A Hong Kong police officer has been jailed for three years for forging witness statements to bring a premature end to seven criminal inquiries, with the judge slamming the accused for undermining the public’s confidence in the force out of his own convenience.
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Detective constable Woo Siu-chun, who has been suspended pending the conclusion of the trial, was on Monday sentenced on seven counts of misconduct in public office for illegally seeking the termination of as many investigations between December 2019 and September 2020.
West Kowloon Court heard the 26-year-old Kwai Tsing district investigator, who joined the force in 2016 at the age of 18, had received more than 20 commendations in the three years leading up to his offences.
Pleading guilty to the charges last month, Woo admitted falsifying seven declarations purportedly made by the complainants in which they appeared to ask police to drop their cases arising from alleged incidents of assault, shoplifting and using a false document.
Three complainants later told police they had never given consent to abort the investigations. Three others said they had indeed agreed not to pursue their complaints, but no officer had ever contacted them to formalise their decisions.
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Woo’s crimes emerged after his claim in a seventh inquiry that the ParknShop supermarket chain was willing to settle a shoplifting case by way of compensation aroused a supervising chief inspector’s suspicion.
A supermarket staff member later confirmed she had never given a statement indicating the company would not press on with the complaint.