refusal by police to follow a directive from prosecutors has renewed a debate on the roles the two law-enforcement agencies play in criminal investigations. But the police are not to blame if they have acted strictly in accordance with the law, as they claim.

At the core of the dispute are the rules on initial inquiries, as opposed to pre-trial full-scale criminal investigations. A new presidential decree on the enforcement of the Criminal Procedure Act, which went into force on Jan. 1, does not require police to follow prosecutors’ directives in initial inquiries unless they are conducted when formal criminal charges are pressed.

As such, prosecutors cannot order a police station to launch an initial inquiry based solely on a petition or gathered intelligence. But prosecutors in Daegu recently issued a directive to a police station to conduct an initial inquiry based on a petition, as they had conventionally done in the past. The police station refused to follow the directive. Critics of the police station’s decision claim that it put public safety in jeopardy.

But no one can blame the police station and the National Police Agency, which had earlier issued internal guidelines on conventional practices not based on the law. Instead, the blame should be put on those who authored the presidential decree lopsidedly in favor of the prosecutors’ office as well as the prosecutors that ignored the new presidential decree in issuing the directive.

The conflict over initial inquiries dates back to June last year when the police demanded that they be legally authorized to conduct initial inquiries on their own ― as they do in nine out of every 10 cases. The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office agreed to the demand. But the Ministry of Justice reversed the agreement and banned police from initiating criminal investigations on their own when it wrote the presidential decree. It was only natural for the National Police Agency to be angered.

What needs to be done now is to have the presidential decree rewritten, preferably in accordance with the earlier agreement between the prosecutors’ office and the police agency. The least that can be done is to write rules on initial investigations based on a petition or information gathered on criminal offenses.

A protracted dispute over criminal investigations serves no one’s interests. The prosecutors’ office and the police agency will do well to agree on a new compromise as soon as possible.