Capital adds police to community stations
Beijing police have put more than 10,000 personnel into community stations in the past year as part of municipal government reforms aimed at improving service and ensuring safety.
“As the police in the capital, we have significant responsibilities,” Beijing Public Security Bureau spokesman Heng Xiaofan said. “People are at the core of all the work. Thus we have taken measures to put more police from administrative offices onto the ‘front line’ — near the public.”
The bureau said 13,118 police officers had been added to local stations.
Zhang Wenjing, deputy chief of Taoranting police station in Xicheng district, used to work at the municipal bureau but decided to move to the local station last year.
“The public security situation is not good in the area because of the floating population and a large number of small shops,” Zhang said.
He said the extra staff resulting from the reform allowed the station to form a team of 12 police officers to fight crime. Four team members had previously worked at higher levels in the bureau.
Zhang said they had developed a range of skills in their previous posts and that had helped the team catch 42 criminal suspects in the second half of last year.
“The residents now see police officers more often than before and the number of burglaries in my area has dropped significantly,” said Zhu Pengyi, a police officer at the Taoranting station. “There have been zero burglaries so far this year.”
In Xicheng, the number of police officers stationed in local communities has increased from 367 to 692, which has enabled 80 of the district’s 257 stations to operate round-the-clock.
Innovation is also part of the reforms.
The bureau formed an “antifinancial-fraud center” in 2015. It has strengthened cooperation with banks and telecommunication companies and is now using the internet and big data to investigate cases.
The center can share data with police officers working at the community level through mobile equipment, which makes their daily work more convenient.
It stopped about 40,000 people from being cheated last year, preventing potential losses of about 2 billion yuan ($309 million).
The number of the phone fraud cases in Beijing last year was the lowest in five years.
The bureau has also been accelerating the establishment of an “online bureau” able to give the public quicker service.
It can handle 43 services related to the public at present, and it accepted and dealt with 7 million cases last year.