Investigators raid Seoul police over deadly crowd surge

South Korea’s National Police Agency on Wednesday raided local police departments in the capital, Seoul, and the city’s Yongsan district office as it investigates whether official ineptitude contributed to a deadly crowd surge that killed 156 people in the neighborhood of Itaewon.
The raids came a day after the national agency acknowledged that Seoul police failed to act for hours despite receiving at least 11 emergency calls from pedestrians warning about a swelling crowd of Halloween revelers getting out of control ahead of the crush on Saturday in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel.
The national agency said members of its special investigation unit were retrieving documents and other materials from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency and Yongsan’s police station, district office and fire department and other offices. Local officials and police have faced sharp questions about why they didn’t employ crowd controls or sufficient personnel in the small nightlife district despite anticipating a crowd of 100,000 following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in recent months.