Policing Hong Kong, 1842-1969: Insiders' Stories 9789629375034, 9789629372064

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Policing Hong Kong, 1842–1969

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Policing Hong Kong, 1842–1969 Insiders’ Stories Lawrence K. K. HO Yiu Kong CHU

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©2012 City University of Hong Kong All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, internet or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the City University of Hong Kong Press. ISBN: 978-962-937-206-4 Published by City University of Hong Kong Press Tat Chee Avenue Kowloon, Hong Kong Website: www.cityu.edu.hk/upress E-mail: [email protected] Printed in Hong Kong

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This engaging and well-written book, based on interviews as well as documentary sources, is a gem that both the specialist and the layman will enjoy. Ho and Chu tell their story with rigour, fairness and a keen eye for the telling detail. And what a story it is! Weathering strikes, occupation, riots, wars, Triad turf-battles, domestic revolts and mass immigration, the Hong Kong police force emerged to become one of the most professional forces in the world. Most vitally, this book brings us back to the individual men and women of many races whose hard work and sacrifice forged the conditions of public order without which Hong Kong could never have succeeded. You have read about the great entrepreneurs and taipans of Hong Kong. You know about the territory’s financial kingmakers. Here is another integral part of the story. Read it for both pleasure and instruction. Professor Peter BAEHR Academic Dean of Social Sciences, Lingnan University

Not only a history of policing but also a valuable contribution to our understanding of Hong Kong in the post-war decade. A good read, indeed. LUI Tai-lok Professor and Head, Department of Sociology The University of Hong Kong

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Table of Contents

Foreword by Mr. K. S. Tang, Former Commissioner of Police, Hong Kong SAR



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Foreword by Professor Ming K. Chan, Stanford University, USA



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Foreword by Professor Peter Manning Northeastern University, USA



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Preface

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Acknowledgements

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List of Tables

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1.

Introduction

1

Section I A Chronological Sketch of the Hong Kong Police Force before 1969 2.

Opening of Chaos: The Birth of the Police Force on the Island 2.1

Rampant Piracy

8

2.2

The Multi-Ethnic Force

9

2.3

Separate Management of the Chinese and European

14

2.4

Policemen Onboard

29

2.5

The Multi-Tasking Force

32

2.6

Recruitment and Training before World War II

33

2.7

Police Reserve and the Special Police Constabulary

36

2.8

Summary

40

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3.

Unstable Years:



The Police Force during the Japanese Occupation and the Post-War Reconstruction

4.

3.1

Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation

46

3.2

Organisation of the Kempeitai

49

3.3

Governance under Martial Law

53

3.4 Meticulous Deployment

56

3.5 Post-War Reconstruction of the Police Force

58

3.6 Summary

74

The 1956, 1966 and 1967 Riots: Challenges to the Hong Kong Police Force 4.1

The 1956 and 1966 Riots

78

4.2

Establishment of the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force

80

4.3 The 1967 Riots

83

4.4 Summary

99

Section II A Glance at Different Branches of the Hong Kong Police Force 5.

The Criminal Investigation Department: Policemen in Plain Clothes 5.1

Criminal Investigation before World War I

106

5.2 Staffing and Equipment

108

5.3 Investigation and Interrogation Skills

111

5.4 Reverences for Guan Ti and Canteen Culture

120

5.6 Summary

122

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Table of Contents

6.

The Marine Police: Gatekeepers of Hong Kong Waters 6.1

7.

126 130

6.3 “White Dolphins”

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6.4 Anti-Riot Support

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6.5 Vietnamese Boat People

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6.6 Deportation of Criminals and Carrying Senior Officials

144

6.7 Life Onboard

147

6.8 Summary

149

Anti-Riot Teams: From Police Training Contingent to Police Tactical Unit 7.1

8.

Establishment of the Marine Police

6.2 Organisation and Recruitment

Anti-Riot Training before the 1950s

152

7.2 Police Training Contingent

154

7.3 The Police Tactical Unit

158

7.4 Special Duties Unit

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Inspectors and Policewomen 8.1

The Inspectors: The Middle Management of the Force

8.2 Relationship with the Chinese Detectives

166 172

8.3 Policewomen: Evolved from Female Searchers

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8.4 Directing Traffic and Handling Abandoned Babies

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8.5 The New Anti-Riot Force

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8.6 Marine Policewomen

195

8.7 Summary

199

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Section III Important Figures of the Hong Kong Police Force Remembered 9.

Police Interviews 9.1

Interview with the Former Chairman of the Hong Kong Police Old Comrades’ Association, Mr AU Ting

206

9.2 Interview with the former Chairman of Hong Kong Marine Police Retirees’ Association, Mr CHAN Cheong

216

9.3 Interview with Former Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr David HODSON

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9.4 Interview with Former Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mr Gordon FUNG Siu-yuen

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9.5 Interview with Former Commissioner of Police, Mr Dick LEE Ming-kwai

10. Conclusion

248

265

Appendices Appendix 1 Major Events for the Hong Kong Police Force 1844–1997

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Appendix 2 The Rank System of the Hong Kong Police Force

272

Appendix 3 “Firsts” in the Hong Kong Police Force

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The Historical Episodes

275

Bibliography

297



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Foreword by Mr. K. S. Tang Former Commissioner of Police, Hong Kong SAR

Police work is closely related to the daily lives of the general public. Hong Kong people pay particular attention to the media coverage of the police and they are also interested in their stories and plots. That is why movies and TV drama series that use police work as storylines are considered a guarantee for box offices and TV ratings. Over the past century Hong Kong has evolved from a small fishing village to an international city with a population of over seven million. The Hong Kong Police Force as the largest enforcement agency in Hong Kong has played a vital role during the evolutionary process of the Hong Kong society. Having been established for more than one hundred and sixty years, the Hong Kong Police Force has introduced various reforms and innovations ranging from staff uniforms, firearms, equipment, training mode, work procedures and team structure to policing philosophies in order to keep pace with the change of times and to maintain work efficiency. These changes do not only witness the milestones of the Hong Kong Police Force, but also conceal memorable information and interesting stories which may be unknown even to police officers. This new book explains more than one hundred years of development of the Hong Kong Police Force. Apart from collecting a large quantity of reading materials, the two authors conducted interviews with eighty retired police officers who worked for the Force from different periods. The sharing of these retired seniors together with the careful compilation unveils interesting and valuable stories and photos to the readers. Another five VIP interviewees in the last Section are outstanding officers. Readers can know more about the recent changes of the

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Hong Kong Police Force from different perspectives through the interviewees’ police careers. From a historical angle, this book describes the development of the Police Force in different important eras in Hong Kong’s history in an elaborated but a lively way. At the same time, the work details, stories, episodes and narratives related to the frontline police officers complement the role of the Police Force throughout the changes of time in Hong Kong society. This historical background information greatly enhances the recognition and fun of the book, and caters for various needs of a range of readers. I have to express my gratitude to the two authors in compiling such a valuable and representative historical book of the Hong Kong Police Force.

K. S. TANG Former Commissioner Hong Kong Police Force

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Foreword by Professor Ming K. Chan Stanford University, USA

In most modern communities, policemen/women are the significantly omnipresent and high-profiled frontline functionary underling state-society interface. Under most civilian regimes, police personnel and police vehicles are often the most obvious and commonly seen symbol of the governing authorities’ outreach efforts and front line contact with the local folks in their daily life. In the recent context of off-shore Chinese societies, there are three major cases of police-regime-people linkages that deserve serious sociological investigation and careful historical inquiry. All these three cases are related to the family origin of the top leaders of Hong Kong and Taiwan, who share a common characteristic of being the sons of a policeman father, who had served previously in the local colonial regime. Specifically, it should be quite interesting to compare the personal background of Taiwan’s former President Lee Teng-hui, and the Hong Kong SAR’s retiring Chief Executive Donald Tsang and the incoming Chief Executive C. Y. Leung. Lee’s father was a middle-level policeman in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial era before 1945, and his brother served and died in the Japanese Navy. In 1944 Lee Teng-hui also volunteered for service in the Japanese Army and became a second lieutenant in charge of an anti-aircraft gun in Taiwan. He was ordered back to Japan in 1945 and participated in the cleanup after the March 1945 great Tokyo firebombing. Lee stayed in Japan after the surrender and received his undergraduate degree from Kyoto University in 1946. Both Tsang and Leung were born into and grew up in a police family, their fathers served as policemen under the British

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colonial regime, and as such both spent much of their childhood as occupants in low-ranked police dormitory. Donald Tsang’s younger brother also served in the local police force, eventually reaching the top rank as Police Commissioner before retirement. In Leung’s case, his father came from the city of Weihai in China’s Shandong province, which was a British concession until 1930. The elder Leung’s service in the Hong Kong Police Force was not an isolated case as the Hong Kong colonial regime had a long standing practice of recruiting non-local police personnel from the UK as well as from its once extensive overseas domains. One is tempted to ask exactly what did Lee, Tsang and Leung have in common by way of their police family background as a crucial shaping factor in terms of ideo-political fermentation, career-occupational goals and generational inheritance. In what sense and to what extent did such distinctive attributes like discipline, public service, social sensitivity, and even regime loyalty as harboured in their fathers’ police service impact their visions and missions as government leaders? In this post-colonial era, it will now be interesting to examine the roles played by the elder Mr. Tsang and elder Mr. Leung as policemen in the British regime’s counter-insurgency operations to suppress the leftist anticolonial riots staged by pro-Beijing partisans in 1967 summer. In this context, it may not be totally inappropriate to suggest a partially parallel colonial case as a useful comparison — an academic assessment of the record of Hong Kong’s 15th governor Francis Henry May (1860–1922, governorship 1912–19) whose service in the colony began in 1881 as a cadet officer and was once local police chief and later became colonial secretary

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Foreword by Professor Ming K. Chan

(1902–1910), making him the only head of the Hong Kong colonial regime with a police portfolio. Governor May resorted to ill-justified stern police measures to end the 1912–13 Tramway Boycott that stemmed from the colonial regime’s ban on the local circulation of mainland Chinese coins, thus provoking the first among many subsequent discords between the colony and the mainland under the new Republic of China. This book by Dr. Ho and Dr. Chu is in many ways a pathbreaking study intended for a readership in Hong Kong and elsewhere that may include laymen and specialists. As an informative volume delineating of the first hundred and thirty years of growth and transformation of the Hong Kong police, it offers detailed historical narratives and systematic analyses of the evolutionary processes of the local police force as a vital arm of the British colonial state in a Chinese majority community and as a complex, large-scale organisation for law and order enforcement composed of multi-racial/multi-national personnel from diverse geographic, cultural and religious origins. Illustrated with many photographs and illuminated by the insightful first personal recollections of five retired police officers, who are of different ranks and lines of responsibility, and belonging to both the pre- and post-colonial generations, this is a highly readable and genuinely enjoyable volume. The authors have vividly portrayed the six phases of the Hong Kong Police Force’s lengthy developmental experience as delineated through carefully reconstructed mosaics layered with fine textures that are reinforced with a vivid human touch as manifested in the personal accounts gathered from interviews

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with over 80 former policemen and policewomen. These personal interviews yield very rich insiders’ details that are extremely revealing, some of which were not recorded in any official written documents. This definitely constitutes both a unique strength and a sterling contribution of this volume. Such personal recollections of ex-police personnel on the various events, persons, institutions, and movements (to which they were either eye-witnesses, or in many cases, were themselves the principal frontline actors directly involved), however intentionally truthful and factually accurate, might inevitably carry a certain self-limiting perspective. While such former policemen/women’s accounts are undoubtedly authoritative retrospectives by “insiders”, it is quite likely that most of these “insiders” are seeing things as well as understanding and even justifying past events from a certain police vantage point. Perhaps as a matter of subconscious selectivity individually and collectively, they may tend to offer a view that is generally sympathetic to the police force establishment and its functional performance as law enforcer on behalf of a regime was colonial and top-heavy with an expatriate leadership, whose policies, strategies and tactics might fall far short in legitimacy, responsiveness and effectiveness by contemporary standards. In other words, the broader societal (and non-regime/non-police) perspectives are not emphasised in both the documentation and the interviews that form the basis of the police stories as told in this volume. As such, readers of the book may be justified in questioning some of the claims and assertions advanced by the interviewees, with or without explicit collaborative support in the official documents.

