Police have detained mourners of the Shanghai apartment tower blaze that last month killed at least 58 people, shoving middle-aged men and women onto a bus and shuttling them away Sunday.

The Nov. 15 fire sparked pointed questions about the quality of construction work in Shanghai, as it was blamed on poor workmanship during renovation of the 28-floor residential tower. In a city filled with skyscrapers, the fire chilled locals who watched on live TV how the fire department was seemingly unable to pluck residents from the burning tower. The tragedy threw cold water on Shanghai’s post Expo glow and its motto “Better City, Better Life.”

The fire also prompted an unprecedented outpouring of sorrow and anger by residents of a city with a reputation for being emotionally vacuous. In the days after the fire, parades of mourners descended toward the base of the charred ruins toting wreaths.

Now, police may be signaling some mourners are going too far.

Police appeared to far outnumber mourners and onlookers in the area around the burned-out tower on Sunday, which marked the 35th day after the fire. In Chinese tradition, local media reports later noted , spirits of departed family members are said to come back to visit 35 days after their deaths, making it an important day for mourning.

Uniformed officers blocked traffic along Yuyao Lu that passes in front of the apartment, while scores of police in street clothes milled on sidewalks around it. The lobby of a government environmental office that stands opposite to the ruined structure appeared transformed into a police operations base.

Only a few flowers and decorations of colorful Origami cranes remained from the piles that appeared after the fire. Passersby were waved past the corrugated steel fence that surrounds the site and now features a red cross. One woman approached the makeshift alter and bowed deeply three times in a sorrowful gesture.

As a reporter approached the scene around midday Sunday, it felt very tense with two buses surrounded by uniformed police. Dozens more, though wearing street clothes, were easily identifiable as police from their radios and coordination with the uniformed officers. A roundup of mourners was underway.

A number of police were busy detaining people. Several times they grabbed people off the sidewalk and hustled them onto a green motor coach idling near the ruined building. Uniformed police sat across the front rows of the bus.

One man was thrown toward the bus’s the back row and accosted by officers, who then pulled shut the window drapes. Seated toward the front of the bus, a woman in a red park gripped a bouquet of yellow flowers.

It’s not clear exactly why the people were being detained. As one man was pushed onto the bus by an officer gripping the neck of his jacket, he shouted “I’m not allowed to talk.”

The press office of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau declined to answer questions about the incident and a spokesman at the Jing’an District branch said he wasn’t aware of the issue.

As the second of two buses slowly pulled away from the area with perhaps 15 detainees, a group of police officers escorted it slowly down Zhaozhou Lu. Midway down the block, more undercover officers speaking on radios hidden in their jackets appeared, gripping arms and shoulders of two elderly women and pushed them onto the bus.