Netizens nag over cop horse rescue

Police have come under fire after they issued a press release detailing how they rescued two lost horses belonging to an American-owned resort near the Great Wall.

Two police officers from Yanqi township, Huairou district, walked 20 kilometers to find the horses, which had escaped from a resort, the report, from Huairou district police, said.

Chinese Web users, citing the case, have accused police of treating foreigners better than the average Chinese citizen. Foreigners have said that they do not believe they receive more favorable treatment.

Meanwhile, Zi Xiangdong, spokesman for Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, said that what the two officers did was a good deed, and police cannot control Web users' opinions.

Yanqi township police station received a call from an American, who they named as Long Anzhi on Thursday, saying the horses had disappeared from a resort called Shambhala at the Great Wall, according to the Beijing News. The officers, along with several local villagers, walked more than 20 kilometers in four hours before they spotted the two horses in the mountains.

While police did not reveal the American's identity, the owner of the resort is Laurence Brahm, who describes himself on his website as a global activist, international mediator and author.

Brahm owns a restaurant, Red Capital Club, and a hotel called Red Capital Residence, both in Beijing, as well as Shambhala at the Great Wall, and a Shambhala hotel in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region. An employee from Red Capital Residence, surnamed Wu, confirmed that their boss was "Long," and he had heard of the lost horse incident.

No one answered the phone at the resort as of last night, and Brahm could not be reached. There is no suggestion that Brahm has done anything wrong in reporting the incident to police, or that police had done anything wrong in retrieving them.

However, the feel-good story of a horse rescue created quite a stir online.

"What if they [horses] are mine, will the police help me find them? I really doubt that," LishLU posted on his microblog yesterday.

Other Web users linked it to an incident in Wuhan, Hubei Province, when a Japanese man's bicycle was retrieved by police. Many accused the police of being "foreigners' police" as they only strived to solve cases involving foreigners, even if they were trivial.

Kawahara Keiichiro, from Yokohama, lost his touring bicycle in Wuhan while on a round-the-world cycle trip on February 17. After he appealed online for its return, local police and concerned citizens offered him a free brand new one, and also used their most elite police officers to find it, handing the bicycle back three days later.

While Keiichiro's post was forwarded over 60,000 times, with many expressing sympathy for his plight initially, after police found the bike, many Web users alleged that police would not be so helpful if they had lost a bike.

David Friesen, a British writer and editor in Beijing, does not think police treat foreigners better.

Friesen said he complained to police about the loud construction noise in his compound in Wudaokou, Haidian district, six months ago, but police told him that they could not do anything, and did not come to check out his complaint. In fact, Friesen added, he feels that the police may treat Chinese citizens better than foreigners in Beijing.

Zhang Ming, a professor in the political science department at Renmin University of China, said that while there may be some truth to Web users' allegations, police should improve their working enthusiasm and treat Chinese citizens and foreigners equally.

Wu Zhongmin, a sociologist from the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said that the capital's police force has improved a lot in their service. Police and government are under increasing scrutiny nowadays from citizens, due to social media, so that they face more pressure, he said.

But he also admitted police in other cities may lag behind in their efficiency and also quality of service.

Liu Fu, a police officer from Yanqi police station, refused to respond to inquiries.