Police have defended their decision not to prosecute eight teens arrested in connection with a high-profile bullying incident after the person who brought the case to authorities’ attention accused them of falsifying parts of his statement and of pressuring him to drop his complaint.
The eight former suspects — aged 17 to 19 — were arrested outside the Yan Chai Hospital Tung Chi Ying Memorial Secondary School in Ma On Shan in January on suspicion of assaulting a student after they were allegedly caught on camera pinning the boy down with chairs, pulling down his pants, spanking him, and twisting his ear. The school soon found itself at the center of a social media scandal after videos of three such incidents leaked in the span of a week, with current and former students accusing administrators of turning a blind eye to rampant bullying.
All eight students were released on bail shortly after their arrests, and local media reported on Monday that police had since formally dropped all charges.
In a statement emailed to Coconuts HK this afternoon, a police spokesperson said there was “insufficient evidence to prosecute the eight arrested men, and all suspects were released unconditionally.”
The police statement comes in response to allegations by the complainant — 18-year-old whistleblower Yip Kit-hung — that officers coerced him to retract his statement and watered down his testimony.
The allegations were publicized by pro-democracy lawmaker Au Nok-hin, who is assisting the alumnus of the high school, and who posted a photo of Yip’s police statement to his Facebook page yesterday.
According to Au’s post, Yip decided to post video of the incident on Facebook after it was sent to him via WhatsApp by a current student. After the video went viral, he gave several media interviews on the subject, and officers contacted him about the case on January 26, four days after the video was posted and two days after arresting the suspects.
When he was brought to the Sha Tin Police Station, Yip claimed that officers coerced him to retract his testimony, criticized him for sharing the video, and also urged him to stop giving interviews over the course of a five-hour interrogation. He said police also denied his request to have his family present.
Yip went on to say that police pressured him to sign his name to a statement that he didn’t agree with and failed to give him a copy. Yip said he felt he was being “assaulted” by police.
With legal assistance, Yip was later able to obtain a copy of his testimony, and found that police had falsely attributed comments to him, such as “news reports were quite exaggerated and untrue, totally different from what I answered,” and “I just want the police to remind the school and the students to be concerned about the incident…thus I agree with how the police handled the case, and I have no intention to pursue anyone.”
Addressing the specific allegations, police maintained in today’s statement that they never received a request from Yip for his family to accompany him, that the statement was signed and confirmed by Yip, and that police provided Yip a copy of his statement on February 25 after receiving a request for a copy of it on January 28
“The police will carefully consider all the evidence in each case and follow up based on the information provided by the victim, the suspects, and eyewitnesses, and deal with it in a serious and professional manner,” the statement reads.
Yip will be lodging a formal complaint against the police with the help of Au, who says that the allegations amount to “not only severe misconduct, but might also involve perverting the course of justice.”
