Booze ban hits Beijing cops

The Beijing police officer drinking ban introduced a month ago has "begun to take effect," according to police sources.

In an attempt to prevent officers from committing misdemeanors, the capital city launched the ban on the police officers at the beginning of this year and it's having an impact, an anonymous police source told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Police officers cannot now drink outside their own home unless they first apply for a drinking permit through their work unit, according to the January 1 ban, the Beijing Youth Daily reported Wednesday.

This month the Beijing police inspection department has received a total of only six applications for drinking, the source revealed.

The ban was considered for a long time and the decision makers had solicited advice from officers and their spouses, the report said.

The ban follows a national rule issued by the Ministry of Public Security in 2003 that banned police from drinking on duty. Officers that disobey these rules risk being fired.

Police drinking has caused tragedies before. On October 28, 2013, a police officer in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region shot a pregnant shop owner and her husband after quarreling over a food purchase.

The woman died and the officer was found to have been drunk before the incident. The case is still under investigation.

The ban also helped the families and health of police, according to a Beijing Youth Daily report.

A police officer's wife reportedly wrote a "thank you" letter to the capital city police chief for helping her husband quit drinking.

Her husband had been an officer for 17 years, the wife wrote, and loved drinking, and they used to quarrel after he drank. But after he handed her a signed letter of commitment seeking her support and supervision of the drinking ban, he only drank cola.

An officer with the information department of the Beijing police confirmed the case was true to the Global Times, but refused to comment more on the phone Wednesday.

An anonymous Beijing police officer said that as the ban was strictly implemented in his bureau, he too had quit drinking, even at home, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.