Anti-crime campaign to target bomb attacks
Violent crimes like bomb attacks would be the focus of the spring anti-crime campaign, a top public security official said yesterday.
Yang Fengrui, vice-director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, said the spring Strike Hard anti-crime campaign had officially started.
In the next three months police would focus on cases like bomb attacks, bank robberies and triad-related criminal activities, Mr Yang said.
They would step up searches for illegal weapons and explosives, he said.
Mr Yang did not explain the new strategy in detail but the new emphasis was apparently related to the recent spate of bomb attacks in Beijing and the unstable Xinjiang region.
Xinhua (the New China News Agency) said the Ministry of Public Security issued a special notice on March 5 requiring officers at all levels to heighten alert and crack major cases before June.
At least two bombs have exploded in Beijing in the past two weeks, injuring about a dozen people.
While Beijing police so far have not confirmed any arrests related to the explosions, Xinjiang officials claimed that the key suspects in the three bomb attacks in Urumqi last month had been arrested. At least nine people were killed in the Xinjiang blasts.
Official figures released by police yesterday showed that officers investigated 380,000 criminal cases from December to February and 145,000 were classified as major cases. More than 51,000 gangs were investigated.
In the same period, police caught 23,000 escaped convicts and closed more than 20,000 illegal dance halls, salons, sauna parlours and electronic games rooms.
Deputies to the National People's Congress last Friday cast a record number of negative votes when they adopted the two annual work reports by top Judge Ren Jianxin and Procurator-General Zhang Siqing to express their disapproval of poor public order.