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Foreword by Professor Ming K. Chan

Students of Hong Kong history, society and public administration as well as those interested in comparative criminology will find much that are relevant, useful, enlightening and entertaining from this splendid volume. By making good use of the present book as solid foundation and facilitating launching platform, there are many potential case studies in Hong Kong policing and state-society interactions that could be undertaken. Looking back on “old Hong Kong” of the pre-1970s period that constitutes the main focus of this volume, some very significant yet so far little explored topics could be well suited for further studies, like the role of local Chinese (especially Cantonese) policemen versus expatriate policemen in the two major labour collective actions that directly involved Guangdong and the issue of Chinese nationalism — the 1922 Seamen’s Strike and the 1925–26 Canton-Hong Kong General Strike-Boycott that reshaped pre-World War II Hong Kong state-grassroots dynamics and the British colony-China mainland relationship. For the post-War era, how did the unfolding decolonisation trends in the British Empire, especially the independence of India, Malaya and Singapore in the neighbouring Far East region, affect policing in colonial Hong Kong. Also, more attention is needed to assess the various external factors that had directly reshaped local policing — the post-1949 PRC mainland-Hong Kong interface within the East-West Cold War context had profoundly impacted policing in Hong Kong as a Chinese community under British rule confronting the massive influx of political and economic refugees from the mainland. In fact, the Chinese civil war residual hostilities did spill over into and even played out in Hong Kong

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as the CCP left vs. the KMT right partisan rivalry that, among other things, had triggered the 1956 riots. The colonial police’s anti-CCP counter-insurgencies efforts were summarised in the monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports on local Communist activities that the governor regularly dispatched to the Colonial Office in London. Related to this Communist mainland — capitalist colony tensions was the 1962 defection of a local Chinese police superintendent Tsang Chao-Fo to the Chinese Communist in Guangdong that raised the question of political allegiance among police personnel of Chinese descent and infiltration of the colonial regime by external hostile forces. Another infamous case of police senior rank serious misdeed that was not covered in this Ho & Chu volume concerns chief superintendent Peter Godber whose 1973 attempted escape from justice on corruption charges prompted the establishment of the anti-corruption agency ICAC in 1974, and its vigorous efforts in weeding out undesirable elements led to the 1977 police mutiny. Many more notorious corruption cases involving police and other public service personnel should be fruitful subjects for further academic inquiry. Indeed, the rich details, fascinating narratives and insightful analyses presented in this book have wetted our appetite for more studies on the Hong Kong police. We particularly need systematic coverage of the post-1970s period that is filled with new issues and fresh challenges rising from the increasing complexity of the social dynamism and economic functioning that have shaped Hong Kong’s growth and transformation during the past three decades. Policing in Hong Kong has been reshaped by multiple objective developments — the intensifying mainland-Hong

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Kong administrative/functional interface, the 1997 sovereignty retrocession that has ushered an unprecedented torrent of civic activism and political participation with an elected legislature scrutinising governmental conduct, the emergence of interactive new media focusing on social movements and regime behaviour in this instant communication high-tech age that also witnesses the proliferation of cyber crimes, and of course the rising tidal wave of public protests and mass demonstrations that characterise post-colonial Hong Kong as a city of protests over local and global issues (such as the 2003 half million strong mass protest against the national security bill enactment and the Korean peasants protests at the 2005 WTO Ministerial Summit in Hong Kong). All these are pertinent issues, landmark cases and breakthrough developments that deserve greater academic attention and more informed public articulation with reference to the role of policing in a global city. Post-colonial Hong Kong as a democratising society under the rule of law with a free press naturally holds regime conduct, including that of the police, to very high standards and public accountability with unyielding vigour. Then and now, the everyday life of many ordinary folks in Hong Kong often has a police angle or fingerprint as the police force is both an indispensible arm of the state and a necessary pillar upholding law and order for social stability and public security. I do very much wish that the authors of this amazing book will not end their endeavour here but proceed to engage us before long with a follow-up second volume on Hong Kong policing

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since the 1970s. Hopefully, some among those who have benefited from reading this volume will be greatly encouraged to embark on further research undertakings to enlighten us on the various worthy police-related topics mentioned in the book as well as many other yet to be explored police stories of Hong Kong as a part of China.

Ming K. CHAN Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University, USA Summer Solstice, 20 June 2012

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Foreword by Professor Peter Manning Northeastern University, USA

There is a new horizon in policing studies, and it looms now. Recognising this new horizon requires scholars to combine, compare and contrast the historical works on colonial and postcolonial policing with the rather anodyne studies of policing in Anglo-American societies. This will require the concatenation of understanding of the forces of the global economy, the remnants of colonial policing and emerging trends in democratic policing generally. More is known about Anglo-American policing set in the crime control mode than about the other major and important trends. Having said that, it is important to understand that like politics, all policing is “local.” It is based on local presuppositions, experiences and knowledge, as well as the acceptable practices that develop. This local knowledge is perhaps best captured by photos, reminisces, tales, anecdotes, ethnographic field notes and observations. The study of what might be called the arts and crafts of policing has waned in the last 25 years, alas, and statistical fetishism has reigned supreme. At this critical point in police studies, the foundational work is thin and found wanting. What is needed is best found, for example, in Policing Hong Kong, 1842–1969: Insiders’ Stories. Ho and Chu present us with a rich tapestry based on imaginative materials, a portrait of one of the most complex and fascinating, relatively successful, colonial forces. They chart the development of policing broadly in the once-territory, noting the important turning points, cycles of change and reform, as well as the creative leadership that emerged from the indigenous population. They enliven this narrative with portraits of special units and leaders, and biographies of members of the top command of the Hong Kong Police.

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Over the course of this unusual and unique book, the authors develop first the historical setting of police rule under the English; patterns of policing reflecting the social divisions in Hong Kong; draw our attention to the pattern of policing using “others” to police “others” (non- English people); and describe the emergence of leadership and holders of command position drawn from within. The tragic period of Japanese occupation is described, as well as the challenges of riots and they hold some intimations of the future. The authors tempt us to speculate about the coming years, those following 1969. How will the force be reconfigured in the coming years? How has the organisational character been forged by past decisions and actions? How has the pattern of policing been changed, given communication, transportation and changes in the world economy? As scholars are beginning to see, experiments in proto-democratic policing are unfolding in the South China seaboard: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, and mainland China. While Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative regions of China, there are also pressures to develop exchanges of personnel, information and advice throughout the region. They will unfold based on past conventions and understandings as Ho and Chu show us. The future beckons us. The matrix of development, history, agreements, and leadership will constraint the future, but who could have predicted the rapid developments after the new arrangements for governing Hong Kong were established, including accepting two systems of law? It is essential to use our knowledge to interrogate the concepts of “colonial policing” and “post-colonial policing,” and use these to examine closely the xxii

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Foreword by Professor Peter Manning

changing patterns of policing in the former Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and German Empires. These may be indications of the growth of democratic policing. In this way, we may be able to outline the contested dramas of policing in the modern world; dramas that arise from the quite distinctive models of policing that are available — private policing; constabulary-oriented policing; Peel-oriented policing and the policing of authoritarian states. These, along with traditional modes of conflict-resolution, are in competition and this competition will shape the ways forward in the next century.

Peter K. Manning Elmer V. H. and Eileen M. Brooks Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology Northeastern University, Boston, USA

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Preface

The Hong Kong Police Force has always evoked a mixed image in the minds of Hong Kong residents. Simultaneously, it manages to be strange and alien, yet entirely familiar. On a daily basis, we find ourselves inundated with news stories about how “the cops” tackle crime, and police work is a favourite subject in local movies and television series. In our daily lives, we also see policemen patrolling the streets. However, we seldom have direct contact with the police — the people charged with protecting our property and well-being — and know very few details about the exact nature of their work. There are not many books on the Hong Kong Police Force. Most are the fruits of academic scholarship and their presentation styles are not friendly for readers who are not in academia. Some are memoirs written by retired expatriate police officers, recording what the authors experienced with the changes in local policing. In recent years, there are more Chinese volumes in the form of autobiographies, anecdotal accounts and records of detective cases, which were increasingly popular with the general public. We sincerely hope that this book will enjoy wide appeal. This volume encompasses three main features. Firstly, a clear and distinctive orientation towards the police as human beings constitutes the soul of this book. It delineates over a century of the history of the Hong Kong Police Force through the personal experiences and frontline stories of many policemen. During the period from 2003 to 2009, we interviewed eighty retired policemen and policewomen through individual oral history interview sessions and group discussions. These represent different generations, races and ranks and lines of duty. For example, they include an officer

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who joined the force in 1938, a Pakistani who came to Hong Kong from India onboard a cargo ship in 1952, the inaugural group of policewomen in 1951, policeman on frontline duty in the 1967 riots, and the first Chinese police chief with a university degree who joined the force after graduation in 1972. Secondly, this book contains a number of photographs of the police at different times. Most of them were provided by the interviewees. These precious photographs cover subjects such as policemen working in Shatin Station in 1924, the official police uniform in the Japanese occupation era, the plain clothes officers in black silky Tang Dynasty suits during the 1940s, the first policewomen armed with a pistol in 1953, the uniformed Staff Sergeant and Detective Staff Sergeant in the 1960s, members of the airborne anti-riot team reaching the roofs of target buildings, and the Marksmen Unit in 1973, and many more. Based on such an invaluable contribution from the interviewees, we offer the reader engagingly presented factual narratives, filled with personal insights and vividly illuminated with historical photographs. Thirdly, being social scientists devoted to research into policing, we verified and cross-referenced the collected information with official documents and non-official literature. For some seemingly dubious pieces of information, we have done our utmost to ascertain factual accuracy with corroborative evidence or relevant verifications with the persons involved or other knowledgeable senior police officers. While we wrote this book in a less academically-formal and more popular style in order to reach a wider readership, we still insisted on it being a solidly fact-based volume. Hence, this book is intended for the

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Preface

general public and can easily serve as an informative source and as reference material suitable for general and civic education. In terms of its contents, this volume is divided into three main sections. The first section traces the early development of the Hong Kong Police Force. It exposes the unique features of the multi-ethnic paramilitary team in the earlier colonial days. It then leads the reader to appreciate the police’s struggles through Hong Kong’s most difficult times. During the dark years of Japanese occupation, how did the local police perform? How did the team rebuild itself after the war? And how did it cope with the turmoil of the 1967 Riots, when the police were fiercely condemned as “yellow-skin colonial running dogs” by the leftist insurgents and pro-Beijing partisans? The second section focuses on three particularly interesting police departments; the Criminal Investigation Department, the Marine Police, and the Anti-Riot Squad. It also highlights Inspectors, the backbone of the force, and policewomen, the most recently recruited category of police staff. The third section presents interviews with five special guests: Mr. Au Ting, former Chairman of the Hong Kong Police Old Comrades’ Association; Mr. Chan Cheong, former Chairman of the Hong Kong Marine Police Retirees’ Association; Mr. David Hodson, former Assistant Commissioner of Police; Mr. Gordon Fung Siu-yuen, former Deputy Commissioner of Police; and Mr. Dick Lee Ming-kwai, former Commissioner of Police. They joined the force in 1948, 1952, 1962, and 1972 respectively. Their personal recollections and lively anecdotes enable the

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reader to share the fun and challenges as well as the better and harder times of the police in the different eras. Their accounts chart the evolution of the Hong Kong Police Force during the last six decades, years that have also drastically reshaped Hong Kong from a British colony to a world city and Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. With this book we aim to suit both specialist scholarly interests and popular tastes. Through its pages, readers can enjoy these genuinely amazing and amusing police stories with their accompanying splendid illustrations, but hopefully they will also develop an informed understanding of how the Hong Kong Police Force has been transformed into one of the world’s most professional urban police forces today after over a century of hard work and struggle.

