Four male mainlanders were arrested over the weekend at the Barrier Gate checkpoint for a pickpocketing spree on public buses since the middle of last month, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lai Man Vai said during a special press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday.
According to Lai, the four suspects, aged between 33 and 41, are all from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Two of them are peasants and one is a labourer while the fourth suspect claimed to be unemployed.
Lai said that the Judiciary Police (PJ) recently received a raft of complaints of pickpocketing on public buses or at bus stops. Police investigations discovered that the four suspects tended to look for victims during the rush hour or in crowded areas such as Avenida do Almirante Lacerda, Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro and the Barrier Gate. They worked as a “team”, some of them stealing bus passengers’ belongings such as wallets and smartphones while the others acted as lookouts or deliberately caused a diversion.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the four suspected pickpockets from Guangxi to a police vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday. Photo: Iong Tat Choi
