National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 1200 - 1130: Arrest According to the List

"Are we supposed to arrest people according to the list?" Director Xu personally placed a plate of peeled persimmons in front of Jiang Yuan and asked him eagerly.

The buyers of the guns are spread throughout the province and possibly across the entire country. The Provincial Department doesn’t have the manpower to make arrests on site, so the most suitable option is the Luo Jin City Bureau. Director Xu was in a favorable position to get the first opportunity.

Jiang Yuan nodded and said, "The confirmed gun buyers can be arrested. There might be some danger involved. Also, what are their sales channels like?"

"Just like drug trafficking, it’s either by mail or direct delivery. They mainly import guns via direct delivery." Liu Jinghui had obviously paid attention to this issue, having reviewed the interrogation records early and sent over the questioning outline. He now said, "They are easier to deal with than drug traffickers. Once the guns are disassembled into parts, they can be stored separately without being discovered. Only transporting gun barrels carries some risk, but they have special tool certificates, and some are blatantly transported."

"Is it the same as this time?"

"More or less the same, but the parts they transported this time were complete. They were initially intended to be sold to Zhang Lei, so the guns were assembled. After killing Zhang Lei, they disassembled the guns again but still packed them all in the car," Liu Jinghui summarized the main findings from the interrogation records in a few words.

Jiang Yuan was beginning to ponder it over and nodded, saying, "So they killed Zhang Lei because of a conflict, quickly drove back, disassembled the guns on the way, switched cars, and then drove all the way back to Lanyue City to dump the body? Why didn’t they find a place to bury the body?"

"This will probably only be known after we catch the murderer." Liu Jinghui naturally had considered this question, but he didn’t dwell on it, asking, "What’s your thought?"

"The big bosses need to be caught, but the small fry shouldn’t be let go. Those who transport and mail parts, the mules, must also be caught quickly to prevent them from escaping." Jiang Yuan’s task was to conduct a thorough investigation, and he was not worried about the syndicate’s key members escaping.

Currently, the syndicate’s top structure is unclear, but the core members are definitely on the run. With the current domestic investigation methods, middle-level members are likely also unable to escape.

Criminal people are like people getting married; if you want to run, you have to run early. You can’t suddenly realize you want to run away after the ceremony has begun—at that point, it’s not called a runaway wedding; it’s called a life escape.

The big bosses need to wait for more clues to be gathered, while the small fry are only dependent on the amount of force applied.

Seeing Jiang Yuan’s clear attitude, Director Xu immediately said, "I’ll transfer two more teams over. So...Xiao Liu, call the East City Branch and the South City Branch and have them each dispatch a criminal police squad and a SWAT team over here. The two criminal police squads will report to Captain Jiang, and the SWAT teams will check their equipment and remain on standby."

Director Xu paused and then discussed with the political commissar, saying, "I think we also need to prepare in advance for traffic control issues. One is to set up checkpoints on all highways, and the other is to manage key areas in the city just in case the worst happens and we need to prevent it from spreading to other areas."

The political commissar said worriedly, "Traffic control is not a problem. The Police Aviation Unit and Traffic Unit can handle that. Regarding city area control, we’ve just pulled people from East and South City... Given the current situation, their mobile police force is probably only so much now. The workload of grassroots units like police stations is already very heavy. If we only use them for a day or two, that’s fine, but if it takes too long, it will affect their daily work, which is not good. Maybe we could pull some people from Public Security or Economic Investigation instead?"

"That won’t work." Director Xu resolutely denied it, saying, "They’re more useful on their own posts."

"Then maybe we could borrow some people from below?" The political commissar tried to guess what the Director was thinking. Police shortages are a common issue domestically, and borrowing officers is one of the most common methods.

Using Walker’s theory from "American Police," in a society like the United States, the police density should reach a level of 25 officers per 10,000 people to effectively manage society. Many Western European countries and Japan also have this police density. Hong Kong and Macau have 40 officers per 10,000. Mainland China has about 13 per 10,000.

From this perspective, overtime for police in China is commonplace and obvious, as the total number is insufficient, and the demand for public security is high. As a result, there is always a large number of non-staff hires. In the past, it was auxiliary police, later contract police, and an ongoing practice of borrowing, akin to perpetual borrowing.

Director Xu was also aware of the personnel shortage below. After thinking for a while, he shook his head and said, "Borrowing staff now would at least require issuing a red-head document, and if people delay below, two days will quickly pass, which is too late. My idea is to ask for help from the students at the Luo Jin Police Academy. They could provide a few hundred people, and we could assign some agency officers over there. This way, we would have a foundation for managing key areas in the city."

The political commissar then understood, smiled grimly, and said, "It’s a good idea. You want me to make the call, right?"

"You’re familiar with the Police Academy," Director Xu laughed heartily.

The political commissar sighed and went to make the call.

Police academy students managing areas is a bit more reliable than auxiliary police. Moreover, having a few hundred students is relatively impressive. Two to three hundred people are equivalent to ten teams’ worth of personnel. As for the long-gunmen, they’ll clearly have more important scenarios to be deployed in next.

Jiang Yuan listened with one ear to the discussion among Director Xu and the others, while he stood in front of a row of computers, searching for traces of the small fry.

The task wasn’t too challenging but was quite complex—a complicated case is like a complex math problem with many steps. It’s not necessarily hard; it isn’t likely a difficult problem, but there are many steps. Each step needs to be followed correctly to reach the final answer. For this particular problem or case, no matter how many interim steps are completed, they don’t earn points; only the final result does. frёeωebɳovel.com

Although they’re just small fry, even the small fry hope to evade punishment and live longer.

