He was a policeman who scored high on his academy exams. He once carried a sign saying "Democracy" in a street protest demanding more political freedom in Hong Kong. He was also a contestant on the local version of the TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
By all accounts, Tsui Po-ko (
Tsui, better known by his media nicknames "rogue policeman" and "devil cop," has been the most talked-about person in Hong Kong since the unexplained shooting that also claimed his life about a week ago.
PHOTO: AP
News of the gunfight in the blood-spattered underpass and the investigation have made front-page headlines daily for the past week. It has sparked intense speculation about whether gangsters and other shadowy figures have infiltrated the police.
Tsui, 35, was a tall, lanky man with a square jaw, a crew cut as short as peach fuzz and sweeping eyebrows that looked like the long wings of a flying bat. He was a fitness fanatic, a runner with a sinewy body like a lightweight boxer.
The policeman -- who had a wife and six-year-old daughter -- was off duty, dressed in khaki pants and a knit hat, when the shooting happened shortly after midnight on March 17 in the Tsim Sha Tsui district.
Tsui ambushed the patrolling officers as they walked down the stairs into the underpass, Lee Ka-chiu (
Investigators believe Tsui was acting alone, and his attack was meticulously planned, Lee said.
His goal was to steal guns and bullets from the two policemen, Lee said, adding that investigators were still trying to understand what motivated Tsui.
"In my 29 years of service, this is the first case which involves a suspect like this," he said.
One of the details that sparked interest was that Tsui's gun was stolen from a policeman who was shot dead while answering a bogus noise complaint in March 2001. The same gun was apparently used in the fatal shooting of a security guard during a bank robbery in December that year, Lee said.
If Tsui were alive, he could be prosecuted for the 2001 killings, Lee said.
Early speculation was that Tsui was mixed up with triads. But Lee insisted that Tsui wasn't involved with triads.
David Chan, a senior lecturer of criminology at City University of Hong Kong, said a few police may be linked to triads, but he doubted that gangsters were entrenched in the force.
He said that the police are well paid compared with others in the region.
"I'm inclined to think the Hong Kong police force is a highly professional team," he said.
Local media quickly began digging into Tsui's past and found that he was an ambitious and active man. A photograph of him was printed in the weekly Eastweek magazine, showing him marching in a recent pro-democracy protest holding a gold-framed sign saying "Democracy."
Tsui and his wife also appeared on the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in 2001. They won HK$60,000 (US$7,692) on the program, which is to be rebroadcast this weekend.
Dennis Wong, head of the criminology department at City University, said that Tsui appeared to be driven by "aggregated frustration."
He said Tsui was passed over for promotions several times over the past five years because he was reportedly deemed too aloof and not a team player.
"Tsui had all sorts of abilities. He was 6 feet [1.83m] tall. He was a good shooter. He was very muscular. He could run fast. He should have been promoted, but he wasn't because of the personality defects," he said.
Wong said that when some people can't achieve socially approved goals -- like money, status and power -- by legitimate means, they resort to illegitimate methods.
"This happened in Tsui's case. It's very clear," he said.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS