South China's Guangzhou city will order all its 2,413 neighborhood police officers to carry guns when on duty in the streets or residential areas, the head of the city's law enforcement body said on Wednesday.

Since Guangzhou recently launched a crackdown on street crimes, such as "hand chop" robberies and purse grabbing, residential areas have become the gangsters' new soft targets. The fighting against neighborhood crime has brought the number of crimes in the city down by 20 percent, but this still means more than 100,000 crimes a year. This figure put Guangzhou among the mainland cities with the highest crime rates.

The order to carry guns will help neighborhood police beef up security in residential areas, a key step in boosting the city's overall public security, according to Guangzhou police. Neighborhood police officers are also entitled to participate in the residential areas' security policy-making. They will act as vice-secretaries of the Communist Party and assistants in neighborhood committees for public security affairs.

Authorized by the local public security leadership, neighborhood police also have the right to organize janitors, among others, as security guards. As part of the reforms, the city's police authority now requires that each police officer have a stint on the neighborhood police force and have achieved some success in thate post before being promoted.

To clamp down on crime in the city, Guangzhou has taken a series of measures. Last April the police were given permission to shoot at dangerous gangsters. Now all the police officers patrolling the streets are equipped with guns, while in the city's railway station, uniformed officers and plain-clothed detectives are on almost every corner.

 Keywords: guangzhou police, gun patrol, china police, china gun policy, china police gun, china police patrol