Guangdong police's recent security campaign had led to a considerable decrease in crime, the provincial public security department said in a press release Monday.

Since the department launched a province-wide campaign to crack down street crime in July, crime rates had dropped more than 20 percent from a year ago, the Southern Metropolitan News quoted a department spokesman as saying Tuesday.

Overall crime decreased 24.5 percent in August, 25.3 percent in September and 16.1 percent in October from the same periods last year, much better than the average drop of 14.4 percent for the first 10 months of this year, the spokesman said, attributing the results to the crackdown.

Most major cities had considerably increased street patrols and extending patrol hours, he said.

Shantou City deployed an additional 400 policemen to patrol the streets, while Guangzhou and Dongguan cities kept a 24-hour watch at bus stations and areas where street crime had been rampant in recent years.

Guangdong police solved more than 53,000 criminal cases, broke up about 3,500 criminal rings and detained 43,700 suspects, the newspaper said.

They also seized 437 illegal guns and 2,686 cartridges, as well as 573 stolen cars and 4,779 motorcycles.

On Sep. 7, the department deployed more than 900 officers to crack down a car-stealing ring in Lufeng City, closing more than 60 premises selling stolen vehicles and forging license plates.

Guangdong police had also speeded up efforts to curb prostitution, gambling and pornography, the paper said. A large number of pornographic Web sites had also been closed during the campaign.

Source: Shenzhen Daily