Top Court Refuses Appeal Bid By Baton-happy Cop

The Court of Final Appeal on Monday rejected an application by retired police superintendent Frankly Chu to challenge his assault conviction and prison term for battering a passerby during the 2014 Occupy protests.

Chu was jailed for three months for smacking Osman Cheng on the back of the neck with his police baton, leaving his victim with relatively minor injuries.

The former police chief had argued that he used a reasonable degree of force in order to constrain a crowd of people.

But this was rejected by the trial magistrate in December 2017 and again in the High Court last September when Chu lost an appeal there.

Applying for leave to appeal for a final time, Chu's lawyer said the lower courts had failed to consider that Chu was a policeman tasked to "go into the trouble" to maintain order. She said the courts had made a mistake by looking at Chu as just an ordinary man who could just walk away from the scene.

She also said that the High Court judge should have conducted a "re-hearing" to examine the evidence afresh, instead of merely reviewing the trial magistrate's ruling to look for possible mistakes.

The prosecution disagreed with these points, however, saying both courts had viewed video footage which showed Cheng had simply been walking past Chu when he was struck.

Having heard their arguments, the three-judge panel decided that the grounds for appeal put forward by Chu's lawyer were not reasonably arguable and it would not hear the case. It said it would hand down the reasons for its decision at a later date.

Chu was released from Stanley Prison last October after completing his prison term, having been free on bail for much of the time since his conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm.