An urban management officer in Raoyang county of North China's Hebei province has been dismissed after being

harshly criticized by netizens for trying to get some street vendors falsely detained for assaulting him. The local police determined that there had been no physical contact at all between the urban management officer and the vendors. After his duplicity was exposed on the Internet, the local authorities immediately announced they had fired the man, whom they described as a "temporary worker".

As public criticism of the urban management officers has become increasingly severe, the authorities have been making great efforts to change their image and improve their work. However, law enforcement officers should not use violence and fraudulent means such as this, which violate the regulations in our society and worsen the confrontation between urban patrol officers and street vendors.

And if the urban management officers do not respect the law and regulations they are supposed to uphold, how can they be trusted to enforce them? Those officers who break the law to uphold it are still acting illegally and should be punished.