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Following is a written reply by the Secretary for Security, Mr Ambrose S K Lee, to a question by the Hon Lau Kong-wah on carpark crimes in the Legislative Council today (May 30):
Question:
Regarding crimes committed in public car parks, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the respective numbers of crimes committed in the past two years in the public car parks managed by private operators and in those managed by government departments, together with a breakdown by the types of crimes, and among the public car parks managed by government departments, of the three with the highest crime figures;
(b) of the detection rate of crimes committed in public car parks over the past two years;
(c) whether it has assessed the effectiveness of installing closed-circuit television systems at public car parks in combating crimes; and
(d) whether the authorities have examined if crimes in public car parks are more often committed late at night or in the early hours of the morning, and whether more police officers will be deployed to patrol public car parks during those hours?
Reply:
Madam President,
(a) and (b) The crime figures and the detection rates for crimes that occurred in carparks in the past two years, as well as information on the categories of offences, are set out at the Annex. The Administration has not maintained statistics on crime situations separately in respect of carparks managed by private entities and government departments, nor by individual carparks.
(c) According to the Police's experience, the deployment of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in different places (including carparks) has some deterrent effect on criminals. In practice, as security staff cannot focus on the images on television screens for an extended period of time, CCTV systems should be used in conjunction with recording systems so that the information may be accessed after the occurrence of crimes to assist in investigations. It must however be emphasised that many other objective circumstances, such as guard patrols and the ease of escape by the culprits, are also relevant factors affecting whether the occurrence of crimes could be deterred. Hence, the installation of CCTVs is only one of the basic measures recommended by the Police to carpark operators. To combat crimes effectively, they have to be used in conjunction with other measures.
(d) The security of carparks is primarily the responsibility of their operators. Nevertheless, depending on the crime trends, the Police often deploy officers to carparks to carry out duties such as patrolling to assist in the prevention of carpark crimes. Statistically, in the past two years, relatively more carpark crimes took place from 8am to 4pm. This is certainly one factor that the Police will consider in the deployment of duties. Besides, uniformed officers patrol carparks at night in particular, with a view to strengthening the alertness among carpark staff to the possibility of carpark crimes.
Ends/Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Issued at HKT 15:01
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