Half-tonne of cocaine seized in 6 months
Police seized almost half a tonne of cocaine in the first half of this year, 13 times more than was seized during the same period last year, officials said yesterday at the mid-year crime situation review.
And the abuse of cocaine in Hong Kong was expected to increase because of the huge profits involved in the sale of the drug.
Police seized 498 kilograms of cocaine in the first six months of this year, compared with 38kg seized in the first half of 2009.
Hong Kong police director of crime and security Xavier Tang Kam-moon said the huge increase in cocaine seized involved two cases in which 372kg of cocaine were seized in April and 70kg in June.
'Profits on the transaction of cocaine could be as high as 20 times [the wholesale price],' Tang said. The force would focus on fighting drug abuse, and investigate where the drug was coming from.
There was, however, a 35 per cent drop in the number of young people arrested for serious drug offences in the first half, from 609 in 2009 to 396 in 2010.
An extra 15 police dogs were being used to help tackle drug-related crime, especially during patrols of 'black spots' during the summer.
Continual online surveillance was also monitoring drug abuse among teenagers. Police noted that most drug abuse by teenagers was taking place in their homes or the homes of their friends.
In the first half, police handled a total of 37,726 criminal cases, a 3.2 per cent decrease from the 38,969 handled during the same period last year. There were 922 triad-related cases, a 17.5 per cent decrease from the 1,117 in the first half of 2009.
A 7.4 per cent decrease in domestic violence was recorded, from 1,193 cases in the first half of 2009 to 1,105 in the same period this year.
Tang said the crime situation in Hong Kong had remained stable in the first half of this year.
Police had noticed an increase in 'quick-cash crimes' in this period, from 15,674 in 2009 to 15,800 in 2010. Robberies involving head bashing, a type of quick-cash crime, had slightly increased, from 17 in the first half of 2009 to 18 in the first half of this year.
Tang said that in relation to the case in which a ballet teacher died after being robbed in an attack in Sau Mau Ping on July 8, police were offering a HK$300,000 reward to anyone who could provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of the assailant.
The woman died from serious head injuries sustained during the attack.
There were 772 pickpocketing cases, another quick-cash crime, reported in the first half of this year, compared with 534 in the same period last year.
The number of mainland illegal immigrants arrested for prostitution in the first half of the year doubled from 90 in 2009 to 203 in 2010, and 1,698 legal mainland visitors were arrested for prostitution, a slight increase of 0.7 per cent from the same period last year, police director of operations Paul Hung Hak-wai said.
