Editorial | Scams the blemish as Hong Kong’s crime rates decline
Hong Kong is one of the safest cities in the world but police have a huge job on their hands as online con artists get ever more brazen
Many traditional forms of violent crime are in marked decline, with assault and wounding cases in 2024 falling to their lowest in 51 years at 3,614 incidents, and arson to the lowest in 40 years at 234 cases.
If only those figures, released by Commissioner of Police Raymond Siu Chak-yee, were an accurate reflection of the overall crime trend in Hong Kong, already known as a safe city.
Sadly, they do not fully compensate for a continuing rise in scams. The rate of increase in scams slowed to 11.7 per cent last year from 42.6 per cent in 2023, but the total still accounted for 46.9 per cent of the 94,727 criminal cases recorded in 2024, which were up 5 per cent year on year.
Even at last year’s slower rate of increase they could account for more than half the total this year.
The latest figures include more than 5,500 cases of a new type of deception involving fake customer service messages. Reports to police identify target groups, such as mainland students at Hong Kong universities.
Two were recently swindled out of HK$11 million (US$1.4 million) by fraudsters posing as law enforcers, prompting local police to discuss with mainland counterparts the possibility of educating Hong Kong-bound students and their parents about scams.