Policemen and Thieves

2009-06-30T07:53:00.001-07:00

After a long period of salvage time, humankind learned to construct the Society, in which people could be protected in case of trouble. That was certainly a very good start and the system has been persisted and improved continuously till today.

The justice system, which sometime is called the machines of a state, is various in different countries—some of them are impartial and efficient, yet some of them are not, or even evil.

China is a country with a very, very long history, and her history of civilization can be as long as that of Mesopotamia. When I was a child, as most Chinese people, we were taught that we were living in a most perfect society in the world, and still there were more than 65% people in the world were to be “liberated” by us in the future. We believed in the propaganda, without any doubt.

In 1960’s, a brother of my best friend was sentenced in prison for 6 long years for cheating of some goods which equivalent to only several hundred RMB (I guess it equals to less than a hundred US dollars at that time). All though the living was hard, and we had very little toys to play with, at least we have our own way of being happy, as I can remember many instances that I think to be worthy of remembering till now.

During the Great Cultural Revolution, the justice system was destroyed, and many tragedies happened. Politics at that time meant everything must be done under the standard of Mao’s thought, which we believed in the deep of our hearts. The propaganda was very effective, except for some objects of the proletarian dictatorship, people got mad in the movement.

In 1970’s, the Great Cultural Revolution was denied, everything seems being turned over. However, I believe, the justice system was not, and it seemed getting worse.

This was proved by a cruel fact that directly involved me. I left the university I studied and worked for ten years and got a job in the Special Economic Zone—Shenzhen, a southern city. A few years later, I established a small business and got a little bit richer, and so I bought a car and some professional cameras. Whenever I had time, I went out to take pictures of the splendid night sceneries of the city and natural landscapes outside of the city.

In July 9^th, 2001, when I went in a store to buy some films, the windshield of my car was broken through and my cameras and accessories were stolen. I called 110 (a phone number like 911 in North America), but the police did not show up during 40 minutes. I called again, and told them that no one had shown up, and the lady finally gave me a phone number of the nearest police station. I got through, but the policeman asked me to go directly to the police station because there were no policemen was available at the time. I hoped that they could come to the site and collect some evidence, but they wouldn’t. When I got there, I found that the distance was only about 500 metres away!

The policeman told me that I should have been careful for the crime happened there every day (but how could I know about it?). He said that only one day before, a luxury car was broken and a great amount of money was stolen. I thought that the case could be revealed easily for they knew that was a place where the same crime was committed every day. But I was wrong.

The next day, I went to the site myself with the only one camera left—a small Panasonic camera. Very soon, I found the criminals—they were well organized, for they sent young children in charge of an adult to find out in which car had bags in it and then they sent specified people to crash the windshield on side of the car and stole anything that might be “traded”, even only a cell phone.

I took some picture, and called the police again, but again, they came after 40 minutes. Of course they could not arrest anyone.

In order to take better pictures, I bought another camera with a 200mm lens, and captured some images of the thieves during the following days. I gave the pictures to the police, but still they caught no thieves, on the contrary, the thieves on the pictures vanished immediately each time I gave picture to the police.

No later than a few weeks, I found that some of the thieves were actually security guards employed by the police station. Now I understand that the police and the thieves were in one family.

[2009-06-28]

Justice&Tao

Policemen and Thieves