An officer of the national security police has been sentenced to 20 months and four weeks behind bars for taking pictures from the surface and trying to grab another officer’s gun when he was taken to the police station for the incident.
Deputy District Judge Li Chi-ho sentenced Ko Chun-chung on Monday after the 40-year-old officer previously pleaded guilty to illegal recording or surveillance of private parts and attempted possession of firearms without a license, local media reported. reported.
The court heard that Ko used a device with the intention of observing or recording a woman’s private parts under her clothing on January 15, 2025, on an escalator at Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station.
The woman, feeling an object hit her left calf while on the escalator, saw Ko put the phone in his pocket. Suspecting she was taken upstairs, she asked to see his phone and saw videos showing the escalator. She then took his phone and called the police.
When he was taken to Tsim Sha Tsui police station for the incident, he tried to grab an officer’s pistol.
‘temporary excitement’
Deputy District Judge Li Chi-ho noted that Ko said in mitigation that he experienced extreme work stress in the National Security Department of the police force and sought help from police psychological services at one point.
Ko told the court he took the above photos for “temporary excitement to relieve stress”, expressing regret for his actions and admitting he had disgraced the police force and ruined his career, Li said.
Li said Ko did not capture the woman’s face in the photos and videos and that they were not shared online. But the judge considered Ko’s violation of the law as a police officer an aggravating factor.
On the firearms charge, Li accepted the defendant’s claim that he grabbed his colleague’s revolver in a “momentary lapse of judgment” to shoot himself and end his own life.
But Judge Li also said that Ko’s actions posed great risks to his colleagues and other detainees and that the consequences could have been fatal.
Li accepted that Ko’s actions were out of character and an isolated incident, while a psychological report also indicated that the risk of committing a criminal offense was low to moderate. The judge considered that a prison sentence was the only appropriate option due to the serious nature of both charges.
Taking into account the discount for Ko’s guilty plea and ordering portions of the sentences to run consecutively, Li sentenced the officer to 20 months and four weeks in prison.
