Police solve all this year's murders

Shanghai police say they have solved all 71 murder cases and 75 robbery cases reported in the city so far this year.

They also noted a 25.9 percent drop in suspected offenses reported through the police hotline, a 37.2 percent drop in criminal cases and a 54.2 percent drop of theft cases in the first nine months this year from the same period last year.

“We have achieved the goal to solve all murder, robbery and grabbing cases the year they happen, and we’re working toward solving all theft cases on the same base,” said Gong Dao’an, head of Shanghai Public Security Bureau and vice mayor of Shanghai.

Theft cases accounted for 44.4 percent of the 90,000 crime cases that took place in Shanghai in the first nine months this year, he said.

Gong contributed a safer Shanghai to a construction of smart devices around the city, both out on the streets and in residential communities.

He said almost one in three residential complexes in Shanghai had been equipped with smart devices such as smart gate systems and smoke detectors. In those residential complexes, burglaries had been eradicated.

“We have over 700,000 ‘neural cells’ in all public places of the city which report any danger to us 24/7,” Gong said.

Also, making use of a 3D geo-information system and a police instant messaging system, Shanghai police have reduced the time from receiving a report to covering the scene by 20 percent, and the time spent on dealing with a case on the scene has also been reduced by 35 percent, according to Gong.

Concerning the traffic paralysis caused by Costco Shanghai store's opening in Minhang District, Gong said the police "couldn't predict that the opening of a supermarket could draw such crowds."

"However, the police reacted quickly when the crowd hit 20,000, which we consider as an alarmingly big crowd, and no incident happened that day," he said. "We will install a crowd monitoring system in the area later." 

Currently there are about 50,000 police officers and police assistants, and every 10,000 residents in Shanghai have just 21 police officers, Shanghai police said.

By comparison, every 10,000 residents in Singapore have 61 police officers, in Tokyo 32 and in Beijing 25, they said.