Lawrence HO Yiu Kong CHU June 2012

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Acknowledgements

This book could not have been completed without the assistance from different organisations and many people. First of all we would like to thank the Department of Sociology of The University of Hong Kong for providing us with resources and facilities to conduct our research project on “Policing Hong Kong: Witnessed by Frontline Police Officers”. We also wish to thank The University of Hong Kong Libraries for sponsoring our two police exhibitions, one in 2006 and another one in 2009. In total we interviewed 80 police retirees. More than half of the interviewees were referred by the Hong Kong Police Old Comrades’ Association, Hong Kong Marine Police Retirees’ Association, Hong Kong Police Inspectors’ Association and Junior Police Officers’ Association. We owe a particular debt to Au Ting, Kwok Chi-keung, Chan Cheong, Lo Ping-chuen, Liu Kit-ming, Lau Tat-keung, Wong Ching and Chung Kam-wah for their referral. We are most grateful to our police interviewees because they not only shared their frontline police experience with us but also lent their valuable police photos to us. We wish to offer our special thanks to Leung Kwok-hung, Tang Kwong and Kam Yueleung who joined the Hong Kong Police Force before the Second World War. Other police interviewees including Mak Shing-wan, Yip Ping-chun, Chan Fook-cheung, Lo Kwok-tung, Lee Fookkei, Lo Hung-shun, Wan Sing-fai, Chu Wing-hong, Wan Tsang Yau, Lai kam-kong, Wong kai-ho, Lau Yan-to, Yip Mak, Luk Kailau, Lam Oi-sze, Li Yin-mei, Kwok Siu-fung, Lo Kiu, Cheung Sik-hung, Lau Kai-fai, Lai Wun-wing, Lok Tak-chi, Chan Fukkan, Cheung Lap-man, Lui Ching, Tong Shing-yiu, Ko Wing-kit, Tai Siu-tong, Cheuk Man-kei, Yan Kam-cheung, Chung Kwong-

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wah, Kwok Chi-sing, Choi Yip-tsui, Kwan Kam-wan, Ng Meingan, Tung Suk-yee, Wong Kwai-ying, Chau Cham-chiu, Lam Kin, Tsui Yiu-kwong, Tse Keung, Yue Ting-wang, Ip Tak-chuen, Leung Wah-kit, Siu Chun-ming, So Siu-kuen, Yu Kam-ho, Wong Yu-keung, Leung Siu-yuk and Chiu Chun-sing. We cannot list the names of all interviewees because of anonymity, but their contribution to our book has been much appreciated. Many police officers gave us tremendous support and valuable opinions throughout our research. We owe a particular debt to Lee Ming-kwai, Fung Siu-yuen, Yam Tat-wing, Koo Siihong, Chan Wai-kei, Au Hok-lam, Suen Kwai-leung, Chang Mosee, Au Wai-lam, Lam Kwai-bun, Iain Ward, Gilbert George, Paul Dickinson, Jim Walker and Mohammad Munir Khan. We also want to thank Lam kam-yuen, Ho Ming-sun, Cheng Po-hung, Siu Kin-chung and Chan Wing-wai for providing us with their police historical materials. A number of people helped us collect research data and transcribe interview tapes. Among them, we particularly wish to express our thanks to Plato Chan, Karson Mau, Mandy Lau, Sarah Ng, Alexandra Ip and Jossie Chu. The Chinese version of this book Hong Kong Police Officers: Historical Witness and Law Enforcement was published by Joint Publishing Hong Kong in 2011. We deeply indebted to several persons who assisted us in the production of this English manuscript. We would like to thank Ms Katrina Tong and her team members for their excellent English translation work. Our special thanks go to Mr. David Hodson who read through the draft manuscript and gave us many constructive comments and suggestions. We owe a particular debt to the editorial team of the City University of Hong Kong Press for their professional and xxx

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Acknowledgements

efficient editing job on the manuscript. Dr. Jeffrey Martin, our colleague and friend at The University of Hong Kong, deserve our thanks for his encouragement throughout our writing. Finally, we would like to thank Mr. Tang King-shing, former Commissioner of the Hong Kong Police Force; Professor Ming K. Chan of Stanford University, USA; Professor Peter Manning of Northeastern University, USA, for writing forewords for this book; Professor Peter Beahr of Lingnan University and Professor Lui Tai-lok of The University of Hong Kong for writing recommendations to potential readers.

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List of Tables

List of Tables Table 2.1

Nationalities of Police Officers in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

13

Annual Salaries of Rank and Files by Nationality, 1855–1915

14

Table 2.3

Anti-Piracy Guards in 1932

30

Table 2.4

Training Course Contents in the 1940s

35

Table 2.5

Chronology of the “Part-time” Police in Hong Kong

39

Numbers of Police Before and After the Japanese Occupation

63

Selection Criteria for Police Recruits in the 1950s

65

Recruitment Counters in Hong Kong Police Stations in the 1950s

65

Comparison of Recruitment Process of Policemen in the 1950s and 2000s

69

Table 2.2

Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 8.1

Some Well Known Chinese Police Officers Who Trained in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s 173

Table 8.2

Comparison of Policemen and Policewomen in the 1950s and 1960s

185

Numbers of Policewomen 1950–1974, by Rank

198

Table 8.3

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Policing Hong Kong, 1842–1969: Insiders’ Stories

Table 9.1

Au Ting’s Career in the Police Force

214

Table 9.2

Chan Cheong’s Career in the Police Force

224

Table 9.3

David Hodson’s Career in the Police Force

236

Table 9.4

Fung Siu-yuen’s Career in the Police Force

247

Table 9.5

Lee Ming-kwai’s Career in the Police Force

263

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Chapter 1 Introduction

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Policing Hong Kong, 1842–1969: Insiders’ Stories

In 1842, Hong Kong Island was formally ceded to Britain and became a British crown colony. After the British took possession, they established a small-scale police force with a few dozen European, Indian and Chinese policemen. The Colonial Police Force was officially set up in 1844 and officers carried out their duties under the fifth Ordinance of the Laws of Hong Kong.1 The newly established Hong Kong Police Force did not follow the model of its British forerunner. In Britain, there is no single national police force, but instead a number of individual forces developed and controlled by each region. In the very beginning, there were more than 200 forces. With continuous consolidation, there are 52 police forces today; 39 in England, four in Wales, eight in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland. The British forces do not operate under a centralised authority and each of them operates independently with its own police chief. Except for the Metropolitan Police Service, which is responsible for policing Greater London and is governed by the Home Office, the other 51 police forces are accountable to their local councils and not subject to central command. British police constables patrol the streets in blue uniforms without guns; in fact, most of them do not receive any firearms training. Limited power is given to them under the law. The police are empowered to enforce the law relating to public security and order only, not involving any political matters and military affairs. In Britain, the basic emphasis is on policing by consent and thus community relations are the prime concern of the British police, whose officers are well known for their empathy. Until 1922, Ireland was ruled directly from London. As early as 1822, the British authorities had developed the Royal Irish Constabulary there. It was a quasi-military force stressing the centralisation of power, with the primary responsibility

1. Hong Kong Police College. (2007). Policing in Hong Kong at the Turn of the Century. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Police College, p. 2.

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1. Introduction

of maintaining public order rather than tackling crimes. As suggested by Sinclair, “the builders of the British Empire mainly took reference from the Irish Constabulary model when they developed the police forces in the overseas colonies. This is the so-called ‘colonial police model’”.2 Due to its unique history and geography, Hong Kong did not follow the colonial police model completely, but what it developed was still recognisable: an armed force serving the colonial officialdom. There were four key characteristics of the Hong Kong Police Force in its early stage. First, it was a paramilitary organisation. Officers patrolling the streets were armed and took the responsibility of protecting the ruling class and government agencies. Second, it operated in a structure of power centralisation. There was only one force and all its members were under the command of the police chief. Third, it was composed of different nationalities. European personnel were placed in decision-making and management positions, while Indian and Chinese staff served as frontline constables in the police organisation. It even recruited new members from Weihaiwei, the British concession in China’s Shandong Province. Fourth, it was often a case of policing by coercion. Brute force was used to enforce the law when it faced any challenge to order from society. The Hong Kong Police Force went through different stages in the twentieth century. From 1900 to 1941 was the era of specialisation. The force set up different departments for different functions, like the Transport Department and the Criminal Investigation Department. It gradually developed into a modern and professional law enforcement organisation. In late 1941, the Hong Kong Police Force was disbanded when the Japanese Imperial Army occupied Hong Kong. The force was built anew

2. Hong Kong Police Museum. (2008). Police Museum . Hong Kong: Police Museum, Hong Kong Police Force.

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when the British colonial regime regained control of Hong Kong in September 1945. With its post-war reconstruction basically completed in 1955, the force had a brighter future after the difficult period of three years and eight months of Japanese rule. Between 1956 and 1977, it endured two major riots and one very crucial internal conflict, which seriously tested and strained the force. The Double Ten Day riot in 1956 triggered the force to prepare itself better to confront politically motivated social unrest. The Police Training Contingent (PTC) was set up in 1958. Learning from the 1967 Riots, the Police Tactical Unit (PTU) became the professional anti-riot body. In 1969, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed on the Hong Kong Police Force the prefix of “Royal” to recognise its contribution to the suppression of the riots. In 1974, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) was formed to target police corruption. This led to a massive police mutiny, a direct confrontation between many rank-and-file policemen and the graft fighters in 1977. In the late 1970s, the force commenced a large-scale reform. It actively strengthened its community relations in the 1980s and progressively became a professional law enforcement organisation widely accepted and trusted by the local populace. In 1994, it launched serviceoriented policing. Upon the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, the force was renamed the Hong Kong Police Force, but its functional position of serving the community has been effectively maintained so far.

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Section I A Chronological Sketch of the Hong Kong Police Force before 1969

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Chapter 2 Opening of Chaos: The Birth of the Police Force on the Island

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Policing Hong Kong, 1842–1969: Insiders’ Stories

2.1 Rampant Piracy In 1841 the British troops landed in Hong Kong Island. On the day after landing, the flag-raising ceremony was held by the British to mark their occupation of Hong Kong.1 In 1842, the Qing government and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Nanking, under which Hong Kong Island became a colony of the British Crown. At that time, there was a population of just 6,000 people on Hong Kong Island. Most of them were Tanka fishermen and Hakka charcoal workers, living in poor villages along the coast. Commercial activities had been boosted in the area along the Pearl River in Guangdong Province since Hong Kong was opened to the outside world. It attracted a large number of foreign merchants to do business in that new market. Many vessels flying different national flags moored in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. Warehouses and terminals sprouted and spread across the island waterfront. Hong Kong prospered with a growing population as its trade developed rapidly. Pubs, gambling houses, opium dens and brothels also flourished in the busy commercial area. At that time, the British garrison based in Hong Kong was small, which made it difficult to maintain law and order on the Island. In addition to widespread robbery and looting, piracy was escalating in the surrounding waters. It was not easy to combat because the pirates usually hid themselves in the villages, among the normal residents, between their predatory acts. The Hong Kong government and the Qing government campaigned together against the pirates a number of times, but still failed to solve the piracy problem. There were two major groups of pirates, led by Tsui Ah Bo and Shup Ng Tsai who were fishermen in Wong Ma Kok, Stanley.

