Chapter 546: Dereliction of Duty Taken This Far Is Unparalleled

Entering the detention center, the four of them went straight to the surveillance room.

"Pull up the surveillance footage from the time of the incident," Yu Dazhang ordered the police officer inside the surveillance room.

This needs a bit of explanation.

The administrators of a detention center are public security police officers, not prison guards.

Because detention centers and prisons are managed by different authorities, the type of police naturally differs.

Detention centers fall under public security; prisons are managed by judicial administrative organs.

This is a rebirth story — I didn't intend to be this rigorous, but considering there are readers who care about details, I figured I'd better explain.

At this moment, the two police officers' faces looked very grim.

With something like this happening, everyone inside the detention center would certainly be held accountable — only, right now no one was paying them any attention.

The officer skillfully rewound the surveillance video to the moment of the incident, then hit pause.

After that, the officer stood up and gave up his seat.

Yu Dazhang walked over, sat down, then moved the mouse and pressed play.

The video showed the inside of a duty room.

A Mingguan Sect officer went to a cell, brought a suspect out for interrogation in the duty room, then took out his phone and handed it to the man.

Yu Dazhang immediately recognized the suspect — it was the fugitive called Hu Kang, one of the three.

He'd barely watched the opening when his brow furrowed.

How could there be only one officer on duty?

Although he'd never worked at a detention center, he still knew they operated a 24-hour shift system.

A single patrol officer on duty wasn't allowed — every area had to be staffed by two or more officers.

Yu Dazhang looked at another surveillance feed and noticed that after the Mingguan Sect officer brought the man out, the cell door didn't seem to have been closed.

That can't be right either.

By regulation, when entering a cell, another officer had to stand guard outside; after exiting, the door had to be immediately bolted and locked.

That procedure was strictly enforced — how could it be so casual at this detention center?

He turned to look at the two officers standing nearby, only to see their faces ashen, staring fixedly at the surveillance screen without moving.

Looking at them, four characters immediately popped into Yu Dazhang's head: dereliction of duty.

No wonder three of them escaped at once — turns out the problem was internal.

Yu Dazhang turned back and continued playing the surveillance video.

Hu Kang used the Mingguan Sect officer's phone to make a call. Two minutes into the conversation, Hu Kang moved behind the officer.

The next moment, Hu Kang suddenly looped an arm around the officer's neck and wrestled him to the ground.

At the same time, two suspects came rushing over from the cell — Cheng Wenhao and Li Min.

Then the three of them together pinned the officer to the floor, covered his mouth and nose, and ultimately caused his death by mechanical asphyxiation.

He didn't die unjustly in the slightest… Yu Dazhang muttered inwardly.

That Mingguan Sect officer violated regulations the entire time — he was asking for it.

Yu Dazhang had also figured out how it all started.

Hu Kang wanted to call home, so he asked the officer to bring him out of the cell for interrogation.

Then that officer handed Hu Kang his own phone so he could contact his family.

That was yet another violation.

Strictly speaking, this wasn't even dereliction of duty anymore — it was abusing one's authority for personal gain, a clear-cut illegal act.

There's no need to be a criminal investigator like Yu Dazhang — any ordinary person knows a criminal suspect isn't allowed to directly contact the outside world while in a detention center.

Borrowing the officer's phone to call outside.

Even movies wouldn't dare script something like this, yet it really happened in real life.

What followed was even more surreal.

The three suspects stripped the police uniform off the officer and put it on themselves, one by one — they didn't even spare the uniform hanging on the wall.

In the end they were still one pair of pants short, so Hu Kang had to keep wearing his prison trousers.

After all that, the three of them actually just swaggered out of the detention center like that.

Not a single police officer in the reception hall or the corridor outside the cell block!

What Yu Dazhang found most unbelievable was that from the moment Hu Kang was brought out for interrogation to the moment the three walked out of the detention center, the whole thing took twenty minutes.

The entire process was captured on camera, yet the surveillance room showed no reaction at all.

By regulation, surveillance also operates on a 24-hour patrol system.

Patrol and surveillance are combined into one post, and the interval between patrols must not exceed 20 minutes.

This meant the people in the surveillance room at the time simply weren't watching the monitors.

Yu Dazhang glanced at the two officers standing nearby and saw they were now drenched in sweat.

That must be their second time sweating.

The criminal investigation brigade had surely come to check before — back then they'd probably sweated even more than now.

A jailbreak with absolutely zero technical skill… Yu Dazhang could hardly believe the detention center's security had already reached the point of being effectively nonexistent.

Three suspects killing a Mingguan Sect officer in the duty room was already surreal enough.