An auxiliary police officer in northern China has been sentenced to eight months in prison for leaking a sex video that led to the suicide of the woman who appeared in it, The Beijing News reported Sunday.

In July 2015, the auxiliary officer from Hebei province, surnamed Wang, came across two people having sex in a parked car while patrolling with his colleagues, and recorded the scene. During the trial, Wang admitted that he had shown the video to his friends, but said he did not know how it got online.

According to a statement from local police, after the clip circulated on social media in 2016, the woman shown in the video killed herself in August of this year by drinking pesticide at the police station where Wang worked.

Police detained Wang after the woman’s death on suspicion of abusing his power. The prosecutor of the case told The Beijing News that Wang had asked the two people in the video for a bribe of 8,000 yuan ($1,200) with the promise that the incident would be settled privately, following orders from the head of his division, who was also suspended but exempt from criminal punishment.

Wang claimed in court that he had inspected the car on suspicion of criminal activity, but another auxiliary officer from Wang’s division told The Beijing News that it was common for the auxiliary police to extort money from people involved in cases of public indecency.

Zhang Xinnian, a criminal lawyer from Beijing Jingsh Law Firm, told Sixth Tone that the pair in the video did not appear to have violated the law, judging from the court’s official statement and media reports.

“If sex in a car does not take place openly in a public space and does not harm the interests of other people and society, the police do not have the right to record the scene,” Zhang said. Even if police have valid reason to suspect illegal activity, as Wang claimed, they must show identification before recording.

Zhang commented that the police force Wang worked for should also be held accountable, given that his actions had such grave results. “Police should carry out their duties by the law, respect human rights, and protect the dignity of citizens,” he said.

Auxiliary police in China are recruited and paid by the government to assist the regular police force, and typically work full-time. According to guidelines released in 2016 by the State Council, China’s cabinet, auxiliary officers should only carry out their duties under the direction and supervision of regular police.

But in 2015, Wang often patrolled without regular officers present, and similar cases abound. In August, a 17-year-old auxiliary police officer in eastern China’s Shandong province was punished with four months’ detention after he leaked a video of two people having sex in a car that he had shot in 2014.

Even now, there is no specific law that regulates the work of auxiliary police.

“The auxiliary police are sometimes used as a shield for illegal activities of the regular police, and this has been widely criticized,” Zhang said. “It’s a problem that leads to rising antagonism among the public, and it must be addressed urgently.”

There are no official statistics on the number of auxiliary police in China, but according to a press release from the State Council, each year from 2011 to 2016, around 100 auxiliary police officers died and 2,000 were injured in the line of duty.

Editor: Qian Jinghua.

(Header image: First Light/VCG)