US lawyer jailed over scuffle with off-duty policeman

A Hong Kong court sentenced a US lawyer to prison for a scuffle with an off-duty police officer at the height of pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Samuel Phillip Bickett, 37, was given a jail term of four months and two weeks on Tuesday on one charge of assaulting a police officer.

The former Asia-Pacific compliance director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch was found guilty last month and denied bail.

Magistrate Arthur Lam Hei-wei described Bickett’s crime as a “serious threat to public order,” saying the policeman suffered multiple injuries. 

Lam said the two weeks were added to the sentence because the assault occurred in a crowded area and Bickett’s actions may have incited others to violence.

In convicting Bickett, the court had earlier rejected Bickett’s defense that he heard the officer denying he was a policeman, and so he tried to subdue him for fear that he might attack other commuters.

Bickett, who said the officer was attacking people with a baton in a subway station, wrote in a statement before his conviction that the verdict was “entirely unsupportable by both the law and the evidence in this case.”

Prosecutors said during the trial that Bickett tried to take a baton from Senior Constable Yu Shu-sang, punched him and knelt on him.

The incident happened three months after police officers were given the approval to carry batons during off-hours at the height of anti-government protests.