So whether or not they’ve been taught, the small fry always try various counter-surveillance techniques when committing crimes. However, given their status and skills, the counter-surveillance techniques they can use are relatively cheap and often need to be complemented by a combination of time, place, and people to be effective.

Of course, more realistically, it depends on luck.

Most of the time, small fry rely on luck to survive.

They gamble their lives not only against the police but also against the big boss.

Contrary to popular belief, small fry in crime syndicates, even in drug trafficking groups, don’t earn much. Getting a salary comparable to an ordinary white-collar worker is considered high income for them.

As for their occasional excess spending, it’s mainly because they don’t save money or buy houses, cars, or stocks. When they get the money, they spend it all at once, and when it’s gone, they shrink their spending, or immediately look to make the next big score.

Living like this for a long time is desperate, but luckily, there’s always a force that can break this cycle—the big boss getting caught.

As a follower in a crime syndicate, the real hope is for the boss to be caught so they can rise in rank. It’s akin to working in a company, hoping for your superior to be promoted or leave.

Doing it solely by yourself, rising through the ranks despite the difficulty, sounds impressive, but in reality, it’s too difficult. And those willing to undertake such challenging tasks with such a spirit of challenge actually don’t need to be lackeys in a drug cartel; it is indeed very dangerous.

From the perspective of the police or society, the result of not eliminating the roots of the problem is that drug trafficking gangs always resurrect from the ashes, even becoming highly resilient.

35-year-old underlings don’t need optimization; naturally, someone higher up the food chain takes care of them.

In a market where demand is strong, merely striking the supply side is always significantly less effective.

But to say to catch them all in one go, the difficulty is naturally extremely high.

When doing exercises normally, if a math fill-in-the-blank question can’t be scored perfectly, leaving out a few when capturing suspects probably isn’t intentional.

It can be said that when Jiang Yuan stepped onto the scene, it was already a sign that this batch of small fry was out of luck.

After completing a round of basic investigations, the captain of the Image Reconnaissance Brigade eagerly asked, "Should we apply for technical investigation?"

If Image Investigation is the armored force of the police, then Technical Investigation is the airborne assault team, truly high and powerful, striking from the air.

Jiang Yuan did not oppose it, signed the documents, and then handed them over to Director Xu for signing.

Tasks that take others three to five days, or even three to five weeks to process, Jiang Yuan could get initial feedback within an hour.

But Jiang Yuan was clearly not satisfied with this; after completing the technical investigation application, he turned around and approached the officers from the Narcotics Division, saying, "Guns and drugs are inseparable, can you share your intelligence?"

Within the police department, highly confidential units have their own operating logic. If someone else were to bring up this issue, they would get a prompt rejection.

But this time, the Narcotics Division specifically sent someone over to cooperate with Jiang Yuan.

So, despite Jiang Yuan’s request being vague and seemingly excessive, the officer merely frowned out of habit and said, "No problem, but how much intelligence we can gather is uncertain... I’ll contact the commander now."

He turned around to make a call, and the nearby criminal police kept rubbing their ears while listening.

"Jiang Yuan really has good relations." The political commissar of the Luojin City Bureau couldn’t help but remark in front of Director Xu.

Director Xu smiled and, feeling touched, said, "If you can save a person’s life, naturally they would be grateful to you."

The morale of the different levels of police officers in the task force greatly increased. With the same project, different budgets, the results are naturally different.

Wang Chuanxing made an Excel sheet on the spot, collecting data with his left hand, filling in the form with his right, and took time to improve the summary meeting’s PPT.

Before long, the first screen of the Excel sheet was filled up.

Wang Chuanxing printed it out with a crackling sound and presented it to Jiang Yuan for review.

After Jiang Yuan nodded, Pang Jidong immediately began dispatching personnel, and Jiang Yuan once again took out his phone bravely.

One day later.

When Wang Zhancheng reconnected to the video call, he looked as withered as herbal residue.

Seeing Jiang Yuan, Wang Zhancheng struggled to stand up and said, "Mission accomplished. All five bases of the Heavy Load Gang in Ping Meng City have been dismantled."

The Heavy Load Gang, that is the name of this arms trafficking syndicate.

Jiang Yuan already knew and smiled, praising Wang Zhancheng a few times.

Under Jiang Yuan’s praise, Wang Zhancheng’s cheeks visibly became rosier.

After they finished talking, Director Xu took over the conversation and asked, "Lao Wang, what is the final count of arrests?"

"37 people! All the main responsible individuals of the Heavy Load Gang in Ping Meng have been apprehended." Wang Zhancheng stood tall and proud.

"Not bad, not bad." Director Xu nodded repeatedly.

"How’s the task force doing?" Wang Zhancheng, who had been focusing on live textual updates for the past few days, was also putting in his full efforts and didn’t have the capacity to accept more information. Now that the mission was complete, he finally had time to inquire.

Director Xu glanced at Jiang Yuan, coughed twice, and said, "Currently, under Jiang Yuan’s leadership, the task force has captured 267 people."

"267 people?" On the screen, Wang Zhancheng raised his head in doubt, as if he turned into a 42-inch question mark.

"Jiang Yuan has dismantled several bases of the Heavy Load Gang in Luojin City and surrounding areas, confiscating a large amount of buyer information. At the same time, the Heavy Load Gang’s mules have also been pretty much wiped out." Director Xu particularly understood Wang Zhancheng’s confusion and explained, "The direct sales model adopted by the Heavy Load Gang is very effective and quite popular among factory owners and smuggling syndicates. When we arrested people, we also incidentally captured many other involved individuals."

"I didn’t quite understand. But I roughly got the idea." On the screen, Wang Zhancheng laughed, like a 42-inch exclamation mark.