A married police officer, who abused his position by refusing to pay a prostitute he had slept with, received a 20-month jail sentence from a Hong Kong court yesterday.
District Judge Joseph To indicated that there was no reasonable defence, as the officer, 40-year-old Chu Chi-ho, couldn’t even explain his actions.
It sure would have been fun to hear him try and talk his way out of that one!
Chu was convicted last Thursday, despite denying the charge of misconduct in public office.
The court heard that Chu stopped the woman – whose identity must be concealed for legal reasons – at Temple Street on May 28 last year, the SCMP reports.
The woman had arrived from the mainland with a friend a day before and began selling sex. For her friend’s sake, we hope they didn’t get a twin room.
On discovering that the woman was a visitor from the mainland and working as a prostitute, Chu failed to investigate her visa breach, and had sex with her (without paying the HKD200 fee) instead.
Post-bang, the upstanding father-of-two threatened the woman with seven days’ imprisonment if she did not flee Hong Kong within three hours. Before she left, Chu confiscated her keys to prevent her return.
The judge said that Chu’s actions “fundamentally destroyed the function and responsibilities of a police officer”, and that he committed an “extremely serious offence”.
The judge highlighted the fact that Chu not only failed to enforce the law, but that he also “took benefits” from an offender (one way of putting it), committed a serious criminal offence by threatening and refusing to pay the woman after he slept with her, and hindered the opportunity for further investigation by taking the keys to her flat.
Even though the judge accepted in mitigation that Chu had already suffered substantially from the conviction – such as the loss of his police quarters and pension (boo-effing-hoo) – he said that the defendant should have expected this, and issued the 20 months’ sentence.
Chu reportedly remained unmoved throughout the sentencing.
Related Stories:
Hong Kong police inspector guilty of misconduct for blackmailing prostitute into free sex