1. Siu Kwok-kin. (1994). Hong Kong History and Society . Hong Kong: Hong Kong Educational Press. [Chinese]

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In 1848, Governor George Bonham (1848–1854) requested the British Government to send its naval fleet against the growing number and power of pirates. The British navy set out to repress piracy in the autumn of 1849. Tsui Ah Bo was hit and escaped with his remains of his gang; in the same year, Shup Ng Tsai was made to surrender himself to the Qing government. In 1850, the navy hit Tsui Ah Bo again when they came across each other in Mirs Bay. On his way to Guangdong to surrender, Tsui Ah Bo was betrayed by his subordinates and offered to the British. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but finally committed suicide by hanging himself in prison.2

2.2 The Multi-Ethnic Force In the early days, policemen of different ethnicities worked in different positions of the Hong Kong Police Force under the authority of the colonial government. British and European nationals could be promoted to management and senior positions. Indians could generally hope to be promoted to Sergeant, and it was not uncommon for them to serve as Inspector. The highest rank that the Chinese could attain was Sergeant. In the annual report of the Police Chief, Walter Meredith Deane, submitted to the colonial government for the year 1873, it was asserted that in the early 1870s the Hong Kong Police Force had recruited officers from Africa and the West Indies. It was believed that they were sailors originally and they joined the Police Force after arriving in Hong Kong on their working vessels. However, Mr. Deane’s report stated that the Police

2. Siu Kwok-kin. (1986). The Social Changes in Hong Kong Before and After the Relocation of the Harbour in the Early Qing Dynasty . Taipei: Taiwan Shang Wu Yin Shu Guan. [Chinese]

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Force no longer recruited men from the West Indies due to their unsatisfactory performance.3 In April 1841, Sir Charles Elliot, the Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, authorised Mr. William Caine, the Chief Magistrate, to maintain law and order in Hong Kong. Caine proceeded to establish the Hong Kong Police Force. Due to this development, Caine Road in the Mid-Levels in Hong Kong Island was named in his honour. He recruited 32 people in total, including British and Indian soldiers who were garrisoned in Hong Kong and who voluntarily agreed to leave the army, foreign sailors and Chinese, and in doing so formed the first police force on the small Island.4 It was not easy for such a mixed team to manage public order effectively. The rampant piracy in those years made night patrols extremely dangerous and thus only few team members were willing to work the night shift. With no alternative, the government imposed a curfew. In the early days, the British strictly controlled the Chinese in Hong Kong. At the end of 1842, Caine imposed an order that disallowed the Chinese from walking in the streets after eleven o’clock at night. The year after, the Chinese were required to take lanterns with them on the streets from eight to ten every night, and were not allowed to go out at all after ten.5 On 1 May 1844, the Fifth Ordinance of the Laws of Hong Kong was enacted, and by it the Hong Kong Police Force was

3. Hong Kong Government. (1874). Bluebook . Hong Kong: Government Printer; Hong Kong Police (2004). Offbeat , Issue No. 777. 4. With reference to Ng Chi-wa (1999), there are divergent opinions on the strength of the Hong Kong Police Force upon its establishment. The exact number of personnel has been estimated at 28, 32 or even 93. However, none can be regarded as 100% accurate as no authoritative source can be found in the publicly accessible government archives nowadays. 5. Siu Kwok-kin. (1992). The Anecdotes of Hong Kong History . Hong Kong: Modern Educational Press. [Chinese]

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formally set up to perform its duties in law. Although the colonial force was established by the British, it did not follow the model of the new police forces in England, which were civil forces working in harmony with the communities they served. In order to prevent the expansion of Chinese power, the government heralded a curfew for Chinese people and allowed the police to lash Chinese. On one occasion, 54 Chinese men had their braids cut within a day. Every day, there were public floggings by police in Queen’s Road. Even worse, from 1871 onwards every Wednesday was considered to be the day of flogging. This barbaric regime was not repealed until Governor Hennessy took office six years later.6 In 1871, there were a total of 171 policemen in the Hong Kong Police Force. It was composed of different races, mainly Europeans and Indians, with a small number of Chinese. The European officers took the roles of decision making and management, while the Indian and Chinese members engaged in front-line work. At the very beginning, many members were former soldiers who had voluntarily left the British garrison in Hong Kong. Their job performance was not satisfactory at all. Their high rate of illness, serious alcohol abuse, low sense of belonging and high turnover rate seriously affected the operational efficiency of the police force as a whole. The first Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Henry Pottinger, asked the British Government for Police officers in the UK on duty in Hong Kong. The request was turned down due to the large expenditure involved. However, when the second Governor, Sir John Davis, took office, a chief inspector and two inspectors were sent to Hong Kong for the purpose of building a modern police force.

6. Yu Seng-wu. (1995). Cession of Hong Kong Island (Ge zhan Xianggang Dao) . Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co. [Chinese]

11

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Fig 2.1

Chinese and Indian Police in Hong Kong. Sikhs wore turbans (dastars ) instead of official caps, in religious observation.

12

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2. Opening of Chaos: The Birth of the Police Force on the Island

Table 2.1 Nationalities of Police Officers in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries7 Nationality

1867

1881

1908

1927

1946

89

103

131

246

377

Indian

377

194

410

753

325

Guangdong Chinese

132

351

501

600

1,630

Shandong Chinese

–

–

–

216

305

European

In the early days, Chinese policemen were not allowed on late-night duty, nor were they allowed to be stationed in European communities like the Peak district. Additionally, they were not equipped with any firearms. In 1878, disregarding objections from the British residents, Governor John Pope Hennessy first allowed the Chinese policemen to receive firearms training. However, once Hennessy left office, the training was immediately suspended. It was not until the 1920s that the Chinese policemen once more began to receive formal firearms training.8 All those policies reflected that the British Hong Kong government ruled the majority by minority rule. Before the Second World War, the policemen of different nationalities were grouped under different contingents, with different remunerations and career paths. Table 2.2 shows the income changes of the junior policemen from 1855 to 1915. The remuneration of European officers was two to three times higher

7. Hong Kong Government. (1928). Reports of Captain Superintendent of Police. Hong Kong Administrative Report 1927, Appendix K. Hong Kong: Government Printer; Hong Kong Government (1947). Annual Report on the Hong Kong Police Force 1946–1947 . Hong Kong: Government Printer; Jones, C & Vagg, J. (2007). Criminal Justice in Hong Kong . London: Routledge-Cavendish. 8. Jones, C. & Vagg, J. (2007). Criminal Justice in Hong Kong . London: RoutledgeCavendish.

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than that of their Indian and Chinese counterparts. As for the pay of the Indians and Chinese, the former were better paid than the latter in the nineteenth century, but in the early twentieth century their pay became comparable. Table 2.2 Annual Salaries of Rank and Files by Nationality, 1855–19159 Year (currency)

European

Indian

Chinese

1855 (pounds sterling)

47.10

20

13.15

1885 (HKD)

480

150

108

1915

100 pounds sterling

150 HKD

150 HKD

2.3 Separate Management of the Chinese and European Prior to the Second World War, the British colonial government adopted an “apartheid” policy of managing the Chinese and European separately.10 The Police Force principally served the European community. The response to the demand for a means to maintain law and order by the Chinese population was the creation of a separate body of watchmen. Upon the request of a group of Chinese businessmen in 1886, Governor Richard Graves MacDonnell granted permission for the Chinese to organise a District Watchmen Force in order to manage the security of their own community. With money raised by Chinese community groups in various districts and certain government funding, Chinese men in good physical health were recruited as watchmen. They were

9. Hong Kong Government. (Various Years). Hong Kong Bluebook . Hong Kong: Government Printer. The figures were from the Bluebook of 1855, 1885 and 1915. 10. Ng Chi-wa. (1999). Establishment and Early Development of the Police System in Hong Kong (Unpublished PhD thesis). The Chinese University of Hong Kong. [Chinese]

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responsible for patrolling the streets and apprehending thieves and criminals. The government funded these watchmen forces with an annual budget and appointed European police inspectors to monitor their operation. In 1922, the government spent about 2,000 Hong Kong dollars in total on them. In 1929 the force increased from 102 watchmen to 125.11 District Watchmen Forces were developed in various areas, from Sheung Wan in Hong Kong Island to the undeveloped areas such as Tai Po and Tsuen Wan in the New Territories. The Chinese community and businessmen in the City of Victoria (Central District) made donations for the organisation of watchmen forces for maintaining law and order in the region. The watchmen assisted the police force in protecting merchants and residents from crimes. In 1891, the Chinese merchants raised more than 7,200 dollars, with 2,000 dollars of government funding, to recruit physically-strong Chinese as the watchmen, responsible for guarding against thieves and criminals. A Board of Watchmen Forces was formed by 15 Chinese community leaders and chaired by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. There was one watchmen force office in each of the City of Victoria’s four districts. The government granted each of the watchmen forces 100 dollars a year for their operation costs. Extra funding for operations was contributed by local businesses as a proportion of rent collected, namely 1.25 dollars for every hundred dollars of rent. Pirates occasionally preyed on Tsuen Wan, one of the coastal districts in New Territories, Hong Kong. In order to ensure the safety of the inhabitants, the elders of the villages organised a watchmen force by recruiting the strongest youngsters in the villages. The watchmen force then took care of the law and order of the villages. The Tin Hau Temple was the usual venue

11. Secretary for Chinese Affairs. (1930). Report of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. Hong Kong Administrative Report 1929, Appendix C. Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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for meetings and settling disputes by the village elders, and thus became the headquarters of the watchmen force.12 The watchmen forces were not subordinate to the Police Force, but were managed by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and mainly funded by the Chinese business groups. They would take part in a range of policing duties like conducting censuses, combating teenage prostitution with the charitable organisation Po Leung Kuk, and arresting pickpockets and thieves. Since the watchmen forces had a close relationship with the local communities, they were very helpful to the Police Force in helping to keep things under control.

2.3.1 How Expatriate Police Managed the Chinese Population? In the early days, most European and Indian police officers joined the force because they no longer wanted to serve as soldiers. Their sense of responsibility for the job of policing was questionable. The Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong were not familiar with the British judicial system, and so it is of little surprise that they did not trust a police force that was made up of foreigners. In addition to the language barrier between the alien police officers and local residents, the force hardly ever maintained law and order effectively. In the late nineteenth century, more Chinese men joined the police force. Nevertheless, the British government reserved its trust in the indigenous policemen. At that time, the Chinese and European communities were clearly separated and the latter did not like the Chinese police patrolling in their communities. In fact, the government did not dare to give too much power

12. Hong Kong Museum of History. (1990). Collected Essays on Various Historical Materials for Hong Kong Studies . Hong Kong: Urban Council.

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to the local Chinese policemen for fear of its governance being threatened. In order to solve the problem of insufficient manpower in the police force, the government recruited personnel from India, as another colony of the British Empire in Asia; the number of Indian policemen employed was comparable to the number of Chinese, while the European officers fulfilled the management roles of the force. This organisational structure was used to curb the growth of Chinese power and avoid the potential threat to British governance. Big head in green coat whistled There was a popular nursery rhyme that described the police system to a certain extent. Children chanted: “ABCD, big head in green coat, blew whistle when failed to arrest thieves”. Since the 1920s, the policemen were grouped according to their ethnicity and assigned a different alphabetical letter before their batch numbers: “A” for the British and Europeans, “B” for Indians, “C” for Guangdong Chinese, “D” for Chinese recruited from Weihaiwei, Shandong, and “E” for Russians who joined the force after 1930 and specialised in marine work. Due to the dark green colour of the old-style Chinese police uniform, the police were named “green coats”. In the early days, there were a large number of Indian policemen who traditionally wore turbans the size of a rice cooker. They were therefore dubbed “Big head in green coat”. Later, when Chinese police officers were recruited, they wore conical straw hats which made their heads look big. Hence the public continued to call the police the “Big head in a green coat”, just as it used to.

From 1861 onwards, the Hong Kong Police Force recruited members from Mumbai, India, and targeted later Sikhs in the Punjab. Respecting the traditions and religious beliefs of the Sikhs, the Hong Kong Police Force permitted them to retain the custom of wearing turbans instead of caps. As the number of Indian policemen kept increasing, the Hong Kong Police Force 17

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sent senior British police officers to study Hindi in India from time to time in order to facilitate their communication with their Indian subordinates. This study arrangement continued until shortly before the Second World War. Indian Police Up to the Second World War, 23 Indian Hong Kong policemen had died in their line of duty while only nine Chinese and six British officers had lost their lives at their post. Indian policemen mostly worked in the front line, which explained why they made up more than a half of the deceased. Their contribution to law and order in Hong Kong should not be overlooked. For example, at the inauguration of Governor Henry May in 1912, a Chinese man, whose father had been dismissed by May when he was the police chief, attempted to assassinate the newly appointed Governor. Fortunately, there were two Indian policemen on hand who thwarted the assassination attempt promptly. Without their action, the Governor could not even have taken the oath of office smoothly.13

During the Second World War, some of the Indian police returned to India, while some of them continued to work in Hong Kong. The Japanese army did not treat the Indian policemen who stayed in Hong Kong as enemies, and allowed them to perform police work under the Japanese occupation. However, if they did not obey the Japanese leadership, or assisted the British in the prison camp, they would be executed. In the first two months of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, eight Indian policemen were put to death on these grounds.14 After the war, few Indian policemen served the Hong Kong force any longer. According to the Annual Report of the Hong

13. White, B. (1994). Turbans and Traders: Hong Kong’s Indian Communities . Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. 14. Vaid, K. (1972). The Overseas Indian Community in Hong Kong . Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, The University of Hong Kong.

