A POLICE officer threatened to ruin a homosexual student's life after he caught him prowling around a Lan Kwai Fong lavatory looking for other gay men, the High Court heard yesterday.
Constable Chan Ho-lun, 25, told Siu Shing-kai, 24, he could be charged with loitering. He warned the university student that a criminal record would bring his studies in the United States to an abrupt end.
He then plucked $100 from Mr Siu's wallet.
The officer appeared in the High Court yesterday after lodging an appeal in a bid to overturn his conviction in the magistrate's court.
Last May, Chan was sentenced to three months in prison after he was found guilty of theft. The magistrate ruled there was no case to answer on the more serious alternative charge of accepting an advantage.
But defence lawyer Bernard Chung argued that a technical error made the conviction unsafe.