2 men arrested over theft, damage of Hong Kong Legco election posters
Police say 2 men apprehended in separate cases in To Kwa Wan and Tsing Yi, vow ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to attempts to disrupt election
Hong Kong police have separately arrested two men on suspicion of theft and damaging campaign posters for next month’s Legislative Council election, bringing the number of enforcement actions in such cases to four within a week.
The force said on Wednesday that it received a report the day before from an election candidate’s assistant, who claimed that nine promotional posters displayed in the ground-floor lobby of a residential building in To Kwa Wan had been stolen, while another had allegedly been damaged.
“Police, after reviewing a large amount of nearby CCTV footage, including those under the ‘SmartView’ scheme, swiftly identified a 45-year-old man as the suspect,” Inspector Ng Wang-hin of the Kowloon City police district said.
The SmartView scheme is a government-led initiative to install surveillance cameras in public places with high crime rates and pedestrian flows.
Ng said the man was arrested on Tuesday afternoon in the Kowloon City district on suspicion of theft and criminal damage, and was currently being held as part of the investigation.
On the same day, a 71-year-old man was arrested at his home in Tsing Yi after a female passer-by reported that two election posters hanging on the railings of a footbridge near the Tsing Yi Garden housing complex had been damaged and left on the ground below.