User:Paris1127/John MacLennan

John MacLennan was Scottish-born officer of the Royal Hong Kong Police who was discovered dead in the Ho Man Tin police station, shot five times. Ruled a suicide, MacLennan's death was rumoured to be a murder made to look like a suicide. MacLennan, a closeted homosexual, had in March 1977 discovered files of the RHKP Special Branch, which since 1966 had been dedicated to rooting out homosexuals in the police and government and documenting liaisons (homosexuality being illegal in Hong Kong until 1991; in the United Kingdom, of which Hong Kong was then a colony, it had been decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967 and would be decriminalised in MacLennan's native Scotland in 1980, the year of his death). MacLennan, who had requested the transfer to Special Branch, resigned two months later and applied to join the Metropolitan Police in London. MacLennan later told urban councillor Elsie Elliot about the files. By March 1978, bored with policing in London, MacLennan was back in the RHKP, working in Yuen Long, in the New Territories.

MacLennan was a weekend fixture at gay bars in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, usually the Waltzing Matilda. In the summer of 1978, MacLennan made a pass at a 17-year-old University of Glasgow student spending the summer at home in Hong Kong. The student told a friend, and the friend informed his father, a police officer. When word reached the district commander, he demanded MacLennan be fired.

That August, a prominent solicitor was arrested for having sex with underage boys. In return for leniency, he testified about male prostitution rings and the organized crime groups, Triads, running them, and their clients. Special Branch formed a unit, the Special Investigation Unit, dedicated to investigating the solicitor's information. The SIU investigated the police force, judiciary, and government.

MacLennan was dismissed in 1978, but the decision was overturned (with assistance from Elliot). The SIU allegedly worked to arrest MacLennan, attempting to entrap him without success.

John MacLennan was discovered dead on 15 January 1980, shot 5 times with a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. An inquest determined that he had checked the weapon out of the police armoury.