Jan. 27 (UPI) —<\/span> Hong Kong police on Thursday reported an increase in online scams last year, including a 24% rise in fraud cases, of which 70% of happened over the internet.<\/p>\n Overall, Hong Kong saw a total of 64,428 crimes in 2021, a 1.9% increase over 2020, according to data published by the Hong Kong Police Force.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n Officials blamed the overall rise in crime on a large number of fraud cases — an increase of more than 3,000 — as well as increases in homicide, rape, extortion and police-initiated crimes such as drug offenses, among others.<\/p>\n The huge number of fraud cases was driven by part-time girlfriends, online dating, investment and job-seeking scams, among other schemes, officials reported.\n<\/p>\n Police said the number of violent crimes increased by 2.1% in 2021, a 196-crime increase, to 9,587.<\/p>\n On the upside, however, police reported that robberies and burglaries declined by 53% and 30%, respectively.<\/p>\n Hong Kong also saw declines in burglary, arson and theft, in addition to ten-year-lows for looting and pickpocketing.\n<\/p>\n “The police will continue to strengthen intelligence collection, actively use different media and activities to enhance the public’s awareness and resilience to local terrorism and self-aggrandizing behaviors and encourage citizens to make reports,” police officials said in a press release.\n<\/p>\n Child abuse cases jumped by 60% during the year, to 1,232 cases in 2021 from 463 in 2020, and the number of drug crimes increased to 1,570 in 2021 from 1,149 the year before.<\/p>\n The amount of drugs that were confiscated also saw a large increase, with confiscations of MDMA — commonly known as ecstasy or Molly — jumping to 62,000 in 2021 from 5,900 in 2020, the Standard reported.\n<\/p>\n Some crimes reported in 2021 involve a the Child’s Residential Home in Mong Kok, a residential and shopping district in Hong Kong, where police commissioner Raymond Siu Chak-yee said five more police officers will join a 21-man team reviewing video footage from the home.<\/p>\n Police said they hope to complete investigations within a month.<\/p>\n “We will step up our efforts on intelligence and we urge the public to report to us any suspicious people or activities,” Siu said.<\/p>\n Police have also arrested 162 people for violating the controversial National Security Law. Over 100 have been prosecuted so far, officials said.\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hong Kong Commissioner of Police Raymond Siu Chak-yee (L) arrives at a press conference about the crime and police work in the city. Photo by Jerome Favre\/EPA-EFE Jan. 27 (UPI) — Hong Kong police on Thursday reported an increase in online scams last year, including a 24% rise in fraud cases, of which 70% of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":768958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Police:](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Police-Online-scams-drugs-dominated-rise-in-Hong-Kong-crimes-in-2021.jpg\" "\\"Police:")
\n<\/div>\nHong Kong Commissioner of Police Raymond Siu Chak-yee (L) arrives at a press conference about the crime and police work in the city. Photo by Jerome Favre\/EPA-EFE<\/p>\n