Qiu Binhua of Shenmu City, Shanxi Province, is believed to have sold the body for a ritual at a profit of 2,000 yuan ($ 60,600). According to police.
The QU fled to Hulestai Sumu in the western part of Inner Mongolia, where officials began trying to eradicate the coronavirus by scanning the QR codes of passers-by and setting up checkpoints.
“The long-suffering Kiu was under pressure and finally on February 11 he was turned over to the Hulstei police,” police said in a statement after his arrest.
He said he had no means of escape without an identity card.
Less movement, more supervision
Fugitives are facing new challenges when it comes to hiding during a global epidemic with the movement banned in many countries. Some have been forced to surrender themselves, while others have been caught traveling.
But as law enforcement increased efforts to find wanted criminals, the toughest people to continue their game of cat and mouse tried to earn the changes that occur in daily life.
During the UK’s spring lockdown, the country’s National Crime Agency (NCA) arrested about 300 fugitives “That’s significantly more than we would normally see,” Arthur Whitehead, operations operations manager for the NCA’s International Crime Bureau, told CNN. This work was part of a “concerted effort” under Operation Operation Survey, Launched during lockdown to help find and arrest fugitives.
The arrest also includes Arshid Ali Khan, who is accused of sexually abusing a child in the Netherlands and has been on the run for six years. NCA investigators conducted a financial investigation, in which Khan was found in the English city of Leicester, where local police arrested him in April.
“The lockdown was unique to us because it created a limited travel opportunity for serious organized criminals who would avoid us on a regular basis and give us the opportunity to exploit intelligence, and we were able to act quickly,” Whitehead said.
“By its very nature, having a lockdown period meant that people changed their behavior so that people became more dependent on Technol on G, more dependent on where they were.”
He said one arrest was due to the fact that the target was not wearing a mask, which caused him to stand in that position.
He added, “It was not a tactic that we focused on, it was a broad range of case-viewing on an individual basis, where we could understand what the person’s behavior might be, where it might be.”
In late May, Greater Manchester Police arrested David John Lee Lee, an alleged drug smuggler who had been wanted since 2013, as he celebrated his 45th birthday at a property in the area. Marcy Fitzibban, a drug trafficker from Merseyside and one of Britain’s Most Wanted, was arrested at Liverpool Airport in July after flying from Portugal after fleeing for 16 years.
Identify vulnerabilities
The epidemic meant the street footfall was down, making it difficult to hide the police presence, and restrictions on gatherings meant Sanchez would not attend the religious event.
But thanks to their increased oversight, law enforcement eventually got the opportunity they needed in the form of family reunification. In May, the task force received a report indicating that a group of people close to Sanchez was heading for the coast to an open area, a hilly area with a few houses next to a mountain nature reserve. Police carefully approached and spoke to locals who led them to the building where Sanchez met and arrested family and friends.
Stefano Sayoni, who runs Interpol’s EL Pacto (Europe-Latin America Technical Assistance Program Against Transnational Organized Crime), told CNN that the case was due to “great cooperation” between Brazil and Argentina.
He said increasing information sharing and the use of technology such as the Border Management Monitoring System has enabled his team to arrest 10 fugitives and positively detect four since the onset of the epidemic. The team has arrested 60 fugitives since October 2017.
Julie Clegg, a private investigator in Canada and founder of Human-Eye Intelligence Services, said, “Based on what we know about someone’s vulnerabilities, it is possible to expect and guess what someone does based on accurate pattern analysis.”
“With any fugitive you have to figure out first and foremost what their emotional vulnerabilities are, what the vulnerabilities are … often it’s news of a parent getting sick, or a child.”
Clegg said the epidemic tends to get people to “go a little further” and stick closely with their network, which could help law enforcement.
“The fugitives tend to move around and then they feel saluted at some point and then they move on,” she said.
Fugitives who have arrived in a new location and are limited by the Covid rules, she added, “potentially increase the risk of getting caught.”
Clegg said she has seen a “significant increase in the number of fugitives” in parts of Asia, especially if they were trapped in areas where the spread of coronavirus is particularly high or has low levels of medical care.
Even in Europe, he said, different lockdown levels “force people to move to a neighboring city or neighborhood or out of their comfort zone, perhaps long enough to pick them up.”
Changes in tactics
While some aspects of the lockdown make it difficult to hide, others provide an opportunity for creative fugitives to exploit – such as distracting the police, wearing pervasive masks, and making extra use of the digital environment.
Clegg said “smart fugitives” would avoid planes during lockdowns “unless they try to return to a family member,” and cargo ships remained an unobtrusive method of transport.
She said her workload has shifted from CCTV and facial recognition software to detailed profiles of fugitives, to many telegram and encrypted communications services such as Signals, Cryptocurrency and the Dark Web.
“You can now cover your face and you won’t be able to carry any face recognition cameras; CCTV will have a really hard time finding you,” he said. “The criminals are very agile.”
“The way we actually work has changed a lot, we have to learn new platforms,” he said, adding that his team was focusing on digging deep into a network of fugitives to predict behavior using machine learning. . , Artificial intelligence and terrestrial equipment.
Peter Blacksley, a founding member of Scotland Yard’s undercover unit and author of Manhunt, told CNN that burglary and street looting were replaced by cybercrime, fraud and scams, “because people were at home and spending more time on their laptops.”
He said Schroeder fugitives were too difficult to locate locate because “they know that every keystroke leaves a trace, every contact leaves a trace.”
Police around the world are now working on additional covid work, staff shortages and new security protocols that could create gaps for fugitives to benefit.
Jeremy Douglas, regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said criminals were moving to less cautious countries in the region during the epidemic.
“It seems that as a result of Kovid, organized crime groups have accelerated their movement towards weaker jurisdictions that have not been able to maintain law and order like others.”
He pointed to the huge variability between countries like Singapore and countries where it has strict control over countries including Laos, Myanmar or Cambodia.
Douglas said UNODC had noted earlier this year that law enforcement in the region was being reassigned to public safety and lockdown measures and could be distracted.
Douglas told CNN, “We began to observe that this could be a significant problem – deviations are a chance for criminals.”
He said it became easier for criminals to cross certain borders during the epidemic. The UNODC quickly noticed that border police were “overwhelmed” by the volume of crossings, as migrants returned to their homeland due to the economic downturn and job losses.
“Governments on both sides of the border have suddenly become concerned that they cannot carry out health screening investigations, which has raised concerns about general investigations into smuggling and trafficking,” he said. Duclas added that many of the borders in the Mekong region – including Myanmar, southern China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and parts of Cambodia – are “porous”.
A UNODC representative said that while some fugitives could be arrested in the area due to border closures or a lack of flights, “large organized crime groups were not affected in the same way – they have an impact.”
“The lower class fugitives and criminals are not able to earn Covid, but the big boys, yes. They have been able to take advantage of it.”
Former U.S. John “Buck” Smith, a martial adviser and trainer for law enforcement, told CNN. When Covid forced investigators to prioritize, they were favorable.
The main resources are being diverted to more violent criminals, he said. “White collar crimes are at the bottom of the pile.
“We have been assigned to go after these fugitives and Covid-19, although it has limited some of our resources to go after them and we have to give more priority. I can tell you that the Marshall Services is still looking for fugitives. , Is still making arrests. “
CNN’s Hanna Zhang contributed to the report.
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