A troubling online video of a Shenzhen police officer berating and mocking two young women recently became a topic of heated online discussion.
In the video, the two women are sitting in the back of the officer’s car, on their way to a police station in Bao’an. Viewers can see only the side of the policeman’s head as he goes on angry, sometimes childish rants to his increasingly upset passengers in the backseat. From the dialogue, it seems that the two ladies were walking along the street when they were accosted by the policeman. As they question his authority to treat them this way, the cop responds aggressively, spouting comments that are threatening, absurd or both:
“Suspecting I’m not a cop, that I’m fake, even if I’m fake you have to cooperate! How do you know that I’m fake?”
“I even suspect you’re men, what are you using the damn women’s toilets for, take off your clothes so I can see. You’re sick in the head, [saying] I’m not a policeman.”
“[I’ll] shut you in with those people with AIDS, with those thieves, with those robbers, I’ll let you slowly enjoy it! I’m telling you, you’ll see!”
“Nothing would have happened if you didn’t go out.”
“You think because you’re a girl, you don’t have to respect the law.”
At one point a man sitting in the passenger’s seat, who has been mostly quiet, also directs a sarcastic comment at the women: “You're very beautiful, are you?”
As the four-minute video progresses, the girl next to the one filming becomes audibly upset. She has to be soothed several times by her companion. Near the end of the video she pulls up her sleeve to reveal a faint red mark on her arm. This, she declares, is where she was grabbed by one of the policemen while being detained. Shortly afterwards, the video ends.
A blurry shot of the woman's arm, from the video
The whole incident took place on May 21, and the video was posted on Weibo later by one of the women. According to her account, she and her sister had been on their way to a friend’s house when a man in a police uniform approached them and asked them to show their ID cards.
Neither sister had brought theirs that day. The elder one suspected the man of being a fraud and asked him to show his credentials. He didn’t respond, instead dragging them to a police car where another man in uniform appeared.
The two men got them into the car and began driving to the local station. Still suspicious of being abducted, the elder sister pulled out her phone and began recording, capturing the verbal abuse from the cop in the driver’s seat.
After arriving at the police station, the two sisters were subjected to another hour of this treatment by him and another questioner, who assured them the whole process was “completely legal.”
Later, she received a phone call from a staff member at the station. This person explained that the abusive cop and his coworker had been putting in a lot of overtime hours recently and were very tired, asking for her understanding.
On June 10, the Bao’an police department announced on their Weibo that they were looking into the incident, which had become infamous online. The next day they released a statement (below) saying that the offending cop had been relieved of his duties and that police officials had apologized to the two young women.
The apologies were accepted.
Watch footage from the incident here (VPN on):
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