Legal on the road

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Legal on the road

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-02 07:37

Shanghai has launched a three-month crackdown on illegally operated vehicles. The joint efforts by the city's transportation administrative law enforcement department and the municipal police will focus on areas around the railway and subway stations, the airports and the hypermarkets.

The announcement came after weeks of news media censure of Shanghai's questionable entrapment methods used by its law enforcement officers. The most appalling case involved Henan-native Sun Zhongjie who chopped off his finger with a knife in order to prove his innocence.

Shanghai's district and municipal authorities were slow in responding to this public relations crisis before it snowballed into a nationwide crusade against Shanghai.

Finally officials in Shanghai's Pudong New Area renounced any illegal means used in cracking down on illegally operated taxis, known as black cars. Sun's van, which was confiscated by the Pudong law enforcement team, was returned.

However, Shanghai has not addressed the protest of many others who were caught and fined as "black car operators" under authorities' entrapment scheme.

In the first six months of this year, Shanghai seized 16,700 black cars. And no one knows how many are innocent yet entrapped by the law enforcement officers who exploit human sympathy in their work, by pretending ailments and asking for a ride and then catching the kind-hearted driver.

So, the first reminder to Shanghai's latest crackdown should be that no such despicable entrapment means should be practiced any more. If people who help the needy by giving them a ride are penalized, then no one knows what kind of society we are becoming.

The other reminder is that authorities should refrain from too many short-term campaigns. Illegally operated vehicles violate laws and create safety problems. So enforcing relevant laws should be routine, rather than something that deserves only three-month attention span.

It is understandable that the authorities want to deliver an unequivocal message to black car operators this time, but correcting mistakes in law enforcement does not mean compromise or tolerance of black cars.

Yet the black car service, which is rampant in areas around railway and subway stations, airports, shopping malls and some suburbs, hints at the serious inadequacy of our bus and other public transport systems. So improving public transport would be a more effective way to eliminate black cars.

As more family cars choke the roads, Shanghai should encourage the use of mass transit systems as well as carpooling for people living in the suburbs. That may create new problems for the law enforcement officers, who don't seem to be good at telling which is a black car, and who are rewarded by the number of black cars they catch.

Both illegally operated vehicles and illicit means of enforcing the laws should be banned. We can better solve the black car problem if we are willing to address the root cause.

(China Daily 11/02/2009 page4)