Express delivery of illegal drugs, safety issues keep procurators busy
Problems relating to public safety and online ordering and express delivery of new types of drugs have become significant concerns for Shanghai's procurators.
Jing'an District's procurators check a problematic manhole cover.
Public safety
Procurators in some districts, including Jing'an, Putuo and Yangpu, have dealt with missing manhole covers in streets and lanes in their focus on public security problems in the city.
Jing'an District's procurators have received real-time information about broken and missing manhole covers through the citizens' hot line "12345" and other online monitoring platforms during the year. In typical cases, even the covers broken by heavy vans could be recovered by relevant departments under their supervision.
Putuo District's procurators have investigated over 1,321 cases relating to manhole covers since the beginning this year.
Yangpu procurators released details of a typical case from June this year when a boy suffered a leg injury in Yangpu District due to a missing manhole cover.
Manhole cover issues can lead to serious injuries and death among pedestrians, so procurators have strengthened communication with local authorities such as city inspectors, and the construction and transportation commission, to identify the ascription of liability, and broadened supervision of ways to prevent such accidents.
A procurator advises on the demolition of an old garage in Putuo District.
Other problems affecting public safety, such as obstructing blind lanes and throwing objects from heights, are also the focus of Putuo procurators. They helped a residential complex demolish a shabby garage which could lead to serious public safety accidents.
A man, surnamed Gu, was sentenced to an eight-month jail term and fined 5,000 yuan (US$785) by Putuo People's Court for affecting public safety.
Putuo procurators instigated the city's first court case over an offence against public safety.
It involved a bus driver who had asked a mask-free passenger to get off the bus. When another passenger disagreed with the order, his quarrel with the driver involved a fight over control of the steering wheel.
The passenger surnamed Gu who started the fight was sentenced to an eight-month jail term and fined 5,000 yuan (US$785). No passenger was killed or injured in the incident
Qingpu District's procurators also focused on safety problems during the year.
Two people died, two were injured and losses valued at over 6 million yuan were incurred in a fire at an express delivery company in suburban Qingpu District. Six people in charged of the company were jailed for between 1.5 years and 2.5 years, according to the district's procuratorate.
Qingpu procurators have charged 91 people in 41 cases between 2017 and 2020, a number which has increased every year they said on Monday.
New type of drugs
Although the total number of drug-related cases has declined due to the efforts of the city's prosecutors, the number of new case types has continued to rise.
This is especially in the new mode of trafficking involving drugs obtained through express delivery.
Procurators in urban Putuo and Jing'an districts have found that traffickers put synthetic cannabinoids into the liquid of e-cigarettes which are sold through online social apps and delivered through express parcels. These are proving difficult to discover and trace.
ADB-BUTINACA, normally used in research and forensic applications, has been listed as a controlled drug since July by the National Narcotics Control Committee.
China is the first country in the world to list 18 new psychoactive substances as controlled drugs. Last month, the committee released a new conversion table covering Ketamine and seven types of synthetic cannabinoids.
In the table, 1 gram of Ketamine is equivalent to 0.1 gram of heroin; a gram of seven kinds of synthetic cannabinoids is equal to between 0.2 and 5 grams of heroin.
In one typical case released by Jing'an procurators, a man was sentenced to a seven-year jail term and fined 7,000 yuan for trafficking a total of 28.89 grams of synthetic cannabinoid.
Putuo procurators have investigated nine people in four cases relating to the synthetic cannabinoid since controls were introduced.
Also, a drug trafficker who has repeatedly trafficked drugs has only served one year and three months in prison, a lot less than the statutory sentence of more than three years.
Qingpu prosecutors have found in drug case reviews that drug-related criminals have been receiving extremely light penalties, some involving possible judicial abuse of the law.
Consequently, corrections have been applied in the cases of a pregnant woman surnamed Huang and a man surnamed Fan, each for multiple drug trafficking offences.
