Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

Before it was completely dark, the duty phone at the gate rang. It was the Chengdong Police Station, saying that a tricycle had been found under the Chengdong Overpass, with an old man sitting on it. His eyes were glazed over, and he was trembling all over, as if he was being controlled and forced to beg on the street.

The police brought the person back, but the old man couldn't explain where he came from, only repeatedly saying, "I want to go home, I want to go home."

Jiang Ruolan put down her teacup, put on her coat, and went outside.

In an office of the Chengdong Police Station, an elderly man with gray hair and an extremely thin appearance was huddled in a chair against the wall.

He was holding a bottle of mineral water given to him by the police. His lips were dry and chapped, his face and arms were covered with red bumps from mosquito bites, and his fingernails were filled with black mud.

Chen Mo squatted down in front of him and spoke to him in a low voice.

The old man sometimes said his name was "Gensheng," and sometimes he said he lived in "Wangjia'ao." His accent was very heavy, and you could only understand three or four sentences out of ten.

After Jiang Ruolan went inside, Chen Mo stood up and said that the old man was found by the public under the Chengdong Overpass in the evening.

At the time, he was sitting in a modified old tricycle with a cardboard sign tied to the side of the vehicle that read in a crooked hand: "Seriously ill and penniless, please help me, kind people."

Passersby noticed he was shaking violently and suspected he had suffered a stroke, so they called the police.

When the police arrived, they found a man crouching in the green belt behind the tricycle, looking furtively in their direction. When the police car approached, he turned and ran away.

After the elderly man was brought back to the station, Chen Mo investigated similar reports received by police stations throughout the city over the past six months and found that elderly people and disabled people who were manipulated into begging had appeared in many places in the east, north, and south of the city. In some sections, there were even people who took turns "on duty" at fixed times and locations.

After listening, Jiang Ruolan said that this was no longer ordinary homelessness and begging.

This is because some people are using these elderly and disabled people as tools, organizing them to "schedule" for begging on the streets, while they hide behind and take a cut.

We need to find the person first, and then we need to find the others one by one.

Lu Zheng rushed back from his hometown the next morning. Without even changing out of his police uniform, he took Zhao Rui and Chen Mo to retrieve public surveillance videos from several intersections around the Chengdong Overpass.

Because the area under the overpass is relatively hidden, only two cameras were available, but the technical team still managed to sift out several clips from the last twenty-odd hours.

One of the videos shows that around 11 p.m. the previous night, a silver-gray van stopped on the north side of the overpass. Two men got out of the van, helped the old man off the van, put him on a tricycle, and gave him a bottle of water.

The van then drove west along the ring road.

Lu Zheng zoomed in on the license plate and discovered it was a car with a fake plate, but the car had a distinctive feature—a piece of yellow tape was pasted on the left rear window.

Zhao Rui searched the system for vehicles with similar characteristics within the past six months and quickly found a silver-gray van that had appeared in the security surveillance footage of a secondhand goods alley in the north of the city. At that time, the van drove into the courtyard of a restaurant called "Limin Hotel".

The car owner is named Huang Deming, a resident of the northern part of the city, who has a criminal record for theft and intentional assault.

Zhao Rui led his men to stake out the area near the "Limin Restaurant" in the north of the city. The next evening, they spotted the silver-gray van returning from outside and parking in the restaurant's backyard. Three men got out of the van.

One of the tall, thin men was Huang Deming. The other two were unfamiliar faces, but Chen recognized one of them as the man who had fled under the overpass. He was called "Er Gou," whose real name was Li Er Gou. He was an unemployed man in the north of the city who specialized in "keeping watch" for others.

Lu Zheng did not act immediately, but instead asked Chen Mo to continue monitoring and figure out their activity patterns.

Chen Mo followed them for four days and discovered that every morning around five o'clock, the group would take two vans to various "locations" in the city, such as overpasses, train station exits, hospital back gates, vegetable market entrances, and under pedestrian overpasses, and then pick them up one by one in the evening.

These elderly and disabled people are all gathered in a "dormitory" converted from an old factory in the north of the city. There are people guarding the entrance, and they are not allowed to enter or leave at will.

They hand over all the money they beg for each day; if they don't hand it over or hand over too little, they will be starved, forced to stand in the corner, or even beaten.

Chen Mo said that while he was staking out the place, he saw a hunchbacked old man get kicked in the leg by Er Gou because he paid too little money. The old man knelt on the ground for a long time and couldn't get up.

He almost couldn't hold back at that moment, but Lu Zheng told him to calm down through the earpiece.

After Lu Zheng reported the situation to Jiang Ruolan, she said in a deep voice:

"Wait a little longer. If we're going to arrest them, we need to wipe out the entire gang, not let anyone escape. First, gather evidence, then find a few elderly people who are willing to talk. These elderly people aren't unwilling to speak, they're afraid to speak, and they don't know who to believe."

Chen Mo accepted the order and began contacting people who had been controlled by the gang but had been abandoned or rescued.

The Chengbei Rescue Station provided two individuals who had had similar experiences.

One was a 62-year-old man named Wen, and the other was a young man named Ma Xiaojun with a lower limb disability.

Both of them said they were lured from other places by promises of "free room and board and pocket money".

Upon arrival, they were taken to an old factory building and pushed around in a tricycle every day to beg for money.

Some people tried to run away, but were caught and beaten in public.

Old Man Wen had two ribs broken in a fight, and he still feels a tightness in his chest when he speaks.

Jiang Ruolan asked Chen Mo if Old Man Wen could point out the location, and Chen Mo said yes, but they would need to apply for security measures first.

Jiang Ruolan agreed.

In early June, the conditions for the arrest were basically met.

The task force, together with the Chengbei Branch and the rescue station, launched a simultaneous operation at 4:00 a.m. One group rushed to the old factory, the second group took control of the "Limin Hotel", and the third group went to Huang Deming's residence.

When Chen Mo followed a group into the factory, the air inside was extremely murky, and a dozen people were crammed on the brick floor with a few straw mats on the floor.

Several disabled people were strapped to a modified cart, some of them still unconscious.

The two "guards" were taken into custody on the spot.

Lu Zheng found the ledgers and work schedule in a corner of the old factory building.

The ledger meticulously records each person under control's supervision daily "income," the amount they hand over, and any "violations."

Jiang Ruolan felt a chill run down her spine when she saw those numbers.

She had the account books sealed up exactly as they were, as key evidence.

Huang Deming was arrested on the second floor of the Limin Hotel while he was reconciling accounts with an accomplice nicknamed "Horse Face".

When the police rushed in, Horse Face grabbed a handful of loose change and threw it out the window.

Ignoring the scattered banknotes, the police officers immediately pinned the two men down.

During interrogation, Huang Deming confessed that his gang was organized by a man known as "Brother Camel," whose real name was Luo Pinggui, who had been engaged in "begging" in the provincial capital and Yi'an area for many years.

They first lured the elderly and disabled to remote towns in other provinces under the guise of "introducing jobs," confiscated their ID cards, and then detained them under the pretext of "working in a factory," gradually turning them into forced beggars.

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