Successful Experiences and Lessons from an Advance Warning and Control System in Handling a Taxi Driver Mass Troublemaking Incident

Abstract

On July 20, 1999, after the Ningbo City Government published “Detailed Implementation Rules for the Ningbo City Taxi Passenger Management Regulations” in Ningbo Daily, some taxi drivers believed that these rules directly harmed their inherent interests, and the focus of the conflict was mainly on the following five aspects: first, operating licenses originally never expired, and now they were limited to 15 years; second, a 10,000 yuan usage fee was required for operating licenses that were not obtained through auction; third, the conditional opening of three venues (the airport, south station square, and bus station square) affected taxi business; fourth, the issue of the starting price for Santana and Xiali taxis; and fifth, the issue of few places for taxis to park in city districts. On the morning of July 16, 40-50 airport Santana taxi drivers petitioned at the city public management office. Affected by this incident and contacted by some taxi drivers, more than 100 taxi drivers from all city districts and Yin County collectively petitioned outside the city government for several days, and at most more than 1,000 people were out petitioning. During this time, the petitioners shouted slogans, encircled the city government gate, stopped leaders’ vehicles, and attacked the Gulou Police Station, and some taxi drivers even raised funds to petition in Hangzhou and contact the television show Focus Report. This taxi driver troublemaking petition incident lasted for a long time, involved many petitioners, and had organizational tendencies such as fundraising for petitioning at higher levels, but as our city’s public security organs always upheld the uniform leadership of the party committee and government and made full use of this year’s formally implemented advance warning and control system. It played a good role and in the end allowed for the proper handling of this incident while providing many experiences for our successfully handling similar incidents that are worth our summarization and learning from. First experience: From start to finish intelligence information permeated the entire handling process. It was the soul and core of handling the entire incident, provided a basis for the party committee and government to make correct decisions, and it laid a good foundation for the final pacification of the incident. Intelligence information is an important, integral part of the advance warning and control system. Based on the advance warning and control system implementation plan, domestic security and traffic police departments jointly issued “Additional Regulations for Advance Warning and