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Kong Police Force for 1946–47, only three out of the former 300 Indian policemen continued to work in Hong Kong. Part of this can perhaps be ascribed to a change in the political relationship between Britain and India. The former British colony split into two independent countries, India and Pakistan. The new government of India did not support the colonial government of Hong Kong recruiting from the Punjab. It even withheld permission from the Indian policemen who took leave at homeland after the war from resuming duties in Hong Kong. Therefore, the Hong Kong government went to find other sources of personnel. It simultaneously increased the number of local Chinese policemen and recruited Muslims from Pakistan, India’s neighbour.15 Two recruitment drives were conducted by the Hong Kong Police Force in Pakistan. The first one was held in 1952 and recruited 156 personnel; the second one in 1961 recruited 47. Those recruited in the first round travelled to Hong Kong by train and then cargo vessel, with 13 days at sea. There were more applicants in the second recruitment drive, probably because they found their friends recruited in the first round enjoyed good pay and good lives in Hong Kong. In the second drive, the Superintendent Peter Moor led two colleagues to conduct the recruitment of policemen in four cities in Pakistan, specifically Rawalpindi, Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi. The Pakistani candidates were required to undergo a strict selection procedure in order to obtain the letters of appointment. The good salary on offer was their main motivation for applying. A Pakistani policeman in Hong Kong could receive a salary of up to 180 Hong Kong dollars per month, which was four times that of a general civil servant in Pakistan. It thus attracted as many as 2,000 on-site applications for 50 places in the recruitment held in Lahore. Yet, only five were employed in the end, most of whom

15. Ibid .

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held university degrees and were able to speak fluent English. The interviewers were inclined to pick those candidates who had received military training. They also favoured those who were family members of the Pakistani police officers employed in 1952, probably because they were regarded as being better able to adapt to a new life in Hong Kong. A retired Pakistani policeman who was among those recruited in 1961 recalled: I was well-educated and able to speak fluent English. This explains why I could stand out among the 2,000 candidates and was admitted successfully. Being single was one of the entry requirements. In order to get the employment, some candidates who had passed the preliminary interview but were rejected due to their married status brought their wives and kids to the interviewer’s office and publicly announced that they would divorce their wives.

The 47 Pakistani recruits went to Hong Kong by air. Pan American World Airways especially set aside some space in the plane for their personal belongings and carried their luggage together with their favourite chicken curry to Hong Kong. Upon arrival, they were all assigned to live in an abandoned military camp temporarily. They then moved into quarters that were specifically built for them. In the quarters, they had a dedicated chef who served traditional Pakistani food; and their own barber. They worshipped in the mosque inside the quarters while, later, their children studied in the Islamic school in the vicinity. Afterwards, some of the Pakistani children enrolled in the general schools in the community and studied with the local students.16 At that time, the policemen from Pakistan were classified as overseas employees by the Hong Kong Police Force. They not only received a monthly special allowance of 20 Hong Kong

16. Royal Hong Kong Police Force. (1980). Offbeat , Issue No. 197.

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Dollars but also enjoy six-month paid holidays after five years of service. The long holidays were designed for them to visit their hometown and family. However, they were eligible for those benefits only if they did not marry in the first five years of service. As they were socially conservative and preferred to marry women from their own culture, many Pakistani policemen took advantage of the long paid leave to get married in their hometowns after the five years of service. Few Pakistani policemen married Chinese women in Hong Kong. Some of the Pakistani policemen who arrived in Hong Kong in 1952 were deployed for anti-smuggling activities in Hong Kong Island; some of them joined the Shandong policemen to make up the Emergency Unit of Kowloon. Those who worked in the Emergency Unit were dispatched to cope with internal unrest in Hong Kong. In the Double Ten Day Riots of 1956, the Pakistani policemen, wearing white helmets, were sent to round up the troublemakers in Sham Shui Po in Kowloon. Since many of them had worked in the armed forces in Pakistan before, they were physically strong enough to control the riot. A Pakistani policeman on duty in the Double Ten Day Riots recalled: I remember that the thugs kept throwing stones and even soft drink bottles at us. We held the shields and unceasingly dispersed the crowd. The most impressive incident was the kidnapping of a rich Chinese businessman during the riot. We searched the Castle Peak in New Territories under orders. We successfully arrested the suspect and finally rescued the hostage.

The group worked in the New Territories Emergency Unit involved in the sensational gunfight in Lam Tsuen in 1964. An outlaw confronted the police in the forest of Lam Tsuen for seven hours. The non-stop gunfight between the two sides left four people dead and many wounded.

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Another group of Pakistani policemen, stationed in the border area, were often sent to patrol in the mountains and intercept illegal immigrants. They recalled that in cold winter weather, when the temperature was below 10 degrees Celsius, they continued their outdoor work as usual. When working in the mountains, they were stiff most of the time. It was undoubtedly a great challenge to them. A retired Pakistani policeman recalled: We had to be on duty in the mountains even when typhoon signal number ten was hoisted. However, the toughest time was working in mountains in hard winters. Once a British commanding officer came up and inspected our work. He could not urinate because he was so cold that he was not able to unzip his trousers. He asked our help but it was too late for us to do anything because he had already peed!

In the 1967 disturbances, many Pakistani policemen were sent to work in the border area. Several of them were killed in the shooting incident in Sha Tau Kok on 9 July.17 As the Muslim Pakistani policemen did not smoke cigarettes some of them were assigned to police the official explosive store on Stonecutters Island. In the ten years between the enrolment of the first and the second batch of Pakistani policemen in 1952 and 1961 respectively, some of the outstanding recruits were promoted as group leaders, responsible for managing the other Pakistani policemen as well as drilling the marching and firearms technique of the second batch of policemen. Meanwhile, a number of Chinese teachers were employed to teach the Pakistani policemen basic Cantonese. As a result, most of the Pakistanis in the 1970s were able to communicate with the local people on a basic level.

17. Royal Hong Kong Police Force. (1995). Offbeat , Issue No. 571.

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Fig 2.2

The review of Pakistanis policemen in Hong Kong by the Offbeat magazine No. 197 of the Hong Kong Police, 1980.

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Fig 2.3

Two Pakistanis policemen recruited in Pakistan and reported duty in 1962.

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Those Pakistani policemen, working far away from their homeland, mostly served Hong Kong with great honour and pride. Their work in Hong Kong also made their friends and relatives in their home country envious, regardless of the fact that in Pakistan policemen did not have a good reputation. In the 1960s, the situation in Hong Kong was not stable and the 1967 Riots even lasted for more than half a year. The Pakistani policemen, with no political stance or national feeling in Hong Kong, were able to fulfil their duties and implement orders impartially. Under the police reform in the early 1970s, the Pakistani policemen were no longer regarded as a distinct category in the police force. All of them were deployed to different departments. From that time, their contacts with colleagues of different races increased. Because of their good character, they cooperated closely with the local Chinese policemen. Some of them were even promoted to the rank of inspector. The last Pakistani policeman to retire was recruited by Peter Moor in 1961.18 He worked in the shooting incident in Sha Tau Kok and had been promoted to Senior Inspector when he retired in 1996. Today, all those recruited in Pakistan have retired. Some of their descendants have joined the Force as local citizens and continued to serve Hong Kong.

2.3.2 How Shandong Police Managed the Local Cantonese Population Hong Kong is a Chinese community, and hence the frontline policemen are predominantly Guangdong Chinese. Donguan, Hakka and Chaozhou policemen have long played an important

18. Royal Hong Kong Police Force. (1996). Offbeat , Issue No. 576.

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role in the Hong Kong Police Force. One special group of Chinese in the history of the Police Force should be noted — those recruited from Weihaiwei in the Shandong Province of China. The burly and strong Shandong policemen were assigned to the station in the Peak as well as the Western and Central districts, where European resided. Most of them were not fluent in Cantonese and so worked in the absence of mutual communication with the local Guangdong Chinese residents. This was in line with the strategy of not relying on local recruitment that had been adopted by the British colonial government. After World War I, in order to improve the efficiency of the police, the British government started to recruit police in Weihaiwei in Shandong Province in China. According to the official statistics, the first group from Shandong was recruited in 1922. To facilitate the first recruitment drive in Weihaiwei, an expatriate police officer, two or three local training instructors and a Shandong-English interpreter joined in. The selection criteria were tougher for the Shandong candidates than their Hong Kong counterparts: for example, the Shandong candidates had to be at least five feet seven inches (170 cm) tall with a muscular build. More than 50 policemen in total were recruited from the first recruitment in Shandong. After six months of training in Weihaiwei, they were transported to Hong Kong by British warship for about a week, accompanied by an EnglishShandong language interpreter. By 1946, as many as 300 policemen had been recruited from Shandong Province.19 All the admitted candidates received training with the accompanying instructors in Shandong and went to serve in Hong Kong after training. They were eligible for a holiday of three months after a service of three years. Apart from visiting relatives, most of the traditional and conservative Shandong

19. Secretary for Chinese Affairs. (1930). Report of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. Hong Kong Administrative Report 1929, Appendix C. Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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policemen would make use of the long holiday to get married in their hometown. They then returned with their spouses and settled down in Hong Kong. Selection by Hand According to a retired police officer, his native Shandong grandfather joined the recruitment in Weihaiwei and was required to put his hands out for the British interviewer’s touch. It was said that candidates with rough hands had a higher chance of admission, compared with those with tender skin, because the interviewer preferred those with tough and bitter life experience.

With limited knowledge of English and Cantonese, the Shandong policemen were segregated and classified as a group with numbers different from the local Guangdong policemen. They were assigned the batch numbers 2501 to 3000 and 4701 to 4800 and group D, one of the A-E scheme for grouping by races. Due to the language barrier, they generally worked in the Peak district, remote areas in the New Territories, and the Transport Department.20 Good appetite A retired local policeman who worked with Shandong counterparts recalled that they had a very good appetite and always complained that insufficient food was provided. He remembered that there was a cook hired specifically for the Shandong men in the police station, with the food originally provided at a fixed contract pricey. The cook was surprised to find that all the Shandongese were trenchermen, and he promptly changed the price to a per-portion basis.

The local Chinese did not know English and thus were unwilling to work in the Peak where the European resided. In

20. Hong Kong Police. (2004). Offbeat , Issue No. 777.

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fact, the expatriate communities did not like the local Chinese policemen but favoured the burly and apparently simple-minded Shandong policemen. Despite their lower education level, the meticulous Shandong policemen were always dispatched to work in Central and Western districts as well as the Peak. A Guangdong Chinese who worked with the Shandong policemen recalled, A majority of the Shandong colleagues were assigned to work in the Peak station. They were not able to speak Cantonese and it was difficult for them to communicate with the local people. Thus, they kept working in the Peak and we seldom linked up with them. At the time when I was stationed in the Wanchai Police Station, there was a patrol car. In the daytime, there were two Shandong associates on patrol. Two local colleagues would join them in the evenings just because it required more manpower in the night time.

All the members of the Emergency Unit of Hong Kong Island, which was established in 1927, were from Shandong, except three expatriate Inspectors. Working away from their hometown, the Shandong police were not close to the local people. Without much entertainment, most of them studied hard in their spare time. English was always the subject they were most keen to learn in order to gain opportunities for promotion, and it paid off: many of them were eventually promoted to the position of Sergeant. A retired Guangdong Chinese policeman praised his Shandong partner profusely: My Shandong colleague did not know even the English letters when he arrived in Hong Kong. He was so hardworking that he enrolled on a lot of courses in his spare time. Later, he was promoted as Probationary Inspector. He kept pursuing further education, and he entered the legal profession and became the first onthe-job Queen’s Counsel in the force.

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After 1949, the Hong Kong Police Force stopped recruiting in Shandong. However, under the influence or encouragement of their elders and relatives, many offspring of the Shandong policemen themselves joined the force. Today, there are still the descendants of Shandong serving in the Police Force.

