Crime rates are down, but the city’s increasingly mutinous, said the Hong Kong police chief. That’s because the police force has been misused as a political tool under your leadership, pro-democracy lawmakers replied.
In a legislature session Tuesday, police commissioner Andy Tsang reported that there were only 936 police cases per 100,000 people in 2014—a four-decade low crime rate.
Burglaries, however, supposedly rose in areas where protesters of the 79-day long Occupy street demonstrations set up camp, as the police were stretched out. Tsang gave no numbers to back the claim.
The crime rate also doesn’t include the people who surrendered to police post-Occupy, Tsang continued, so the figure is not reflective of the exact situation.
Police made “arrest appointments” with 32 key protest figures earlier this month. All walked free without posting police bail.
“This sense of lawlessness,” added the police chief, “does great harm to law and order in the long term.”
Political Prosecution
Pro-democracy lawmakers criticized Tsang and the police for casting the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement activists as criminals.
“Police officers,” said Labor Party vice chairman Fernando Cheung “are describing protesters as ’troublemakers’ and ’thugs.'”
“But many of these protesters are well-educated people... they’re academics and lawmakers; your friends and relatives.”
It’s unfortunate that the police force has become a tool of political suppression, said Cheung.
And Hongkongers are starting to sense this political prosecution, said Labor Party vice chairwoman Cyd Ho, particularly in the case of a 14-year-old girl who chalked flowers on the pro-democracy “Lennon Wall.”
