Since January 2020, due to the spread of new coronaviruses, all parts of the country are actively responding to the national epidemic prevention policy and carrying out epidemic prevention work. However, during this period, a small number of staff members took advantage of the epidemic situation to exploit the problem and abused their power to resolve contradictions. Such behaviors not only undermine epidemic prevention but also rule of law, and need to be stopped in time. This article will explain the performance of abuse of power during the epidemic in conjunction with the case of “Tianjin Scavenging Old Man Beaten” and propose solutions to prevent abuse of power.
1. Case analysis of power abuse
On the afternoon of February 28, 2020, the Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team of Xianyang North Road Street in Hongqiao District and the staff of the property of Zhangwulou carried out sanitation and cleaning work on the community of Zhangwulou. During the cleaning of 57-year-old Zhang Mou debris, property staff Li Mou and Zhang Mou had physical conflicts such as pushing and dragging. Eventually, the property company issued a statement stating that the Public Security Bureau imposed an administrative penalty on Li.
In this incident, you need to pay attention to the following two points: First, health problems have always existed. Zhang is a poor household, and his long-term collection of waste products is piled up in the public space of the community. Therefore, the property company has frequently received complaints from other owners in the community, but the property company did not deal with Zhang’s waste products. In the sanitation and cleanup work, the relevant personnel believed that Zhang's debris was easy to cause the virus to spread, which was not conducive to the epidemic prevention work. Second, the inaction of law enforcement officers. In this case, the street law enforcement personnel work together with the property staff, but the real law enforcement personnel are the street law enforcement personnel. When the staff of the property has a beating action against Zhang, the street law enforcement personnel are obliged to perform actions such as blocking to ensure reasonable law enforcement. However, the street law enforcement personnel tacitly approve the behavior of the property staff in an inaction manner, resulting in undesirable results. Since then, street law enforcement officers have not considered the unreasonableness of their own measures.
The incident caused dissatisfaction among the majority of netizens on the Internet. The reason for the dissatisfaction can be drawn from the above two points: on the one hand, law enforcement personnel abuse their power and believe that they have the authorization to use violence without responsibility. The staff could not resolve the daily contradictions. During the epidemic situation, with the law enforcement staff of the street, taking the lead in epidemic prevention work, when they had the power to force the clean-up, they took a tough attitude to remove the waste products. On the other hand, such abuses of power have always existed. For example, the Mahjong table was smashed after being dissuaded by law enforcement officials from playing Mahjong in the family of Xiaogan, Hubei. Therefore, during the epidemic, the abuse of power deserves attention and contained.
2. How to prevent abuse of power
In general, constructing a more complete system can solve problems from the source, but the construction of the system requires more careful consideration. Under the existing institutional framework, how to use the existing regulations to prevent the abuse of power can be started from the following three points.
(1) Adhere to proper procedures
Proper procedures are the basic requirements of administrative law, and law enforcement promoted in accordance with the provisions of procedures is also the most direct manifestation of power. The guarantee procedures are justified, and telling the administrative counterparts the content of the procedures at the beginning of law enforcement is helpful to eliminate the arbitrary nature of the law enforcement personnel during administrative law enforcement, and at the same time, it can ensure the right to know of the relevant administrative personnel, thereby weakening the enforcement personnel’s coercion and increasing the administrative counterparts. Participatory.
Take the old people who are picking up waste in Tianjin as an example. According to the reported situation, it is difficult to ensure that the old man knows the law enforcement steps of these law enforcement officers and how to protect his power after he feels his rights have been violated. There are reports that the elderly have used uncivilized methods to prevent law enforcement personnel from removing waste products. From the perspective of the elderly, this is also a manifestation of fear of law enforcement and of infringement of rights. Fear of absolute power naturally leads to contradictions, and ensuring the operation of programs is an important and convenient way to ensure the proper operation of power.
(2) Implement supervision
Supervision is the most important way to put power in the sun. At present, we can start with internal supervision and external supervision. The external supervision is usually completed by the public through telephone, letter, and network. The internal supervision is usually completed by the discipline inspection commission or the staff of the unit through the law enforcement related records. The most direct reflection of the former is the rapid handling of the relevant personnel in the Tianjin elderly waste picker case. This rapid handling is undoubtedly related to the network fermentation supervision of the incident video, but the result of the incident is still worthy of consideration.
It is worth noting that internal supervision should provide more information for supervision to implement. Relevant records can help supervisors directly restore the entire law enforcement process, including law enforcement recorders and program files. At present, recording in the form of a file is the choice of most law enforcement personnel, and the law enforcement recorder is only commonly used by public security personnel when law enforcement. In fact, in addition to public security law enforcement, daily street law enforcement should also be equipped with law enforcement recorders. Street law enforcement is more likely to cause conflicts between the two parties. If equipped with law enforcement recorders, it can not only urge law enforcers to follow the procedures, but also protect the rights of both parties.
(3) Raise awareness
Consciousness includes two aspects. On the one hand, law enforcers raise the awareness of lawful and reasonable law enforcement. The quality of personnel is directly related to the operation of power, and the correct use of power requires the improvement of the quality of law enforcement personnel. What is legal law enforcement? Law enforcement personnel mostly understand the content of the law and know what behavior is not allowed by law. What is more important is what is meant by reasonable law enforcement, which requires law enforcement personnel to make actual judgments based on actual conditions. In the case, the use of violence against the 57-year-old man itself was unreasonable. The acquiescence of the law enforcement personnel reflected the ideological concept that he did not think that such behavior was inappropriate, which was problematic.
On the other hand, the public raises awareness of law-abiding and rights protection. In the current epidemic, the public must pay attention to local management information in addition to the epidemic information to adjust their behaviors to cooperate with the epidemic prevention work, such as cooperating with local reporting schedules, registering health codes, etc. At the same time, the public should promptly reflect the relevant management regulations that harm personal rights Or law-enforcement behaviors, for example, a district in Xi'an stipulates that dogs cannot be walked. After the owner walks downstairs, the dogs were killed on the spot. This is obviously unreasonable.
3. Conclusion
The prevention and control of New Coronary Pneumonia is a big test for the modernization of my country's governance system and ability. The more urgent the prevention and control of epidemic conditions, the more we must adhere to the law and regulations. Montesquieu mentioned in the Spirit of the Law: Anyone with power is prone to abuse power. This is an eternal experience. Powerful people use power until they meet boundaries. All law enforcement actions should not cross the border, especially in the current epidemic situation, do not abuse the power, in order to truly realize the role of the state endowed power, and ensure that the people of the country are safe through this difficult period.