Officer who borrowed $5,000 from safe seeks return to force

A former senior police officer has launched a second battle for reinstatement after he was forced to retire for borrowing $5,000 from a station safe.

In a High Court writ filed yesterday, ex-chief inspector Martin Henry Heyes, 48, is seeking leave for a judicial review of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's decision on June 2 this year to compulsorily retire him.

The writ states that in October 1998 Mr Heyes took $5,000 from a police safe to pay for home renovations.

It also says Mr Heyes, who earned $80,000 a month, had taken the cash purely out of convenience and had every intention of repaying it.

But he was caught out the next day when a surprise inspection found him trying to replace the cash using money from another safe to cover up the shortfall.

An investigation was launched and Mr Heyes admitted one charge of improperly removing money from the first safe for personal use, one of improperly approaching another officer for a loan and one of obtaining $5,000 from the duty officer's safe to cover up what he had done.

The matter was referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions but no criminal proceedings were launched. When the Police Disciplinary Tribunal decided to impose a severe reprimand and reduction in rank over the second and third charges, the matter was referred to the Deputy Commissioner of Police.