Want your complaints about police officers to go straight to their bosses? For residents in Liaoning province, that opportunity is now only a text message away.

Local residents can now text message the provincial police department with questions and complaints related to police, He Wenge, an officer in charge of petition-related works with Liaoning's public security bureau, said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The service provides an additional way that residents can contact police.

He said residents could also send a message to provincial authorities if their requests to the county or town-level police remain unanswered.

The service had received 130 text messages from 40 residents and 109 messages sent by 30 people seeking judicial advice were answered.

He's office also received five messages that contained complaints about police behavior.

"It will reduce substantially the cost for people to submit their complaints," said He at the press conference. "It is a much more convenient way of contacting police, especially for disabled people, such as the hearing impaired."

Liaoning is the first of all provinces in China to add a text-message communications platform for its police service.

"With the introduction of text messaging, we will cover all ways available (for residents) to contact us," said He.

The text message service is already in use in Liaoning as a method for reporting corruption and calling for police help.

The Liaoning police plan to broaden the text-message platform to the province's 14 sub-provincial areas.

"They will start to operate soon," said He.