City management officers grabbed and threw an elderly person in their 80s; law enforcers should be more people-oriented.
[4] Compiled from: Red Star News
Case review
Recently, a video circulated online shows that around 5 a.m. on September 15, an elderly street vendor was packing her items onto a handcart when three men in urban management uniforms approached. One of them tried to take the weighing scale from her hand. During the struggle, the elderly woman fell to the ground. Eventually, the man took the scale and placed it in the trunk of a vehicle. The woman got up and chased after them to negotiate. Then, a man in uniform opened the trunk, took out the scale, broke it, and threw it onto the road. Because the woman sat in the open trunk, the man pulled her out and threw her onto the road.
Early on September 16, the Development Zone Branch of Nantong Public Security Bureau issued a police report on its official Weibo: It decided to impose 15 days of administrative detention and a fine of 1,000 yuan on the offender Wu. On the same day, the Nantong Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee reported: On September 15, Wu, a co-manager of the Xiaohai Street Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team in the development zone, acted violently while managing mobile vendors, sparking widespread social concern and causing a bad impact. After the incident, the person involved was quickly sent to the hospital for a full examination. That evening, public security authorities dealt with Wu according to law. The district supervision and work committee has filed a case for investigation and will handle relevant responsible persons based on the results. We will deeply learn from this lesson, draw inferences, and comprehensively strengthen team building and improve management levels.
Public Security Administration Punishments Law of the People's Republic of China
Article 43
Whoever assaults another person or intentionally causes harm to another person's body shall be detained for not less than 5 days but not more than 10 days and shall also be fined not less than 200 yuan but not more than 500 yuan; if the circumstances are relatively minor, they shall be detained for not more than 5 days or fined not more than 500 yuan.
Under any of the following circumstances, the offender shall be detained for not less than 10 days but not more than 15 days and shall also be fined not less than 500 yuan but not more than 1,000 yuan:
(1) Assaulting or harming another person in a group;
(2) Assaulting or harming a disabled person, a pregnant woman, a person under the age of 14, or a person over the age of 60;
(3) Assaulting or harming another person multiple times, or assaulting or harming multiple persons at one time.
Article 49
[1] Those who steal, defraud, forcibly seize, snatch, extort, or intentionally damage public or private property shall be detained for not less than 5 days but not more than 10 days, and may also be fined not more than 500 yuan; if the circumstances are relatively serious, they shall be detained for not less than 10 days but not more than 15 days, and may also be fined not more than 1,000 yuan.
[1] The author's perspective
[2] According to the official police report, the offender Wu in this case was not a real urban management officer but an assistant. In May this year, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued a notice on consolidating and deepening the nationwide urban management law enforcement team's special action of "strengthening the foundation, transforming work style, and establishing a good image," which emphasized strict management of assistants. Assistants can only cooperate with law enforcement personnel in auxiliary tasks such as publicity, education, patrols, information collection, and dissuasion of illegal acts, and must not engage in specific administrative law enforcement work. Looking back at the video of this case, on one side was the assistant's aggressive demeanor, and on the other side was the elderly person's trembling figure. Even if the elderly person's street vending was wrong, as an assistant, they should have assisted the urban management officer in law enforcement education, rather than directly destroying the elderly person's property or even physically pushing them.
[3] Although the elderly person did not suffer significant physical harm this time, such violent law enforcement is absolutely unacceptable. Although the relationship between street vendors and urban management officers has always been tense, and conflicts often escalate, the purpose of urban management law enforcement is to achieve standardized operations and beautify the city, not to harm the personal safety or property of vendors. So far, the assistant in this case has voluntarily compensated the elderly person for medical expenses, and the elderly person's family has expressed a desire to let the matter rest. However, we cannot help but think about one question: How can this contradiction be fundamentally resolved?
[4] For urban management, the importance of strengthening the construction of administrative law enforcement teams is self-evident. At the same time, improving urban management methods and concepts is equally indispensable. By dedicating more time and effort to humane law enforcement, meeting the diverse consumption needs of citizens while providing greater living space for small vendors, can conflicts and opposition be eliminated, balancing civilization and management. From this perspective, it is not only the urban management team that needs to improve management standards, but also all aspects of urban management.
