BAD BOYS, BAD BOYS, WHATCHA GONNA DO?

Wang Lijun is coming for you. IN Western media, Chinese police officers generally get bad press. Tales of torture, intimidation and miscarriages of justice frequently appear in news bulletins and RSS feeds. But if the chief of police in Jinzhou, a city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, has his way, all that is about to change. Wang Lijun is using his considerable experience and knowledge in the field to train his charges in a whole new way. He hopes the results can serve as a model for the entire country. The police have perhaps never before been under as intense scrutiny as they are in this age of information and camera-equipped mobile phones. These days the public pays much more attention to their actions. So eliminating corruption from the force - a difficult job in any country - seemed to Wang Lijun a good place to start, and he says he's personally overseeing that task. He's revamped the complaints department - notorious wastes of space in China - and personally interviews local citizens that have complaints against the cops. He says he has done this 700 times in the three and a half years since the new system was put in place, and 95 percent of the complaints were satisfactorily resolved.