Police boost security as semester begins

More sentry posts have been created to tackle issues on campuses nationwide

As a new semester begins across the country, police have intensified patrols around campuses and strengthened their capability to respond to emergencies, ensuring a rapid response to school-related incidents.

A total of 150,000 sentry posts have been set up in various locations to ensure that students can go to and from school safely, especially during rush hour in major road sections, said Zhang Ming, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Public Security.

Additionally, about 250,000 police offices and sentry posts have been established, which could promptly deal with situations when teachers or students call police for help.

Given that schools across the country have successively begun the new semester, ensuring the safety of students, campuses and the surrounding areas is one of the important tasks for public security organs, said Zhang.

To comprehensively screen out safety hazards around campuses, public security organs have worked with administration departments to check hotels, rental houses, internet cafes and other public places around schools.

As of the end of August, a total of 1,156 sites with public security problems around campuses have rectified their problems.

The public security organs and education administration departments will also conduct comprehensive inspections of the schools' internal security measures. If they are not up to standard, the police will urge prompt rectification.

Police were also asked to work with education and traffic administration departments to visit schools and school bus enterprises to investigate the inspection and scrap rate of school buses, Zhang said.

Public security organs were also urged to identify potential traffic safety hazards around schools and report risks to administration departments, and to fix traffic safety facilities such as guardrails, warning signs, traffic lights and speed bumps.