Rao Wei, a female police officer from Ganxian, Jiangxi Province, recently sparked huge controversy on the Internet. She retweeted a video uploaded by a netizen, in which a prostitute was caught naked and cried when being filmed and investigated by policemen at the scene.

"The girl cried hard before the police, but why didn't she cry before the johns?" Rao commented on her Weibo. This comment was slashed by netizens, claiming that grass-roots police officers wielded power arbitrarily and ignored basic human rights.

The source of the original video was not confirmed yet, and some netizens, judging from the language of the policemen in the video, believed it was a crackdown in Vietnam. However, ever since the comment made by Rao, the incident fermented into Internet abuse against grass-roots policemen in China.

This is thought-provoking for me, a grass-roots officer myself. Many believe it's immoral to film prostitutes on the scene, and that we violate their human rights if we don't wait until they put on clothes.

In fact in large-scale crackdown campaigns on prostitution, it is necessary to obtain evidence through filming the raid on the spot, to help recreate the scene later. Such filming should fully respect the facts on the spot.

In recent years, videos showing on-the-spot crackdowns against prostitution have become highly controversial. In 2009, a video sparked netizens' fury, in which a male officer with a Sichuanese accent asked a prostitute to put her hands down during inquiry and a female police officer reminded the cameraman to shoot a close-up to the used condom on the ground. Some abused the police officers in the videos for being more shameless than the prostitutes.

Admittedly, it might be unnecessary to prevent the prostitute from using her hands to cover her body. But there are indeed suspects who refuse to cooperate and try to destroy the original scene. From a police officer's perspective, it's quite normal to remind another to shoot the used condom. It's not that police officers conduct the crackdown with obscene objectives.

The true problem that the netizens should focus on is how these videos were leaked online. Filming the scene itself is part of the job, even if it may violate the personal rights of the suspects. But the impact on these suspects is completely different once the video gets published.

Such information is confidential in public security organs, and anyone who releases the information should be investigated and punished.

It's understandable that netizens feel sympathy for the prostitutes who were videotaped and could be seen by anyone online. However, it is abnormal that such sympathy leads to abuse against the police.

Honestly from my perspective, Rao just made an ordinary comment. Netizens were probably just unleashing their dissatisfaction with social unfairness. They believe sex workers are a disadvantaged group, who fail to reap fruits from social progress.

But in my experience, most sex workers chose this path because of their own laziness, whereas only a few became prostitutes because they didn't have a better choice.

Being in the police as a grass-roots law enforcer is increasingly a hard but thankless job.

We stand at the front line of maintaining social stability, but end up in confrontation with some social groups with radical or unusual appeals.

Being unsatisfied with the police seems to be a prevalent social mentality. And as officers ourselves, we're increasingly used to online attacks triggered by a trivial incident like Rao's comment.

As I began to write this article, I saw another piece of news reporting that 11 policemen in Xi'an of Shaan Province were beaten by some businessmen while investigating into fake goods and no bystanders lent a hand. I find myself more confused by people's standard of judgment, when reading overwhelming support for those conducting the beatings.

When a prostitute's right was violated by an officer, the officer was the shameless one. But when the policemen were beaten, the violators become heroes. Any understanding between police and public will be a luxury if such dual standards continue.

The author is a local police officer in Jiangsu Province. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn