The Chinese police have disabled 56 mafia-style gangs from operating and detained more than 3,000 suspects allegedly involved in mafia-style or violent crimes since last December, said a senior police officer here Wednesday.

In a nationwide campaign that started last December aimed at improving public security, police had cracked more than 4,300 criminal cases and confiscated more than 100 guns, said Zhao Qiming, vice director of the criminal investigation bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.

Police had swept agricultural products and wholesale markets, stations and docks to crack down on crimes that seriously affected normal social order, the officer said.

In a campaign that started from last June, the police had disabled 845 gangs from operating and detained 5,348 suspects involved in phone scams, he said, adding they have cracked more than 25,100 phone scams and seized more than 76.62 million yuan (11.22 million U.S. dollars).

The police also cracked 204,000 robberies and 1.44 million thefts last year, according to Zhao.

Chinese police freed 3,455 children and 7,365 women in nearly nine months since a campaign against human trafficking was launched in early April last year, and they broke up 1,684 criminal gangs in the process, said Zhao.