Cops excuse meat hook attacker and close case
Closing the investigation against the man who attacked me with a meat hook, TST cop Alexander Stewart says “Riding in the fast lane is incorrect. Riding without a helmet is incorrect”.
In June this year I was attacked by a man with a 3-ft-long meat hook, after his driver tried to run me off the road in a 5-tonne truck. I did my civic duty and called the cops (coming just two days after the crazed knife murders in a Diamond Hill mall), only to have first responders throw me against a Nathan Road railing and repeatedly demand to know why I was cycling, why my bicycle was in the road, why was I in the road?
It didn’t end well. Every time I tried to tell them about the guy who just swung a very sharp metal spike in my face they would scream “calm down”. Sorry officers, excuse me for talking fast and loud, jacked up with considerable adrenalin after a brush with a serious crash on the road, having a meat hook swung in my direction and then being pushed around by an aggressive van-load of cops. I was as calm as the situation allowed1.
Those cops at the scene did not even search the driver’s vehicle, and, after cursory questioning, let him and his meat hook passenger go. They said there was no evidence he had a weapon. I ended up in handcuffs, after a final police warning to calm down which I ignored. It was 4 June and I think they were on high alert for “soft resistance”. When, in the handcuffs, I tried to send a message, they grabbed my phone and forced me to the ground, kicking me into submission and inflicting no less than seven separate injuries documented by my doctor2. I was then tied to a stretcher and left in the back of an ambulance.
I was at this point in some pain and could not feel my left hand (I was cuffed with hands behind my back and then strapped tightly down onto a stretcher, with all my weight on my left cuffed wrist cutting off blood to my hand). The two-man ambulance crew ignored all this and stared blankly at the wall, in a really eerie way which made me wonder if I was actually being kidnapped to be shipped over the border. A senior cop later admitted to me the police use such handcuff and stretcher pain as a punishment and way to exert control – I didn’t expect this to extend to ambulance crews.
At the hospital I was transferred to a straitjacket (!!) and threatened by HA staff: “If you don’t keep quiet we will destroy your bicycle” was one favourite taunt from one nurse, which actually got a chuckle from the other staff. Mob madness. When they finally sent in a doctor (who ascertained within seconds I wasn’t actually insane and released the restraints), I tried to take a photo of the wounds inflicted by police and ambulance staff – an orderly snatched my phone away and ordered me to delete the photo, and to delete it from “deleted items”: if I did not comply, they said, I would be send to the psychiatric ward. The casual threats from staff to use a mental health diagnosis as a punishment were unreal and yet extremely convincing.
Anyway, nobody in authority believes me on any of this and none of this has been properly investigated. Fire Services Department initially told me by phone its ambulance crew didn’t speak English, which is why they ignored pleas to lift my weight off my cuffed hands. I asked for this “no speakee English” bullshit in writing – they then sent a completely different and untruthful account in which they claim I was lying about the whole thing and that ambulance crew took good care of me.
Hospital Authority, put in charge of the investigation into its own staff, found no evidence that anyone had said any of those awful things or threats to me and concluded I was making it up.
Police said there was no evidence my injuries were caused by police. I just somehow inflicted them on myself in the 10 minutes I was cycling from Kowloon Tong to Yau Ma Tei?
I had at least hoped police would track down the attacker and, given the photos of him wielding the weapon on a busy street, the case would be a slam-dunk offensive weapon charge. You don’t actually need to hit someone or even threaten someone for an offensive weapon charge: people are jailed for just carrying, for example, laser pointers in their bags. Not using them or threatening to use them, simply having the things in the wrong place without valid explanation is enough for a prosecution.
Sadly, and perhaps not surprisingly, police didn’t take this line and came down on the side of the attacker.
The language used by the investigating cop, Detective Inspector Stewart of TST police station was most illuminating.
“Riding in the fast lane is incorrect,” he said on the phone this week, explaining the dropped case. “Riding without a helmet is incorrect.”
It’s hardly worth dignifying either of these statements: they are wrong at face value3, and they are wrong in the context of the attack: for a start, I was cycling legally and safely (simply on my way to meet my wife and children at Kowloon Park Swimming Pool, dodging the usual Sunday morning illegal parking in the left lane of Nathan Road) with all bells and whistles legally fitted BUT EVEN IF I HAD NOT BEEN RIDING LEGALLY OR SAFELY THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR ATTACKING SOMEONE WITH A FUCKING MEAT HOOK.
Stewart also claimed “some people” might say I damaged the truck when I knocked on its window. This accusation of damage is, of course, untrue and I have video to prove it. I knocked on the window with cycling gloves4 on, there was not a mark or even a fingerprint smear left behind. But police refused to look at that video. In fact, while Stewart says they have “combed through all the CCTV and car cam and witness statements”, police refused to review all material evidence from me: they accepted just one photo, and that photo was a literal photo of my phone screen they took at the police station, a photo of a photo in quite appalling quality. I had assumed (as they told me) that this photo was just for a placeholder and they would gather the proper evidence, including video from the event backing up my story, later. That never happened. They didn’t question the driver and attacker separately at the scene, and those colleagues had plenty of time to concoct a story.
