A paramilitary policeman stands guard in front of the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing March 15, 2008. REUTERS/Jason Lee

BEIJING (Reuters) - A police chief in a remote county of southwestern China has taken down 48 of his relatives, including brothers, cousins and a number of his wife’s family, for various crimes, local media said on Tuesday.

Laobulaluo, a police chief in Heizhugou township, Sichuan province, had seen 25 relatives either jailed, sent for "re-education through labor," or punished in other ways, according to a report posted on state news portal Chinanews.com ( www.chinanews.com.cn ).

The police chief, who is in his 30s, is a member of China’s Yi ethnic minority. Over a 10-year career, He had personally arrested a brother and two cousins after finding they had beaten local teachers at a primary school while drunk.

Other family members were arrested after stealing a woman’s handbag.

The policeman’s sense of duty had inflamed his relatives, some of whom had taken turns threatening his parents, and had “even secretly cut off the tails and slashed the legs of their cows,” the report said.

“In the first few years, I did not dare head back to my hometown to pass the New Year holiday, but now it’s all right. Everyone understands and supports what I was doing at the time,” the report quoted him as saying.