tim's experiment

It would probably be too melodramatic to say that we are now witnessing a struggle for the Police Force’s soul.
Organisations do not have souls. At least, though, we must say that a largely submerged struggle is going on, over the question what sort of police force Hong Kong wants. This is the serious question behind the arguments – some of which are rather trivial – about whether particular crowd control measures were legal, whether rude signs about the Force should not be legal, and whether the Chief of Police should, on appropriate occasions, issue an apology.
Questions of this kind usually start with the traditions of the Force, but in this case we can dispense with that because the history of the Force is rather disreputable. In its youth it discharged many of the duties of an occupying army, firmly suppressing any symptoms of restlessness among the natives. It also provided, in the best colonial tradition, an outlet for restless young men of no visible talent who could come out to Hong Koing and become instant officers. The Force was, however, less interested in combating crime. It frowned on violent newsworthy felonies like murder and bank robbery, while casting a more indulgent eye over the sale of protection, vice and drugs to more or less satisfied customers. Winking at these latter industries provided a substantial extra income. Anyone who finds it surprising that the police sided with the government in the Red Guard riots does not realise how lucrative it was to be a policeman in those days. I do not wish to labour this embarassing point. Suffice to say that the band of retired policemen who turned up at Legco the other day to support their current colleagues could have chosen a more appropriate shirt colour than white.
So we will not dwell on the mutiny, the storming of the ICAC headquarters, the part-time jobs as guns for hire, the repeated claims that triads have been eradicated, later withdrawn (without apology), the real estate holdings in Toronto or the MacLennan Inquiry. Suffice to say that the Force, if not Asia’s finest, is at least no longer the Finest Police Force That Money Can Buy. The only point we need take from this murky history is that the Force is not a prisoner of its past. It can become whatever it wants, or we want.
There is a range of choices on offer. At one extreme there is the Carabinieri system, in which the police man a few heavily defended enclaves from which they emerge, usually in large groups and always armed, to deal with major crises. Many European countries used to have police forces of this kind. They were useful in times of war and revolution. But many of the functions of providing everyday security, suppressing crime and resolving minor disputes were simply not attempted in this model. They were left to the citizens, who made what arrangements they could with each other, or with local magnates, bandits or both. At the other extreme is the Dixon of Dock Green dream, in which the policeman is a friendly avuncular figure from whom the most timid individual would not shrink to ask the time. Dixon was of course a fictional person. Still something like this is not impossible, though no doubt easier in small towns than in big cities.
The English police have always recognised in a fuzzy sort of way that they need the public on their side. Citizens must be willing to call for help, to give evidence, to support adequate financing and manpower. Police work is in a sense like counter-insurgency warfare: winning is achieved not by locking up particular people or groups of people, but by gaining the support of the population, after which peace and order follow naturally.
Regrettably, Hong Kong’s police force took after the first of these models more than the second. This is not anyone’s fault. A foreign-officered police force in a colony is never going to be part of the family. And the Hong Kong population’s expectations of police were conditioned by experience in China, which consisted of decades of civil war followed by decades of communism. The idea of the policeman as a servant of the community was not familiar. Still, 14 years after the handover, it isn’t now either. Some of the comments on policing of demonstrations seem to come from people who hanker for the old Chinese system of law enforcement in which the magistrate presided over a large hall in which suspects were beaten until they confessed.
Some years ago there was a suggestion that the Police Force might like to rename itself as a Police Service. This was vigorously opposed from within the Force. Members told me at the time that they wished to remain a “paramilitary force”. The fact that Hong Kong no longer really needed a paramilitary force did not come up. The Force still devotes huge resources to training of a strenuous military kind in riot control, though we haven’t had a decent riot in decades. At the same time many of our police stations still look like small fortresses and attempts at a community presence, though certainly made, look half-hearted. It does not matter if the police continue to be addicted to bagpipes, mess kits, “Mr Vice, the Loyal Toast” and other regimental rituals. The phenomenal standard of foot drill is harmless, though the time spent honing this obscure accomplishment could perhaps be spent on more constructive matters. What is a problem is the number of policemen and admirers who apparently subscribe to the dictum attributed to Lee Kwan Yew: “If people were not afraid of me I would be a nobody.”
The problem for police forces, as for other large organisations, is that the public’s view of them is not decided primarily by their official stance, by the speeches of their senior officers or their media coverage. It is decided by the quality and content of face-to-face interactions with junior members of the body. If they feel they are being treated unfairly, or bullied, then no amount of PR is going to repair the damage. Some help can be provided by an honest apology when things go wrong, but this it seems is not accepted by the new police regime, which does not do apologies, even when a normal law-abiding citizen might think one was appropriate.
The disturbing thing about all this is that we have here an important matter of policy. Do we want a community-friendly police or do we want a fierce force? No doubt there are arguments on both sides but this should be decided by the government and the public, not by the individual whims of successive commissioners of police.
Meanwhile a word about demonstrations. The purpose of demonstrations, as any serious revolutionary will tell you, is not just to air views about public matters, it is to illustrate by a piece of compelling street theatre the essential oppressive nature of capitalism in general and the police in particular. So for the police, success is not looking oppressive. Failure is pepper-spraying primary school kids. OK?