2.4 Policemen Onboard The Royal Navy was tasked with defending British merchantmen travelling from Hong Kong to the coastal cities of Mainland China against piracy. In 1929, however, the British military decided not to support commercial shipping in that way any longer. Consequently, the Anti-Piracy Guards unit of the Hong Kong Police Force was set up in May 1930 and took over the escort work. In addition to Shandong and Indian, 25 Russians were recruited to join the unit. The Russian policemen were under the fifth group of the Police Force, identified with the letter E. The entire cost of the Anti-Piracy Guards was borne by the British companies that required the escort service. Jardines and Swire Pacific Co. Ltd, names with which we are still familiar today, were the main clients of the escort service. The merchant vessels of Swire Pacific sailed between Britain and Tianjin, China, with Hong Kong as a port of call. In times of serious piracy, the merchants paid for Hong Kong policemen to be stationed onboard their ships in order to combat pirates. The official data of the Hong Kong Police Force showed that no British merchant ships with police onboard were robbed by pirates in their way to Mainland China from June to December of 1930. Conversely, those merchant ships without the presence of police were always the pirates’ favoured targets. In the late 1930s, the Commissioner of Police deemed that escorting was not

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the primary responsibility of the Hong Kong Police Force. The task of escorting convoys was then gradually dropped.21

Table 2.3 Anti-Piracy Guards in 193222 Origins of Members

Number

Russian Police Officers

28 23

Indian Police Officers

28

European Sergeants

6

Indian Sergeants

8

Shandong Police officers

95

Companies

Staff

Canadian Pacific Steam Ship Co.

1 British

12 Russians

4 British

36 Indians

Team A: 4 British

Teams A & B:

Team B: 13 Russians

78 Shandong Chinese

Mackinnon, Mackenzie & Co. Jardine, Matheson & Co. Butterfield & Swire

21. Hong Kong Police. (1930). Report of the Inspector General of Police. Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1930, Appendix K. Hong Kong: Government Printer. 22. Hong Kong Government. (1931). Report of the Inspector General of Police. Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1930, Appendix K. Hong Kong: Government Printer. 23. The Government Administrative Report stated that there were 28 Russian policemen in the Hong Kong Police Force in 1931. However, the figure of 25 is given in most of the other governmental sources, including the official journal Offbeat and the Hong Kong Police Museum.

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Foreign aid from Russia In the 1930s, 25 Russians were recruited and employed in the AntiPiracy Guards. They came from the anti-Communist forces in Siberia. They were incorporated into the Hong Kong Police Force due to their capacity for hard work and extensive experience in battle. During World War II, some of the Russians, together with British officers, were jailed in the prison camp in Stanley. Four of them continued their service in the Hong Kong Police Force after the war. After the Anti-Piracy Guards unit was disbanded in the late 1930s, they served in different departments of the Police Force. Mr L. N. Karpovich was the last Russian anti-piracy team member to leave– he was working as a Communications Officer when he retired in the early 1960s.24

A shootout in the early twentieth century In the morning of 22 January 1918, a rarely-seen shootout between police and criminals happened in Hong Kong, which resulted casualties of British, Chinese and Indian policemen. Two British officers led several Chinese colleagues to search a collection of stolen goods in No. 6, Morrison Street, Wanchai, according to intelligence. They were attacked by the suspected robbers. Two British officers and one Chinese were shot to death. When more policemen arrived on the scene, two criminals took the opportunity to escape and exchanged gunfire with two Indian policemen. The rest of the criminals inside the apartment were surrounded by the police. It was reported that the shootout alarmed the senior government officials and the Governor May also acted as the commander at the scene. The standoff lasted for 18 hours and a total of four police officers were killed on the spot, including two British, one Chinese and one Indian. One more Chinese policeman died from his wounds in hospital two days later. The firefight also left three culprits dead, one arrested and two escaped.25

24. Royal Hong Kong Police Force. (1987). Offbeat , Issue No. 360. 25. Hong Kong Police. (1928). Report of Captain Superintendent of Police. Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1927, Appendix K. Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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2.5 The Multi-Tasking Force It is not widely known that the police performed various duties in the pre-war period. Before the Second World War, the Police Force was also responsible for firefighting, population registration, import and export matters, and directing traffic, as well as the issue of identity documents, driving licenses, vehicle registrations, and even dog licenses. In remote areas, they even coped with sales of stamps and the postal service. The Superintendent was an ex officio member of the Sanitary Board, the former Urban Council, and so the police were required to patrol the markets and manage the city hygiene. They in fact undertook the jobs of the current Fire Services Department, Immigration Department, Transport Department, Food and Environmental Hygiene Department and the Post Office. It is clear that the police played a major role in society.26 Fire Services: At the end of the nineteenth century, the Fire Brigade was part of the Hong Kong Police Force. Its head was also the chief of police. From 1941, the fire services were independent from the Police Force. Immigration: In the very beginning, the Police Force had responsibility over population registration and immigration matters, including the issuance of identity documents, as well as searching for and deporting illegal immigrants. The Immigration Department was established in 1961, and thereafter the police no longer performed such duties. Transport: In addition to directing traffic and enforcement of traffic laws, the Force was also responsible for issuing driving licenses. Registration of vehicles and some early means of transport, such as sedan chairs and rickshaws, was also the

26. Hong Kong Police. (2004). Offbeat , Issue No. 770.; Ho. P. Y. (2004). The Administrative History of the Hong Kong Government Agencies, 1841–2002 . Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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responsibility of the police before the creation of the Transport Department in 1965. Health Services: In the nineteenth century, the Police Chief was an ex officio member of the Sanitary Department, the predecessor of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. Thus, some policemen were dedicated to the inspection of wet markets and the management of city hygiene. In the time of the brothel licensing system, inspectors were also sent for the on-site inspection of these premises. Postal Services: The early postal services of Hong Kong were not as mature as those of today. In the remote areas, the sale of stamps and the collection and distribution of letters took place in police stations. Other Services: Other than the above duties, the Police Force was also responsible for the issuance of dog licenses, and managing missing and stray dogs. It also managed the regulatory licensing of dangerous goods and services. Besides this, it implemented the Weights and Measures Ordinance and ensured vendors used proper measuring tools by inspections.

2.6 Recruitment and Training before World War II Before the Second World War, there were neither standardised guidelines nor even the concept of interviews for police recruitment in Hong Kong. As long as one dared to apply, one would have a chance to be admitted as a policeman, even if illiterate. At that time, the wages of police were far more attractive than those of apprentices. A retiree joined the Police Force in 1938 recalled: I was 20 years old in 1938. I heard about the police recruitment and so went to apply with other people. At that time, not many people got educated formally. It was 33

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Fig 2.4

Varying training contents for the police recruits of different ethnicities in 1930, published in Hong Kong Administrative Report 1930 .

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not a big deal, because there was no entry examination. As long as we were able to impress the examiner, we would be admitted. I earned 18 dollars a month when I was newly recruited. In comparison, there was no wage for an apprentice in other industries in the beginning; and two dollars later in middle stage and four dollars after apprenticeship.

Table 2.4 Training Course Contents in the 1940s Police Constables

• Police Regulations and General Instructions • Ordinances: all those that apply to police • Police Code • Sections and Beats • Local Knowledge • Educational Subjects • Police Court Routine • Observation Lessons • Physical Drill • Squad and Rifle Drill • Musketry Course • Revolver Course • Urdu and/or Gurumukhi and/or English (Indians recruits only) • English and Arithmetic: Elementary (Chinese recruits only) • Geography of China (Chinese recruits only) • Excerpts from Book of Morals (Chinese recruits only)

District Watchmen Recruits

• Police Regulation Book (selected portions) and General Instructions • Ordinances (selected) • Local Knowledge • Physical Drill • Squad Drill

District Watchmen Regulars

• Drilled weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays • During the year three men received instruction in Police Regulations

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The Police Training School was established in 1920. Since the school premises in Wong Chuk Hang had not been completed yet, training of new recruits took place in police stations or other places. For example, those serving in Kowloon were trained in Mongkok Police Station. For those working in Hong Kong Island, some of them received training in the Central Police Station and other in St. Stephen’s School. The teachers of police cases and legal studies were the civilians who managed the legal documents in police stations. The instructors of foot drill were Indian sergeants who were able to speak Cantonese, as recalled by a retiree who joined the force in 1941: After three months of training, the policemen were assigned to work in different police stations. Before the Second World War, there were no more than a thousand policemen. The insufficient manpower created an uncommon duty roster for the policemen, who had to be on-duty for four hours in the morning and had another four-hour session in the evening. In between the morning and evening sessions, there were eight hours for rest; while marching drill would also be arranged during the eight-hour break once or twice a week.

In those years, the Chinese policemen wore different uniforms during the days and nights. In the day time, they wore a slouch hat made of taxus, which protected them from the high temperature and sunlight. At night, they wore caps instead. They wore green shorts and socks with tight legs for going out.

2.7 Police Reserve and the Special Police Constabulary In the early twentieth century, the Hong Kong government convened the Police Reserve several times, in order to support the 36

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regular police in maintaining law and order in particular crises. First created in 1914, the Police Reserve experienced several changes of its name and organisational structure, which was consistent with the changes of the social situation. There were two separate teams with Chinese and expatriate members in the Police Reserve, and in the years before and right after the Second World War, all the non-ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong had to serve in the Police Reserve so as to consolidate British defence against Japanese invasion. This supporting force regularly experienced being formed for a short time and then disbanded. The Police Reserve was first formed in 1914, when the British members of the Hong Kong Police Force departed to fight in the First World War. The Hong Kong government thus passed the Special Police Reserve Ordinance and formed the Hong Kong Special Police Reserve in order to fill up the temporary vacancies left by the policemen on war service.27 The Special Police Reserve had 250 members when it was disbanded in 1917 after three years of operation. Later, it began to operate again as the Hong Kong Police Reserve, with its responsibilities and rights unchanged. It was disbanded again in 1919. As a result of the political changes in Mainland China, a large-scale strike, known as the Canton-Hong Kong strike, broke out in Hong Kong and Guangzhou from June 1925 to October 1926. To strengthen the police in dealing with unexpected incidents under the unstable situation, the government reorganised the Hong Kong Police Reserve with more than 290 personnel. These were arranged in different contingents according to their races. In 1930 the Police Reserve was composed of four contingents, namely Chinese, Indian, European and the Marine Police. During the Japanese invasion of China in 1939, the

27. Hong Kong Government. (1914–1917). Report of Captain Superintendent of Police. Hong Kong Administrative Reports, Appendix K. Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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Compulsory Service Ordinance was enacted. It forced all British nationals in Hong Kong who were not ethnic Chinese to undertake voluntary work for the purpose of increasing the lawenforcing power of Hong Kong. In 1940, there were more than one thousand personnel in the Police Reserve. It is interesting that the Hong Kong government set up a Chinese-based Police Reserve at the same time. The so-called Hong Kong Special Police Constabulary co-existed with the Hong Kong Police Reserve and they maintained the law and order of the community together.

2.7.1 Special Police Constabulary When the Japanese eagerly planned to occupy Hong Kong in the mid-1941, the Hong Kong government established the Chinesebased Special Police Constabulary under the command of the Commissioner of Police, Mr. I. Penefather Evans. Mr. Lok Oiwan, a Chinese tycoon, was responsible for the recruitment of 3,000 Chinese constables. The recruitment office was located on the ground floor of the Central Magistracy in Connaught Road, Central District.28 The Hong Kong Governor later appointed Mr. Law Tung Fun, a Chinese lawyer, as the Honorary Deputy Commissioner of Police to manage the Chinese special team directly. The first two batches of Chinese special police went through training in the Police Training School in Prince Edward Road. The following batches, with greater numbers, were trained at the South China Athletic Association grounds in Caroline Hill Road and Swire Amusement Park in Quarry Bay. Though the Chinese special policemen had their own jobs, they took the same training courses of marching, weapons training, police cases and so on, as their counterparts of the Hong Kong Police Force and the Hong

28. Lam, C. B. (1997). Looking Back with Pride and Glory: Hong Kong Auxiliary Police History Book (1914–1997) . Hong Kong: Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force.

