Police believe a piazza could stop illegal 'car jockeys' controlling Sai Kung parking spots
Police are putting forward radical proposals to turn some of Sai Kung's stretches of seafront road into pedestrian walkways, to stop triad gangsters running car parking rackets - believed to be raking in $3 million a year.
Two triad gangs - the Luen Ying She and the 14K Hau - run 'car-jockey' operations, monopolising public parking meters outside busy seafood restaurants in Sai Kung.
They employ drivers and minders to keep parking spaces exclusively for the use of restaurants along the strip, intimidating other drivers into keeping away and scratching the paint or smashing windscreens of cars parked there against their orders.
A police report to the district council's transport and traffic subcommittee later this week will detail how restaurant managers pay the car jockeys $40 to $50 for each car they bring to the restaurant. Customers then tip the jockeys about $20 a time for minding their vehicles.
Four different car-jockey operations run by the two triad gangs deal with up to 50 cars a day and make an estimated $9,000 a day, or $250,000 a month. Much of that income helps fund other triad activities around Hong Kong.
