In July 2001, police from the police station of a farm in Heilongjiang Province launched another wild spree of persecution directed at Falun Dafa practitioners. They arrested, beat, sent to labour camps, fined the practitioners, and harassed and detained the family members of practitioners. All of these actions are against the law.
In July 2001, I went to southern China to work, along with several other people. The police found out that we left and went to our family members to find out where we were. They even detained our family members, and then extorted large sums of money from them-- 5000 to 8000 Yuan (the average salary of a Chinese urban worker is 500 yuan per month) --with the excuse that we had gone to Beijing to peacefully appeal for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Some family members were detained for as long as two months.

On our way to southern China, the police redirected us around Qinhuangdao City, taking us to the local police station where they brutally beat us and forced us to admit that we wanted to go to Beijing to peacefully appeal. If we refused to say what they wanted, they would cruelly torture us. One of us could not bear the torture, and admitted that we had gone to Beijing because this is what the police forced him to say. One of the policemen pointed to another policeman who had fiercely beat us, and said: "You are doing good, you will get more bonus." These greedy police extorted hard-earned money from practitioners.

Many Falun Dafa practitioners went to Beijing to appeal. If they were arrested in Beijing, the Beijing police would not report it to the leadership, but rather they would notify the police from the practitioner's hometown, requiring them to pay a large amount of money to take the practitioners back. Then the police of the hometown would extort this same amount of money from the practitioners and refuse to provide a receipt. The greedy police lined their pockets with money that was extorted from innocent practitioners.

Source:
http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/2/2/18338.html