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Kong Police Reserve. In December 1941, the Japanese troops laid siege to Hong Kong. All Chinese special policemen were called to gather at the South China Athletic Association on 12 December and arranged to be stationed in the air-raid shelters in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. Yet, as the Japanese captured Hong Kong on Christmas Day, Governor Sir Mark Young surrendered and the Chinese special police team was also disbanded.29 Table 2.5 Chronology of the “Part-time” Police in Hong Kong Year 1914

Hong Kong Special Police Reserve was established

1917–1919

Hong Kong Special Police Reserve was renamed to be the Hong Kong Police Reserve

1927

Hong Kong Police Reserve was re-organised

1941

Hong Kong Special Police Constabulary was established

1945

Hong Kong Police Reserve and Hong Kong Special Police Constabulary were restored after World War II

1951

Compulsory Service Ordinance was passed. Under the provisions of the Ordinance, the British nationals residing in Hong Kong were required to serve in the Special Police Constabulary

1959

Hong Kong Police Reserve and Hong Kong Special Police Constabulary combined together and formed the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police. All auxiliary police were salaried part-time employees

1969

The Queen bestowed the title of “Royal” on the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police which was then renamed as Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Police

29. The Special Police Constabulary, Hong Kong (1949). Special Bulletin of the Special Police Constabulary of Hong Kong . Hong Kong: The Special Police Constabulary, Hong Kong.

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The Special Police Constabulary finally recruited a total of 1,500 Chinese personnel, in order to support the insufficient regular policemen. Most of them studied in missionary schools, were born in Hong Kong and spoke fluent English. They joined the Special Police Constabulary under the encouragement of their British teachers. The wages of the Constabulary force were very attractive: in 1937, a special policeman earned one dollar for an eight-hour working day, while a full-time police officer earned less than 20 dollars a month. What are rates? The Chinese word for rates indicates that it was levied for the payment of the police. In 1845, just four years after the establishment of Hong Kong Government by the British, rates were introduced and initially used to cover the cost of policing, street lighting, drinking water and fire control. As time passed, rates became a kind of indirect tax on the occupation of properties that are on lease or in use. It was the part of government revenue that funded the municipal services for the urban areas and New Territories, which were provided by the Unban Council and Regional Council respectively.

2.8 Summary To review the establishment and early development of the Hong Kong Police Force, we must understand the colonial governance system of Hong Kong. Established in 1844, the Hong Kong Police Force was an armed force serving the colonial rulers. It was adapted from the model of the Royal Irish Police Force and organised with military features. It was policing by coercion in that it enforced laws by force if the citizens did not cooperate. Multi-ethnicity was another feature of the Police Force, which was led by European nationals who were not familiar with the community while front-line duties were taken by Indian and Chinese nationals. 40

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A British scholar on colonial policy, Sinclair remarked that there was the common practice of top-down segregation in the early police system in the British colonies. The former curator of Hong Kong Police Museum, Ng C. W. analysed that the British did not introduce their own legal and judicial systems completely in Hong Kong, and even had the Chinese and European residents under the governance of different police teams. In addition to the formal establishment of the Hong Kong Police Force, the British allowed the local Chinese to form their own watchmen forces in order to maintain law and order in their community. The police force and the watchmen forces were totally different in the ways they operated and their service targets. Ng also argued that the policy of managing the Chinese and European separately reflects the fact that British government did not trust the Chinese population of Hong Kong. Therefore, the Police Force initially was mainly formed by expatriates. He pointed out that there was widespread anti-foreign sentiment in the Hong Kong Chinese community as a result of the Opium War and battles with British and French troops. The colonial government was afraid that the Hong Kong Chinese would overthrow the colonial rule together with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom or the Qing government. As a result, not many Chinese were allowed to join the Hong Kong Police Force.30 Not until 1872 did the police begin recruiting more Chinese to join the force. It also continuously adjusted the proportion of Chinese to European and Indian members. It attempted to improve its working efficiency by assigning the officers of different ethnicities to different types of police work. It even recruited policemen from Weihaiwei in Shandong Province from 1922. Though there were more ethnic Chinese in the Police Force, the colonial Hong Kong government still mistrusted the

30. Sinclair, G. (2006). At the End of the Line: Colonial Policing and the Imperial Endgame 1945–80 . Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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local Chinese policemen. The dual police system terminated officially after the Second World War. Watchmen forces were also disbanded in 1949. The Hong Kong Police Force thus strengthened the localisation of personnel by stopping the recruitment of European nationals for the rank and file posts as well as hiring more local Chinese as Probationary Inspectors.31 The early performance of the Police Force was far from satisfactory. The first recruits were mostly former soldiers of the British Army, who joined the police because they did not want to serve as soldiers. In addition to the language barrier with the local Chinese, the indolent ex-soldiers could not maintain law and order effectively. When crimes occurred, they mostly failed to reach the scene in time. It made the security worse because they feared revenge in the dark streets and did not dare to have night patrols. The situation was not improved much after Indian and Chinese members joined the Police Force. The Hong Kong Police Force was seriously riddled with corruption too. The policemen thus tried different ways to increase their income. They privately operated gambling houses, pubs and brothels. They also received bribes from people who asked for their favour. People stuffed money inside matchboxes and passed the boxes to the policemen by pretending to pass them matches to light their cigarettes, or sent the policemen sealed envelopes with cheques inside in the name of “petitions”. Gifts were indispensable at festivals and New Year. In 1879, the police chief, Henry May, investigated corruption of the police personally. He seized a record of bribes to the police by syndicate leaders and revealed a 42-year history of corruption. Such a force definitely could not gain respect and trust from the public. Governor MacDonnell had also exclaimed, “I had never

31. Ng Chi-Wa. (1999). Establishment and Early Development of the Police System in Hong Kong (Unpublished PhD thesis). The Chinese University of Hong Kong. [Chinese]

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seen nor heard of any colonial police force [...] as corruptive, useless, unreliable and inefficient as the Hong Kong Police.”32 Stewed mushrooms This is a popular expression among Hong Kong policemen. It was initially used to refer to a plain-clothes detective who was demoted to the uniformed ranks. It has now spread to refer to all kinds of degradation of rank in the Police Force. In the early days, the Indian policemen traditionally wore turbans the size of a rice cooker, and individual members were known as a “big head in green coat”. The Chinese policemen wore the same green uniform but did not wear a turban, and thus were called “green coats”. With reference to the headgear of the Qing army, the early Chinese policemen of Hong Kong Police Force in the 1850s wore a straw conical hat that resembled a mushroom in shape. The Chinese policemen were jokingly referred to as “mushroom heads”. The term “stewed mushroom” first appeared in the post-war years. It referred to those plain-clothes policemen who were relegated to uniform. The vested interests of the degraded policemen, like bribes, salaries and degree of freedom, were exploited to a certain extent. The Chinese word for “stew” originates from another word which implies “to level down in an instant”. It gives “stewed mushroom” a more specific meaning and it became more popular. Nowadays, the term is commonly applied in different industries in Hong Kong.

To address the issue of understaffing, the Hong Kong Police Reserve was formed, and expatriates in Hong Kong were encouraged to join the police on a voluntary basis. As society changed, the government not only empowered the Police Reserve to the same extent as the regular police, but it also set up the Hong Kong Special Police Constabulary and recruited locallyborn Chinese. In the late 1950s, the government reformed the

32. Ng Chi-Wa. (1999). Establishment and Early Development of the Police System in Hong Kong (Unpublished PhD thesis). The Chinese University of Hong Kong. [Chinese]

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entire reserve police system. The Hong Kong Police Reserve and Hong Kong Special Police Constabulary were merged into the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force. The auxiliary police members no longer served voluntarily, but instead received payment on a part time basis.

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Chapter 3 Unstable Years: The Police Force during the Japanese Occupation and the Post-War Reconstruction

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During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the Japanese military police took over the Hong Kong Police Force and the police officers became Kempeitai. After liberation, there was a full-scale reconstruction. The British government sent officers from other Commonwealth jurisdictions to Hong Kong to rebuild the Police Force.

3.1 Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation On 7 December 1941, the Japanese launched a sudden attack against Pearl Harbour and started the war in the Pacific Ocean. The response in Hong Kong came in two forms. Firstly, the government stepped up the evacuation of European residents. On the other hand, it actively prepared for war by gathering volunteer and civil defence organisations like the Police Reserve. In the morning of 8 December, the Japanese assault on Hong Kong began. Japanese aircraft bombed Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. Kowloon and the New Territories were occupied on 12 December. On 18 December, Japanese troops landed on Hong Kong Island. After a number of fierce battles, the Governor, Sir Mark Young, surrendered late on Christmas Eve. It marked the start of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong which would for three years and eight months. In early December 1941, the Hong Kong police went to arrest the Japanese in Hong Kong and took them into custody as “enemy civilians”. However, the raid was not very successful, because many Japanese had already escaped. Soon the Japanese troops moved from Mainland China and attacked Hong Kong. Kowloon became the first part of the colony to fall. A policeman who was receiving training in the Mongkok Police Station at the time of the Japanese attack recalled the chaotic scene vividly: 46

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I joined the Police Force in the end of November 1941 and had already received training for several days. One morning, when we were having morning drill, a Japanese plane flew in the sky. Later, the sound of explosions was heard, and smoke from Sham Shui Po could be seen. We knew that the situation had become worse. Shortly afterwards, the instructors left. My colleagues and I could not do anything but fled in fright. We ran to Tsim Sha Tsui with the hope of crossing the harbour and reporting for duty in any police station of Hong Kong Island. Unfortunately, we were not able to get on board at the Tsim Sha Tsui pier as the policemen did, because we were police trainees only and did not have uniforms and warrant cards. We then walked back home to Sham Shui Po. The streets were crowded with people, but with no vehicles. Some hooligans stole buses and trucks and cried “Victory!” outside the shops on the streets.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, some Chinese youngsters joined the Police Reserve. They became the antiJapanese activists in the fighting in Hong Kong. An ex-member of Police Reserve recalled his deeds against the Japanese: I was born in Hong Kong and attended the matriculation class in King’s College before the war. The school term was not even over when Hong Kong fell. I joined the Police Reserve before the war and had received training for about six months. When the Japanese were going to attack Hong Kong from the mainland, the Hong Kong government called the Police Reserve for duty. I was thus enlisted for the defence of Hong Kong and worked in Air Raid Precaution. When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong Island from Kowloon, there was local defensive war on Hong Kong Island. Together with the defence forces, we fired on the Japanese boats with machine guns and tried to stop them from landing at the waterfront of Hong 47

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Kong Island, though we ultimately failed to do so. Once the Japanese occupied Hong Kong, they made raids on many places and looked for us.

After the Japanese occupied Hong Kong on 25 December 1941, there were two periods in their governance of Hong Kong. The first one was a very short period of military governance. Official circulars were issued in the name of military government. The second commenced when General Rensuke Isogai was appointed as the first Japanese Governor of Hong Kong in February 1942. Cheng Po-Hung, a veteran authority on Hong Kong history, analysed the Japanese strategy for the occupied territory as follows: When the Japanese authority set up the Governor’s Office in Hong Kong in February 1942, it had made clear that Hong Kong was a military base that mainly supported military supplies for the Japanese army. Such an inconsiderate direction resulted in all kinds of stringent measures that the Japanese practiced in Hong Kong, including forced collection of resources, storage of goods, vehicles, metals and food, as well as abusive printing of Japanese military yen for forced exchanged with Hong Kong dollars. With the excuse of self-sufficiency, the Japanese authority forcibly repatriated people to their native areas in China with the aim of reducing the local population from 1.6 million before the war to 500,000. Most European who were unfortunately stranded in Hong Kong were imprisoned in detention camps, while the local people were treated brutally and monitored closely by the Japanese military force.1

1. Cheng Po-hung. (2006). Hong Kong Under Japanese Occupation . Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong Arts Museum. [Chinese]

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3.2 Organisation of the Kempeitai Under Japanese military rule, an internal security force was set up, which was initially known as the “Kempeitai”, and later renamed the Police Force. According to Cheng Po-Hung, the name Kempeitai was adopted in Hong Kong by order of the Japanese military.2 The headquarters of the Kempeitai was located in today’s Legislative Council Building in Central, and its hostel was in St Paul’s College dormitories on Upper Albert Road. Its regional headquarters included Wanchai Police Station, Central Police Station and South Kowloon Magistracy. British police officers were removed to concentration camps, and the Japanese became the commanding officers of the Hong Kong Police Force, now a branch of the Kempeitai. Many Indian policemen were promoted to senior ranks in the Kempeitai during the Japanese occupation, with their main duty being to guard the British prisoners of war. The Chinese worked in the lowest rank of the force. Around 1942, the Kempeitai sought to recruit locally by placing advertisements in Hong Kong newspapers. The entry requirements required an ethnic origin in non-enemy countries (namely not British or American), an age of between 20 and 35, as well as a height of 165 cm or more.3 All the new Kempeitai recruits were required to receive two months of training in a school in Caine Road, Hong Kong. They mainly learned basic Japanese, like “good morning” and “good night”. They were also taught some basic courtesy, such as the correct greeting to offer the Japanese Imperial Army soldiers who

2. The word “Kempeitai ” means the Japanese military police. Its organisation was extended to Hong Kong in 1941, and eligible former Hong Kong police officers were converted into “kempeitai ” auxiliaries. Cheng Po-hing. (2006). Hong Kong Under Japanese Occupation . Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong Arts Museum. [Chinese] 3. Tse Wing-kwong. (1995). Suffering during the Three Years and Eight Months . Hong Kong: Mingpao Press. [Chinese]

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Fig 3.1

Kempeitai in military dress.

