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Police who bend laws hurt all of us
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POLICE in Shaanxi Province reportedly refused to release the name of an official who had illegally parked his car and then beaten a patrolman who gave him a ticket.
Xinhua said last Friday that the car belonged to the forestry authorities of Shangluo City, but the beaten policeman, the police station and forestry authorities would not say who committed the assault.
This is clearly another case of police inaction in the face of some influential “big brother” involved with local government.
If this kind of inaction by intimidated police is “understandable,” another kind of police inaction is bewildering.
If you visit the Town of Zhaoxiang in Qingpu District, where I live, you will find many cars parked illegally on the main roads. They are seldom ticketed.
On Monday, a homeowner in our neighborhood intentionally parked her car in front of our neighborhood’s shuttle bus to block its exit — she had quarreled with our property management over other issues and she was venting her anger by causing inconvenience to her neighbors. Both the shuttle bus and her car were illegally parked on the road.
Other homeowners, who could not take the bus, angrily called the police. When the police arrived, they tried to persuade the woman to move her car, but she refused. The police then said both the car and the shuttle bus actually should be ticketed.
But the police finally left without ticketing either the woman who blocked the shuttle bus, or the bus itself, or any other illegally parked vehicles.
Parking management in downtown Shanghai is better, but in certain suburban districts, the law of the jungle prevails.
Take the town of Xu Jing, in Qingpu again. Many illegal taxis park in bus stations to solicit business, effectively blocking the entry and exit of buses. If police had done their job, this problem would have been nipped in the bud.
I recall my years at Stanford more than 10 years ago. One of my classmates was riding a bike back to her campus dorm at midnight. She didn’t see anyone, so she didn’t stop at the stop sign on the campus. A campus policeman darted out from nowhere and gave her a ticket with a heavy fine.
If most policemen in China were trained to dart out at any time, anywhere, to nip illegal actions by anyone in the bud, everyone of us — big brother or small potato — would fall into line. It’s a pity that some of our police bow too easily before lawbreakers.
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