Two local men were arrested for threatening a cabbie late last month, and one of them even posed as a Judiciary Police (PJ) officer during a taxi ride to the city centre, PJ spokesman Lou Chan Fai said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The two suspects are aged 39 and 37 surnamed Fok and Chao respectively. They told the police that they work in the gaming industry.
According to Lou, the Judiciary Police followed up on the case of a cabbie who called public broadcaster TDM’s “Macau Forum” (澳門講場) phone-in programme on May 31 to complain that he had been insulted by two male passengers, one of whom claimed to be a PJ officer. Lou said the Judiciary Police took the matter seriously and urged the complainant to call the police directly to provide further information. At the same time, the Judiciary Police took immediate action to follow up on the case to check whether a PJ officer had in fact breached the law or not.
Lou said the cabbie told the police that he was driving the duo at about 4:30 a.m. on May 31 to Rua Formosa in the city centre, a location he was not familiar with. The two men then insulted him. Fok then claimed that he was a PJ officer and threatened that he would “suspend his taxi driver licence and have the taxi seized”. The cabbie felt humiliated and called the phone-in programme to complain about the incident in the morning of that day.
According to Lou, PJ officers identified Fok and Chao as the suspects and confirmed that neither of them is a public servant. The duo were arrested separately in Cotai and the city centre on Wednesday. Both admitted to the crime but claimed that they were drunk when they got in the taxi. Fok admitted that he posed as a PJ officer.
The duo have been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing coercion charges, while Fok also faces a charge of unlawful impersonation of a public servant, according to Lou.
