Police suspend officer over homeless clearance

The police said they’ve reported an officer to the West Kowloon Regional Crime Squad. File photo: RTHK

The police say they've suspended a plain-clothes officer involved in the clearance of a group of street-sleepers from a park in Sham Shui Po on Monday after they were accused of damaging property and stepping on one of the homeless people.



A group of seven officers were involved in the operation at Tung Chau Street Park, where a number of rough-sleepers spend their nights. They're said to have destroyed a chair and canned goods belonging to people there and, in at least one case, stepped on a person.



The police said late on Wednesday that they had reported their own officers to the West Kowloon Regional Crime Squad and had suspended one of them with immediate effect.



The incident was brought to light at a protest on Tuesday by members of the Tung Chau Street Sleepers Concern Group, led by Father Franco Mella.



"There are some new buildings here, so many people from the middle class will come into these buildings, and so the government is stepping up action to clear the park of everything that is not so good to see," said Mella, a veteran campaigner for Hong Kong's homeless people.



"So they think that the street sleepers give a bad impression to the people here so they are going to clear everything, but that's not the way to solve the problem."