Hong Kong judge overturns police officers’ convictions for making false statements
- Judge Isaac Tam finds that the officers’ omission of certain details in their notes and statements ‘should never be repeated’, but did not constitute a false statement
- The officers’ convictions had stemmed from an incident in which they inaccurately described how they came to confiscate drugs from a suspect
Three Hong Kong police officers have won an appeal against their convictions for making false statements by omitting certain details of how they came to find drugs on a suspect some four years ago.
The High Court on Friday cleared Sergeant Ng Shiu-lung, 46, and constables Joe Tang Man-cho, 36, and Lee Hin-lai, 33, of their joint count of perverting the course of justice, for which they were each sentenced to 10 weeks in jail upon conviction two years ago.
The case stemmed from a stop-and-search operation the three officers conducted in Wong Tai Sin on December 20, 2016.
Tang recorded in his notebook that he had conducted a search on Siu Chi-pong and found a small purse containing suspected drugs in the man’s right trouser pocket, while Ng and Lee reported their colleague’s find in statements.
But security footage revealed that the alleged drugs were not seized in a search of Siu’s person.