The force on Tuesday said it raided 11 residences and two warehouses, seizing around 200 air guns, more than 6,000 lead pellets, axes, knives, respirators, body armour and a smoke grenade launcher.
At a press conference, officers noted that similar smoke grenade launchers, respirators and body armour were seen during the 2019 protests.
“We have intelligence and some information showing that the arrested people, some of them had actively participated in the riot incident in the past two years,” claimed superintendent Chan Yan from the organized crime and triad bureau.
“We will not exclude any possibility. We will continue our investigation to pursue whether the reason of their possession of these high-powered weapons include the purpose of making damage to our society and making disturbance to our coming elections.”
Senior inspector Lucas Lam said the weapons seized were very dangerous, noting that one of them, a pre-charged pneumatic air gun, could kill a deer or shatter bricks.
“Most of the pneumatic air guns they are already preset into high-powered. When you look at the law, it says exceeding two joules is already violating the law. And right now, we are talking about something 250 to 2,000 joules. So when you just simply look at the numbers, they are some dangerous weapons,” he said.