Dirty cops: Police Under fire BY MATTHEW FORNEY. As the article points out, the police are woefully underpaid and overworked. Also, note that Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang is a

protégé of former President Jiang Zemin, who remains head of China's army and controls the country's security apparatus, Zhou took office in December and set out to clean up China's dirty cops.

So not surprisingly

Chinese reformers argue that real improvement will come only if police subject themselves to oversight by prosecutors' offices. But Zhou has resisted this—and has even moved in the opposite direction. Unlike his predecessors, he has been named vice chairman of the party's powerful Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, which oversees judicial matters. That means everyone from the Minister of Justice to the country's top judges must gain Zhou's approval when prosecuting sensitive cases. And he has replicated the system at lower levels by encouraging local chiefs to lead their towns' political committees, giving them the power to influence the outcome of trials. "We've got judges bowing down to police chiefs," says a party official involved in judicial reform. "How can there be hope for change?"

(link via Rice Cooker).