Li Jing

    vivianmuzi@hotmail.com

    SHENZHEN has deployed more police officers on street patrols to deter criminals and reduce crime since Wednesday.

    At least two-thirds of the city’s emergency units will be deployed to patrol roads. Each police station is required to set up a full-time patrol team with no less than 30 officers and put 65 percent of its auxiliary police on patrol, according to the city’s police authorities. Additional officers will be on duty in areas with high crime rates.

    Patrol officers will wear new uniforms and be outfitted with the latest equipment.

    All police forces, including traffic police, SWAT teams, firefighters, border police and armed police, will join in the patrols.

    Sub-bureaus and police stations are entitled to higher autonomy while heads of patrol officers have the authority to coordinate, dispatch and supervise different police forces in their patrol areas.

    Police authorities said they will use the forces efficiently despite a shortage of manpower.

    By the end of 2012, there were fewer than 11 police officers for every 10,000 residents, according to a city government report. The city’s floating population swelled to more than 15 million that year. In the same year, people without a Shenzhen hukou made up 93 percent of crime suspects. Rented homes in urban villages were involved in nearly half of the crimes, the report said.

    In Hong Kong, the 30,000 police officers on its streets rivaled the size of the police presence in cities like New York and London, according to official statistics released in 2013.

    Sixty percent of Hong Kong police forces go on street patrols, according to an earlier Xinhua News Agency report.

    The Hong Kong patrol teams, consisting of 30-50 armed officers each, serve around the clock. Each team patrols in police vans and sends out two people at a time to patrol the streets, which mostly serves crime-preventive purposes. Police vans are parked in prominent locations to discourage crime. Tactical units send additional officers to patrol high-crime areas.

    Hong Kong was the 11th-safest city globally according to a ranking by British magazine The Economist in 2015.

    In 2011, Hong Kong recorded 731 robberies, the lowest since 1969.