tim's experiment

I embark on this piece with some trepidation. Some people will say that this is the wrong time to write anything which could be considered critical about the Hong Kong Police. They have come through a difficult period with credit and should be accorded public support. On the other hand one of the things which a difficult period does is to shine a light on trends which in normal times remain obscure. And those of us who like and admire an institution must still recognise that the exploration of a rosier future must start with the identification of current thorns.  Many police people are sincerely devoted to the service of the community. They include some of the most admirable among my former students, the police and journalism being regarded locally as two rival destinations for ladies with lively minds who do not wish to spend their career at a desk. So if this seems critical it is affectionately critical. A struggle is taking place for the soul of the police force which is too important to be left to the force itself or (heaven forbid) its immediate political masters.

Of all the viral videos which clogged our screens during the Umbrella upheaval the one which stuck in my mind was not one of the teargas shots, or the pepper spray, or the occasions when protesters were not perhaps as non-violent as they should have been. It was the occasion when a policeman, visibly unprovoked, took a random unprovoked swipe with his stick at a member of the public in Mong Kok.

As luck would have it I was at a meeting of an animal welfare group the day before this surfaced when the conversation turned to an upcoming visit to Hong Kong by Cesar Millan. Mr Millan is otherwise known as The Dog Whisperer after the television programme of that name in which he reforms psychologically disturbed dogs, often by changing the behavior of their owners. It seems that some dog appreciation groups in Hong Kong will not be entertaining Mr Millan, because they object to one of his training activities: he sometimes hits the dogs. Nobody suggests that he boots them across the room or causes actual injury, but they occasionally get something fairly up-scale in the way of a sharp tap. Most of us agreed that this was perhaps being a mite too purist, given that Mr Millan does deal with some seriously disturbed dogs. Still it is a good principle, recognized by dog helpers generally, that you should not hit them. It does not help.

Fresh from this discussion I was confronted with the now-famous video clip in which a policeman could be seen lashing out at a civilian with that implement which is known as a baton when used by the police or a club when used by criminals. There was no suggestion that the civilian concerned was attacking the police, or indeed disobeying their instructions. It appeared actually that he was doing his best to go in the direction required, hampered only by his efforts to keep himself between his girlfriend and the police. I infer from this that a good deal of laying on of batons or clubs seemed likely, if indeed it had not already taken place.

This was during the disorders in the evening after the clearance of the blockages in Mong Kok. Clearly this was an exciting scene. Under these circumstances it is only to be expected that some participants will regard crowd control as a contact sport. Young men on both sides will get excited and excitement will lead to bad choices, as it often does. But the policeman in the video was not an excited young man. He was in fact, we were afterwards told, a Senior Superintendant. I wondered how it had come about that so senior a person thought it appropriate to treat an ordinary member of the public in a way which would be regarded as controversial if applied to a deranged dog.

The answer is that in some respects we still have a colonial police force. This is not supposed to be insulting, but it reflects an important distinction. Many years ago I heard a short explanation by Sir Robert Mark, who was then a recently retired Commissioner of Police for London, of the differences between police training and military training. The soldier, he said, was taught to be part of a team; the policeman was taught to act alone.

And indeed this is something taken for granted in countries with a well-established rule of law. The policeman is not the representative of an alien authority; he embodies the community’s consensus that the law should be obeyed, and moves in a supportive environment. His key skills are self-reliance and self-control. His primary source of authority is moral. Force is a necessary back-up, not a first resort. Its use in the control of large crowds represents a fracture between the police and the citizenry they serve, and accordingly is to be avoided, and indeed will usually be unnecessary. No doubt times have changed since the legendary 1923 FA Cup final, when the pitch was cleared by a single policeman on a white horse, but the underlying message remains: the policeman acts as an individual and depends first on his moral authority as the personification of society’s consensus on what is acceptable.

The soldier, by contrast, is focused on his immediate surroundings and is supported primarily by his bonds with his team-members. He is sustained, in moments of excitement and danger, not by patriotism or idealism but by the desire to appear as a man among men in his section or fireteam, and not to let his comrades down. The soldier does not need to embody any of his community’s aspirations, and may even not share its nationality. The French Foreign Legion fights for France and the Gurkhas fight for Britain. The recruitment of foreigners to police France or Britain would be unthinkable.  The military spirit infuses a tribal solidarity which in turn validates the use of force against outsiders. This is its purpose.

Colonies come in two types. Those in which the native inhabitants are marginalized or exterminated can import the police habits of the colonisers, whatever they may be. But in those colonies where the indigenous population heavily outnumbers the empire-builders the only option available is a police force run on military lines. The police force, in other words, does not reflect and embody the community’s consensus. The community is subject to alien rule imposed by force. If the police force is recruited locally then its members must be persuaded to transfer their first loyalty to their unit and their colleagues. This is what military training achieves as a matter of course.

And this is I fear the way the Hong Kong police force still works. Indeed some of its members take a pride in the fact that it is still a paramilitary force, without giving much thought to whether a paramilitary force is appropriate and desirable in a sophisticated modern city. Its training is military (lots of buzzcuts, strenuous exercise, footdrill and firearms training), its tactics are military (shoulder to shoulder lines with the ranged weapons behind; if the officers were on horseback it could be an 18^th century battlefield), and its mindset is military: we are us and they are the enemy.  The resulting mutual loyalty is an engaging feature but it is achieved at the expense of the force’s bonds with the rest of us. The public are not a client to be served but a problem to be solved. “Order” is the objective. Its usual companion in cliche, “law and…” is not mentioned.

This is perhaps not a good time to be looking critically at our police force. But moments of stress reveal problems which are otherwise latent and invisible. Why is tear gas a first resort and police negotiators only appear on the morning after? Why, 17 years after the handover, do police stations still have little turrets on them? Why is the standard patrol in my peaceful part of the world six (six!) officers in a LandRover? Why does the Commissioner of Police think “sorry” is a four-letter word? How can we convince this fine body of men and woman that they are not the Seventh Cavalry and we are not the Sioux?

Under the public surface of the Force I suppose these matters are actually being debated. Do they wish to be a police service or a gendarmerie? But this is not a matter of import only to police people. The public has a right to voice in the matter and I suspect their preferences would be clear.