SHENZHEN police busted 11 mafia-type organizations, 37 criminal mobs and 719 criminal rings in 2018, a recent directors’ meeting of public security bureaus in Guangdong Province held in Guangzhou revealed.

Among the criminal rings, four rings had more than 100 members each, according to Zhou Zhaoxiang, executive deputy director of Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau.

“The anti-crime effort has deterred mafia-type forces. The number of clinic visits by people who were injured in street fights has been reduced,” said Zhou.

“Some criminal organizations that disrupted market order have been eliminated. For example, at a local seafood market, residents are now spending 5 yuan (US$0.74) less each time they shop as the sellers no longer need to pay protection fees to a criminal ring. Police have also closed some illegal clinics and busted their protective umbrella,” he said without elaborating on which seafood market.

According to Zhou, Shenzhen police have set up a 250-member team to crack down on ganglands for the work in 2019.

In Guangdong Province, 88 mafia-type organizations were busted and 8.55 billion yuan in assets were frozen or impounded last year.

The number of drug-related cases in the province also dropped. In 2014, the drug-related cases in Guangdong made up 59.6 percent of China’s total. This percentage dropped to 7.2 percent in 2018. The number of drug cases sourced from Guangdong dropped from 6,527 in 2014 to 745 in 2018.

(Han Ximin)