THE city government is drawing up regulations to step up the management of police aides in Shenzhen, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

    There are about 30,000 police aides in Shenzhen who participate in police operations, including administrative law enforcement, and they were recruited after signing labor contacts with police stations, Shenzhen lawmaker Bai Hong said.

    “Hiring officers with labor contracts may lead to abuse of power and undermine the police credibility,” he said, adding that relevant laws and regulations to supervise police aides have lagged behind.

    Bai said many police aides are paid the city’s minimum wage, but they are doing a risky and labor-intensive job, which could lead to low morale.

    Another Shenzhen’s lawmaker Zhang Lijie said there aren’t standard recruitment requirements for police aides in Shenzhen, and many officers lack professional skills, experience and legal knowledge.

    She said there should be separate management rules for police aides and formal police, while the management system for police aides should include detailed methods on recruitment, training and dismissal.

    The city’s legislative affairs office has drafted management regulations for police aides, and the city’s public security bureau is cooperating with the municipal people’s congress to reform the management system for them, according to the report.

    The official website of Shenzhen Bao’an Security Guard Service Co. Ltd. showed that the company has 8,000 police aides working at several police stations in Bao’an District. Apart from taking part in street patrols or doing paper work, a number of them also work in investigative technical departments.

    A police officer, who wasn’t named in the report, said there are many police aides helping the police identify suspects from surveillance footage, which is time-consuming work.

    He said many police aides also take part in anti-terrorist operations.

    Mao Chenqing, the autopsy team’s head at the city’s public security bureau’s forensic testing center, was one of 20 police aides being shortlisted for an award to honor prominent police aides in Shenzhen recently.

    Most of these candidates learned the skills they needed for their job after starting work.

    Mao worked as a chef at the center at the beginning after he was hired, and later was assigned to transport bodies from crime scenes and assist forensic officers in dissecting, unfreezing and disinfecting dead bodies.

    The poor management of police aides has also enabled some of them to abuse their power and engage in illegal practices. A police aide in Shenzhen was sentenced to 20 months in prison after he took a bribe and helped a suspect escape legal punishment in September 2014.

    Another police aide, surnamed Xu, stole over 2,000 residents’ personal information from the provincial public security department’s database from an office computer in a police station in 2014. He sold the information for 10,000 yuan (US$1,519).

    (Zhang Yang)