Triads linked to shops selling school textbooks
Gangsters target students seeking work for summer
Half of the newly opened second-hand textbook shops in Mongkok that recruit summer-job students to locate clients have triad connections, police say.
Second-hand textbook dealers who formerly used goods vans as their mobile bookshops in the area, have moved to first-floor units to carry out their business this summer, according to Au Yeung Siu-kong, of Mongkok police station's anti-triad unit.
The change of business activity followed the arrest last summer of three booksellers in the Mongkok area as illegal hawkers and the confiscation of their books and vehicles.
In previous summers, hawkers were reported to have harassed passers-by into buying second-hand books from their vans and cheated parents and students into buying outdated textbooks.
This summer, the traders are operating from first-floor units along Nelson Street and Sai Yeung Choi Street South.
About half of the eight bookshops that had opened in the district had triad connections, police said. No mobile bookshops have been seen.
'Because of their new locations, they have to recruit summer-job students to help them find clients in the street,' Mr Au Yeung said.
Students are paid a small fee to deliver leaflets for the bookshops, but can receive up to 20 per cent of the amount their clients spend. Each textbook shop is understood to have recruited six or seven students. Mr Au Yeung warned students involved with second-hand textbook shops to be careful because intelligence showed that half of upstairs bookshops had triad connections.
'They should call police if they are forced to carry out any illegal activities,' he said.
Yesterday anti-triad officers handed out leaflets to passers-by and shopkeepers warning them about illegal practices.
Police will station undercover agents in entertainment premises such as discos and step up raids on karaoke bars, games centres and cyber cafes to clamp down on summer-holiday crime. They also have increased patrols in Mongkok as part of the operation code-named 'Bitter wood'.
Assistant Mongkok district commander (Operations) Acting Superintendent Lee Kiu-ki said police reported no upsurge of youth-related crimes in the district this year but enforcement action was being stepped up as a precaution.
Yesterday afternoon, a team of officers checked eight games centres in Mongkok and seized 30 empty cough medicine bottles in two of the centres.
Officers believe the empty bottles, which had been hidden behind machines, were left by customers who got high with cough medicine.
Police have asked operators of games centres to report patrons using cough medicine in the centres.
