A police public relations department was launched on Tuesday in Beijing as the first provincial level police public relations agency in China, The Beijing Times reports.

In addition to holding regular news conferences, the Beijing police's public relations department will start a blog and microblog to release information and solicit public opinion.

More activities such as face-to-face interactions, police camp opening day and a police-civilian interactive base will be started later. The Beijing police will also make promotional videos and name goodwill ambassadors to strengthen police-civilian understanding and mutual trust.

Fu Zhenghua, Director of the Beijing Public Security Bureau and Chief of the Public Relations Department, said transparent and time-efficient information communications between the police and the public was especially important in the internet era because it brought more independence, selectivity and diversity to public consciousness.

Police agencies dealing with news events, foreign affairs, petition handling and internet security will work with and support the new public relations department.

The police public relations department serves not only Beijing locals but also the migrant population to maximize the public benefits.

All Beijing police agencies are required to set up related public relations offices by the end of July and provide training on public relations skills to every officer.

Starting this year, police in other cities around China also started writing microblogs to communicate with netizens.

The Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department and its 21 subsidiary municipal public security bureaus opened official microblogs in February and set up a microblog group in May. In addition, many police officers have started writing their own microblogs describing their daily work.

(Xinhua News Agency July 14, 2010)