The only way to take this forward now would be to hire a lawyer and push ahead with complaints against police. This has zero chance of success, and would be very costly in terms of time, energy and money (given there’s a high chance it’s actually DOJ which ordered the case dropped, and fighting DOJ is never cheap) so I’m dropping the whole thing.
But it’s disgusting.
And the psychological effect has been immense: I feel physically sick when I think about riding my bike, a terrible thing for a cycle campaigner. I did a Deliveroo shift at the weekend, the first since this incident, and I’m really not ready for it. Being nervy and fearful on the road does not make one a good rider.
Riding in groups is helpful therapy and I’ll be joining Critical Mass this weekend: perhaps some sun and biker companionship on Hong Kong Island’s relatively calmer roads will be the cure.
Hello, he lied
It must be case-closing season at TST police station, because Stewart’s call to tell me about the closed meat hook case came hot on the heels of another call from the same police station telling me they had closed the file on the triad parking gangs on Cameron Lane.
Officer Hui, investigating the hours of video I’ve provided (all gathered at no small risk) told me that, in fact, they had decided to end the investigation because the triads had moved on. The street, he said, was now clear. “Back to normal”.
I wonder if shameless lying like this is simply a new way for police to flex their authority, now they no longer strut around in black SWAT outfits every day?
When Hui said the street had returned to normal, he might have been speaking the truth, if “normal” is having public space stolen by triads who sell the road and re-sell public parking meters for huge profits, intimidating any driver who might think they could park at a public meter at the absurdly-cheap $8/hr government rate.
I visited just a few hours after officer Hui’s call: and yes, of course, the operation was as thriving as ever, with seating and shade for the car jockeys and well as a small network of young lookouts who alert the arrival of police (or pesky journalists like me, who they now recognise).
Most of the time, the whole space is simply stolen. When police or journalists are spotted, the jockeys run around and top up 15-30 minutes parking on the meter spaces (at a cost of HK$2-4 each meter).
I have all this on film, from multiple visits – I’ve videoed money changing hands, the car shuffling, the meter topping up, a bag with thousands of dollars ill-gotten loot stored just inside in the Tern Plaza fire escape door. All this I’ve sent to police, ICAC, Transport Department, District Office, District Councillors and lawmakers.
Nobody seems at all concerned about the Occupy of a potentially-charming cul-de-sac in the middle of the tourist district.
If a “parking gang” sounds innocuous (or as one HKU faculty head said, provides a “public service”) then think again. The parking operation supplies a solid stable income to the various gangs, supporting other crime including prostitution (often underage), drugs and protection rackets. It’s also a training ground for rookie recruits – the 13-14 year olds who come in little groups and stand smoking cigarettes trying *so hard* to look tough when I start taking video. The skills and tough expressions they hone trying to intimidate a nosey reporter will, in a couple of years, be useful in extorting the $35,000 a month protection cash from the small jewellery store across the road.
Violent triad crime aside, there’s also the lost opportunity here. Given South East Asia’s largest musical instrument shop, Tom Lee, is the sole tenant of the cul-de-sac, there’s huge potential to turn this into an excellent pedestrian and outdoor busking zone. Anyone remember Kung Chi-shing’s excellent “Street Music” series outside the Hong Kong Arts Centre c2010? By reclaiming and pedestrianizing part of this triad-owned street , we could create something really great, with some genuine “night vibes” for tourists and residents alike.
But while TST police are in bed with triads and other violent criminals, any hope of such a charming idea is just a stupid fantasy.
Incidentally, I did see some of this behaviour in cops at the death of the naked man two weeks ago: he was clearly not a threat to anyone and clearly needed urgent medical attention, yet they treated him with obscene inhumanity. I would bet he might still be alive today if first responders hadn’t been so amused and inhumane about the whole thing.
The nerve damage in my left hand took two months to heal – until then, it was an ugly, odd feeling, with my thumb completely numb to touch directly but if my daughter held my hand it was unbearable, like the skin was completely raw.
There’s no “fast lane” on Nathan Road, and although cops and their triad buddies love their illegal racing down such streets at night, and probably indeed view the outside lane as a “fast lane”, there is actually no such thing anywhere in Hong Kong traffic law or Road Users Code. And helmets are not legally required in Hong Kong on bicycles. Yet.
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I'm sorry to hear about this. Regrettably this comes as no surprise; the reasons of which I'm sure any HKer would know.
Shocking, but regrettably not surprising. I’m sorry to hear what you went through. Please keep up the excellent campaigning work.