'Officers Told Lie After Lie In Assault Case'

An Eastern Court magistrate on Wednesday slammed two police officers for "telling lie after lie" as he acquitted a district councillor and her assistant of assaulting police.

Jocelyn Chau and her assistant Lao Chak-kin were accused of shoving an officer in the chest while live-streaming video of a police operation in North Point amid high tensions in the district last August.

Chau was a community organiser at the time.

But magistrate Stanley Ho said he could not accept witness statements from the two officers involved, calling them unreasonable, illogical and self-contradictory.

Ho said their testimony did not match what happened in video clips of the incident submitted to the court, and said the officers had tried to cover one lie with another.

Not only was there no evidence to suggest that Chau and Lao had assaulted police, the magistrate also said he suspected the two officers had used inappropriate force on the defendants.

He said the only reasonable conclusion that can be reached was that an officer believed that Chau had been secretly filming the police, and tried to stop her by pushing her camera aside.

The court, he added, did not believe that the two officers were carrying out proper police duties in the incident.