tim's experiment

Have you read the Independent Police Complaints Council’s “Thematic Study on the Public Order events arising from the Fugitive Offenders Bill since June 2019 and the Police actions in response”? Don’t.

The government line was that the IPCC’s effort would be an acceptable substitute for a formal Commission of Inquiry into police activities. The critics of this line were right. The IPCC is the cultural Chernobyl of complacency. Looking at the police force it combines the virtues of the three wise monkeys, contriving to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

It is not true that the report “exonerates the police force”. In fact on most of the questions which you would want answered about the policing of disorder in Hong Kong it refuses to make a decision, though giving generous space to police explanations for some unhappy episodes.

It is also, alas, not true that the report is impartial. Protesters are routinely labelled as “violent protesters” whatever they are doing, except in the section on the Prince Edward MTR brawl, in which someone else seems to have grabbed the word processor because the protesters are labelled “mobsters”.  Junius Ho’s heroes in Yuen Long are just “men in white shirts”.

The sympathies of the authors seep into the phraseology. Protesters “throw hard objects” and “attack ferociously”; in response teargas is mysteriously and antiseptically “deployed”. Readers should be prepared to tackle a forest of euphemistic acronyms for the sub-lethal weapons armoury. There is a glossary at the end of the last volume.

The council’s researchers are clearly unhappy with some of the details of police conduct, but their idea of criticism reminds you of the politician who said that being criticised by Sir Geoffrey Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep.

Picking carefully through their account of the San Uk Ling Centre, for example, you will find answers to two questions of general interest: were protesters subjected to delays in the provision of medical treatment and in obtaining access to a lawyer? The answer to both is yes, but this is never said in so many words. And were people tortured? No complaint was received so this topic is not explored.

This is a long job. During my mis-spent youth I conducted a lengthy study of violence at demonstrations – this did not produce a publishable outcome because violence at demonstrations in the UK at the time was so rare – so I read a good many reports of this kind.

The IPCC is not going to break the length record, which I imagine is still held by the Walker Report, an encyclopedic analysis of the Democratic Convention disorders in Chicago in 1968, still available on Amazon, a hefty paperback.

I have to say also that the IPCC would probably be disqualified by the Guinness Book adjudicators for cheating. Everything in the report is said at least twice and some things are said far more.

There is a summary of the six-month period at the beginning. Each of the major incidents covered is given a detailed prose account, with pictures, and a tabulated version of the same thing, with the same pictures. A “conclusion” makes many points for the fourth time. No effort has been made to spare the rainforest.

Unfortunately the purpose of all this research is apparently mainly to help the IPCC in dealing with complaints. If something has happened but nobody has complained then the matter is of no interest.

For example, none of the people shot with real bullets by police has apparently complained. This could be considered a worrying indication of general lack of faith in the complaints system, but the IPCC has no interest in exploring that. So the topic is cursorily dismissed with the happy thought that all the victims are out of hospital and all the perpetrators were found by a police inquiry to be either in mortal danger or in fear of having their pistols snatched.

It is curious that the IPCC insists that the use of force by a police officer is a matter of individual responsibility, but no similar discrimination is offered to protesters, who are treated as an amorphous lump in which everyone is to blame for everything, including – in the list of specimens of “vigilantism” – acts of violence perpetrated by their opponents.

This brings us to the rather numerous incidents in which arresting officers seem to be administering on-the-spot punishment. The IPCC says it is not interested in individual cases: “This Study does not deal with matters of individual officer’s accountability for over-stepping the law or for insufficient supervision in specific cases. They are for the complaints system and the system of supervision within the Police Force.”

The trouble with this is that where the toxic effects of the para-military policing model appear they do not result in changes in the official arrangements, Force guidelines, chains of command and such like. They manifest themselves in an increasing incidence of abuse and misbehaviour, tolerated by those who do not themselves engage in it. Arrestees are beaten up and people beaten up are transformed into arrestees to discredit any possible complaint.

The report’s most fertile feature is its ability to find reasons for not making a decision about complaints. Whole incidents can be ducked if litigation is in progress. If someone complains about his arrest we can skip that because the manner of arrest will come up at his trial. Various problems should properly be “left to the complaints system”. If the complainant is not the victim it is “outside our purview”. If there is a pending trial the complaint cannot be investigated at all until the trial is over.

What people want to know about our police is why in recent months it has apparently become a common procedure to hold the freshly arrested protester face-down on the floor with two people sitting on his head, two people beating his legs, and six people standing round pepper-spraying anyone who appears to be recording the proceedings.

The IPCC’s thoughts on this are “Where no complaints have been made but there is evidence on reliable video footage or other reliable sources to show overstepping the mark in the use of force, the Commissioner would be expected to put his house in order.”

Note the beautiful use of the subjunctive. The Commissioner would be expected… So the system is, folks, that if you throw a brick at a policeman you will get, and deserve, four years in prison. If he shoots you in the face he can look forward to a taste of the Commissioner’s housekeeping.

The IPCC repeatedly says that whenever force is used “the officer will be held accountable”. Is that so?

The only people who come out of this well are the overseas experts, who after a short period as advisers decided to collectively “withdraw” from the proceedings. I notice that the suggestion that this might be temporary has not been much heard from lately.

The underlying impression of this report is that a number of querulous old men find the whole public order problem baffling. They don’t understand the internet, or the “internet web” as it is sometimes put, they don’t understand young people, they don’t understand contemporary politics and above all they don’t understand why trust in the police force has collapsed when the cops were only doing their job.

Consideration of this last item might usefully start with the thought that confidence in the police complaints system collapsed first. The IPCC is not the solution. It’s part of the problem.

I take no pleasure in criticising the police force, which does many things well and employs a number of my friends and former students. But there is an interesting excerpt in this report from the “public order core principles” of the College of Policing in the UK:

“Peaceful intentions should be presumed unless there is compelling evidence that those organising or participating in a particular event will themselves use, advocate or incite violence. Police action should, therefore, target only those persons responsible for the breach of the peace. An action taken which is not directed at the person committing the breach will generally be unlawful…

“Where and only where there is a reasonable belief that there is no other means whatsoever to prevent a breach of the peace, the lawful exercise by innocent third parties of their rights may be restricted by the Police. This is a test of necessity, which can only be justified in truly extreme and exceptional circumstances…

“Before the Police can take any steps which in any way restrict the lawful exercise of rights by innocent third parties, they must take all other possible steps (including making proper and advance preparations) to ensure that the breach, or imminent breach, is prevented and the rights of third parties are protected.”

That may be a Platonic ideal rather than a description of what happens, even in London. But could anyone seriously assert that it is what happens in Hong Kong?