Pinching pickpockets: it’s all in a day’s work
Print Edition
IT was 9:30pm. The business zone along Qixin Road was still quite busy. A car halted and the door opened. As the occupant stepped out, he was seized by Jiang Jun and four other plainclothes police officers. They found a stolen wallet in the man’s pocket.
Chalk up another small victory for Jiang, 39, a policewoman with the Minhang Security Bureau. She heads a seven-member team focused on catching pickpockets. Last year some 150 thieves were caught, and this year, she was selected as one of winners of the title “Defender of Security” in Shanghai.
“The title just spurs me on,” said Jiang.
Jiang worked for the Zhabei District Security Bureau before being transferred to Minhang five years ago. As the district develops, her job duties change.
The new towns in the suburbs and in business areas have become almost as busy as the downtown, she said. Such an environment creates a new “workplace” for pickpockets.
“Many of them rent a place in a village and come to ‘work’ in the evenings,” said Jiang. “Minhang is a big traffic hub, and it’s easy for the thieves to move about.”
Jiang’s team is divided into three groups: one on foot shadowing suspected pickpockets, another in a car chasing them up, and a third in a van for back-up support.
Sometimes the team chases a thief across district boundaries. Jiang once pursued a pickpocket from Minhang to Changning, following him for seven hours. She didn’t finally nab him until 9:30pm, and she didn’t finish his interrogation until 2am.
“My only free time during the day is around 7am, when I’m up to send my daughter to school,” she said.
Pinching pickpockets requires honed tracking skills. Jiang said her team needs to hide its identity to be able to trail suspects.
“When you’re on the street, you’re just another common pedestrian. When you are in a restaurant or a shopping mall, you’re just another customer,” she said. “You have to forget you’re a cop and you have to be brave.”
The team all operates in plain clothes. On duty, Jiang wears a plaid shirt, a pair of jeans, and a jacket when it’s cool. She blends in with the crowds.
“There is a member on our team, a man with long hair, who failed to fit the bill,” she said. “I finally had to order him to get a crew-cut.”
Inevitable hurts
Although dealing with pickpockets is considered less dangerous than dealing with, say, murderers, drug dealers or robbers, the pickpocket team still faces risks. Jiang herself has been wounded several times in the line of duty. She doesn’t regard that as a badge of glory.
“Getting hurt means that you’re not that good at catching a thief,” she said. “The best way is to sneak behind a thief and grab his wrist, and not get hurt yourself.”
But out on the street, reality can be more complicated. The unexpected can occur.
Jiang remembered the time when her team was pursuing a gang of pickpockets, who were traveling in a taxi. The plan was to mount a “pincer attack” on both sides of the taxi when it was stopped by a red light.
At first, everything went smoothly. The taxi stopped. One team member drove his car to block the taxi. Jiang rushed out from her car and opened the rear door of the taxi. “Police! Freeze!” she yelled.
Three pickpockets surrendered without a fight. But when Jiang was about to take them back to the team cars, two police wagons came and stopped all of them.
“One of my team members was pressed down on the wagon and frisked,” said Jiang. “Later, we realized that the cab driver thought we were hooligans fighting at his cab and had alerted police.”
All’s well that ended well. Jiang’s team captured five smartphones that the pickpockets had purloined. Two of the owners didn’t even know their phones had been pinched until they were informed by police.
Jiang said there also have been times when the best of efforts were in vain. The team once trailed a thief for five hours on Qibao Old Street, only to find that the wallet he had stolen contained only 100 yuan (US$16). According to the law, that was a minor crime and the thief got off lightly.
“The owner was funny,” Jiang said. “He asked if he could put more money in his wallet so that the pickpocket would receive a more severe penalty. I could only tell him to be more careful next time.”
Jiang said her two decades of police work have left her with many frustrations.
She said she’s angry that her team members earn so little, while pickpockets run around squandering their ill-gotten gains. She’s angry that people are so careless about their properties when out on the street. She’s angry that sometimes she has to break traffic rules to chase a thief and gets fined.
“But I never regret my job,” she said. “I want to protect people, and I hope that people will learn how to protect themselves.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
