From shoot-outs on Hong Kong streets to online scams raking in billions: police chief Raymond Siu digs into three decades of crime
- Police chief remembers day he was called to robbery carried out by notorious ‘king of thieves’ Yip Kai-foon
- Criminals move battlefields to internet where thousands of trusting members of the public lose their money to scammers
The then 25-year-old had no idea the Police Tactical Unit was about to go after the “king of thieves” Yip Kai-foon, who was firing an AK-47 assault rifle in the streets of Sham Shui Po in broad daylight.
“I was called to the scene to handle an armed robbery. I didn’t feel any fear or know which criminals were involved. After all, such crimes were common back then and I was called upon quite frequently,” the commissioner of police told the Post in an interview earlier as he recalled the city’s crime situation over the past three decades.
On March 10, 1992, Yip and his gang robbed two jewellery shops on Tai Po Road in Sham Shui Po, during which more than 60 high-velocity AK-47 and pistol rounds were fired at police, with one going straight through the windscreen of an Emergency Unit van.
Hijacking two vehicles as getaway cars and kidnapping the drivers, the gang of eight masked men made off with HK$7 million worth of valuables.
By the time Siu and his team arrived, the scene was littered with dozens of ammunition cases while the culprits had already vanished.
Yip was one of Hong Kong’s “larger-than-life” crime bosses in the 1980s and 90s when shoot-outs in the city’s streets had become shockingly common, because criminals from neighbouring Guangdong province often carried out high-profile armed robberies of jewellery shops with assault rifles, hand grenades and pistols. The gun battles had prompted the force to expand its structure and strengthen its armaments.