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were standing guard. The summer uniform of the Kempeitai was light yellow in colour, with yellow armbands marked with the Chinese characters for “Kempeitai” in red as well as the names and numbers of their officers’ respective districts. The winter uniform was dark blue with a black hat, a white armband with black lettering, and a badge on the chest. The hat was decorated with a star badge, in place of the former British colonial crown badge. The serial number of each officer of the Kempeitai was marked on the left upper sleeve of his tunic. A piece of cloth that indicated the department to which the officer belonged and his Kempeitai number was pinned on the front pocket of the uniform. The Kempeitai occupied the police stations in all the districts of Hong Kong. Those responsible for water patrols were known as the “Marine Kempeitai”. In March 1945, the Japanese authority set up the so-called “Governor’s Police Department of Hong Kong” for governing the Hong Kong and the Kowloon police, the marine police and the fire brigade, all of which were incorporated into the organisation of the Kempeitai and wore the same uniform. These various services were now distinguished by their different armbands, which bore the Chinese characters for “Hong Kong Island Police”, “Kowloon Police”, “Marine Police” etc.4 Locally-recruited Chinese Kempeitai mainly took up the supporting roles in policing during the Japanese occupation period. A retired Chinese policeman who had worked for the Kempeitai recalled: I was initially assigned to cook. After two days of cooking service, I was sent to do other tasks, like guarding dozens of refugees in the Triangle Pier in

4. Cheng Po-hung. (2006). Hong Kong Under Japanese Occupation . Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong Arts Museum. [Chinese]

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Sai Ying Pun. My other main task was to be stationed at a rice warehouse and ration rice to the public. At that time, one rice ticket was for one person and one ticket was for three hundred grams of rice. I guarded a rice warehouse in Happy Valley, where a girls’ school stands today. My other task was recording the price of goods in the market every day.

The Japanese-controlled Hong Kong government had offenders convicted of less-serious crimes paraded, imprisoned, deported or fined. Those convicted of bank robberies and murders were sentenced to death. They were initially decapitated, although this changed to execution by firing squad later. For the culprits of smuggling, their goods were confiscated and their eyebrows were shaved. The military’s tortures included drowning the offenders to death. The Kempeitai were mainly responsible for maintaining order and merely dealt with rogues and petty thieves. Most of the perpetrators were simply starving people. A retired policeman who worked in the shipyards of the Japanese army during the war (he joined the police after the occupation) recalled: In the period of the Japanese occupation, I worked in Hong Kong Island. Traffic basically came to a standstill. There were only several scheduled trams running in the morning and evening. I would rather go to work on foot than by tram, in order to avoid meeting the Japanese soldiers who often made of people in the trams. Besides, I would rather walk in the middle of the road than the pavements. There were not many vehicles in those days. Plus, there were a lot of dead bodies accumulated on the pavements, some had starved to death and some had somehow been killed by the Japanese Imperial Army on the spot.

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Exchange of police rank Under the Japanese governance, there was an amazing case of exchange of rank between a senior and an junior officer. A policeman was promoted to the rank of senior Kempeitai officer due to his ethnicity, and his former supervisor became his subordinate. A retired policeman recalled the case: A well-known Chinese Inspector was demoted to join the Marine Kempeitai. At the same time, one of his former subordinates had become Deputy Director of the Marine Kempeitai, wearing a white uniform, boots and a sword. The Inspector was obliged to salute his ex-subordinate. After the war, their roles were converted back again. The one who made rapid advances in his career during the Japanese occupation now worked as a policeman again. He and I reported to the same Inspector who had been demoted during the occupation. The world really does keep turning! The policeman who had been a senior Kempeitai officer had probably killed too many people in the Japanese colonial period. On night shifts, he always claimed incoherently that he was being hunted and cried, “It was none of my business!”

3.3 Governance under Martial Law Nowadays, citizens often debate whether the Hong Kong police abuse their power and use excessive violence. They are highly concerned about the police who should work in accordance with codes and guidelines. In contrast, under the Japanese governance, there was no such concept of “human rights” because military rule was in force. In February 1942, the Japanese set up the Governor’s Office in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was used as a military base to provide military supplies to the Japanese army. A variety of harsh measures was implemented including the exaction of resources, printing of military banknotes and forced

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repatriation. The Japanese military treated the Hong Kong people barbarously under their military laws. After the war, some executives of the military were condemned as war criminals and sentenced to death.5 The Japanese policy was to reduce Hong Kong’s population and thus lessen the economic burden of feeding them. From the very beginning of its governance of Hong Kong, the Japanese army arrested young men on the streets without reason. It was likely a strategy to remove the most effective resistance fighters and put them to work for the Japanese as forced labour. Those arrested were kept in refugee camps, escorted to the harbour under the guard of Kempeitai officers, and deported to work as forced labour overseas. Among them, about ten thousand were sent to work on Hainan Island in Southern China for mining work. Most of them starved to death or died during the journey. Less than ten percent of those forced labour workers could return to Hong Kong safely at the end of the Japanese occupation. From time to time, Japanese soldiers equipped with rifles led street patrols with four or five Kempeitai officers. A retired policeman who worked for Kempeitai recalled: At that time, there was not enough food in Hong Kong. We were ordered to arrest people on the streets. Some mornings, we, the Kempeitai officers, went to Sheung Wan market in a group. We captured young men as they came out of the public toilets and then sent them to the barrack detention centre on Seven Sisters Road. They were trapped in a so-called “oilwater hut”, which was about 50 feet long by 10 to 20 feet wide, with the door and windows closed. It held as many as two to three hundred people in

5. Tse, Wing-kwong. (1995). Suffering during the Three Years and Eight Months . Hong Kong: Mingpao Press. [Chinese]

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the confined room, and they were sent to Hainan Island for excavation work under escort after some time. They were neither law-breakers nor refugees. These innocently detained persons became extremely weakened and full of lice after a period of time. Some of them who had been trapped for two to three months died before getting off the ship. For those still alive were totally dehydrated. How could they manage the physical work on Hainan Island? Most of them soon died.

Few people dared to commit crimes in the urban areas. When arrested, they would be taken to a police station for recording and then escorted back to the scene of the crime for immediate execution. The Kempeitai mobilised the people nearby to watch the execution. A Chinese recruit in the Kempeitai who was involved in the “suppression of bandits” recalled: I worked as Kempeitai in Hong Kong Island during the war. Once I saw three prisoners knelt down for decapitation in Centre Street in Sai Ying Pun. Two Japanese officers held swords. When the two prisoners saw the first prisoner’s head cut off, they fainted instantly, right before the head fell on the ground. Since they swooned on the ground, the Japanese executed them simply by guns. On another day, led by the Head of a security team, several colleagues and I went to suppress bandits in Central. We fired at one of the fleeing robbers and he was shot. Our Head wrote the word “robber” in Chinese on a piece of paper and put the paper on the dead body. He ordered us to go and left without looking back.

Under the supervision of the Japanese military, secret police in plain clothes and the Chinese staff of all detention centres captured ragged people in the streets from time to time. Up to one hundred persons were seized per day. Later on, under the

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pressure of local food shortage, they randomly arrested residents in the streets and sent them to the refugee camps in King’s Park, Kowloon and North Point, Hong Kong Island. After the Japanese occupation, the leader of the secret police, George Huang, and his five subordinates were sentenced to the gallows on the charge of indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.6 Japanese army officers also led Indian and Chinese Kempeitai members to patrol in the streets. They were empowered to arrest, imprison and even execute the residents at any moment. There was also team of about 30 female assistants to the Kempeitai, who went on duty in the ferry terminals. Though they were not Kempeitai, they had the right to body search the passengers. Some of them were so domineering that they sometimes humiliated people by commanding them to strip off their clothes in public for a body search.7

3.4 Meticulous Deployment The Japanese military stormed and captured Hong Kong with meticulous planning. Once they had captured Hong Kong on Christmas Eve in 1941, the Japanese immediately rebuilt the police system of Hong Kong. The Japanese, on the one hand, sent those Chinese nationals who had received training in Mainland China to take over the management of the Hong Kong Police Force as their puppets. On the other hand, all European nationals who had been serving in the Hong Kong Police Force were sent to concentration camps. The Japanese also offered promotion to the Chinese policemen, except those on the management level under the British, who would be demoted. This arrangement

6. Tse, Wing-kwong. (1995). Suffering during the Three Years and Eight Months . Hong Kong: Mingpao Press. [Chinese] 7. Tse, Wing-kwong. (1995). Suffering during the Three Years and Eight Months . Hong Kong: Mingpao Press. [Chinese]

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shows that the Japanese deliberately used the Chinese to manage Chinese society. At that time, some Chinese policemen returned to their stations and reported for duty when the situation became slightly more stable. They continued to work as policemen during the Japanese occupation, but under the name of Kempeitai. A retired policeman who had worked for the Kempeitai thought that the Japanese government had demonstrated a great deal of foresight. He lamented: The Japanese Imperial Army planned the governance of Hong Kong well, and very early. After the fall of Hong Kong, we could neither leave nor seek jobs. We had no choice but to go back to the stations and claim to the Japanese Imperial Army that we were the former policemen. We were lucky to get the jobs back again. When we put on the Kempeitai uniforms, we were surprised that our direct supervisor was a Cantonese-speaking Chinese from the Mainland, who was called a “security team member”. At that moment, we found that the Japanese had already been planning the control of Hong Kong for a long period of time! To earn a living, I had no choice but to become a Kempeitai. Although I was able to live with adequate clothing and food, comparatively, I was heart-stricken to see other Hong Kong people suffering and living helplessly, with nothing I could do!

Thus, in order to make a living, some Chinese policemen chose to work for the Japanese government and became Kempeitai in blue uniforms with collars. When on-duty policemen met the Japanese army guards with pikes, they were required to salute them and say, “Thank you for the hard work”. One such Chinese policeman recalled: On the day the Japanese captured Hong Kong Island, a British executive told us, the Chinese colleagues,

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“If you like, you can stay and work for the Japanese. Otherwise, it is better for you to seek temporary shelter back in your hometown in Mainland China.” Facing this situation, I wanted to go back to my hometown. However, I knew nothing about tilling and I had no idea how I could make a living there. I thus went back the police station and applied for the job of Kempeitai. Being a Kempeitai, we were provided with food and we did not need to worry about meals. Plus, each of us was equipped with a pistol, though the pistol had to be returned when off duty. When we worked in plain clothes for a certain period of time, we often gathered in the Nathan Hotel. In order to show off our power, we pretended to be tying our shoes and showed the guns at our waists.

3.5 Post-War Reconstruction of the Police Force In 1945, British rule over Hong Kong was restored. One of the main tasks was to revive the Hong Kong Police Force in order to restore law and order. However, those British military officers responsible for taking over Hong Kong soon faced a number of problems. First, different kinds of weapons were readily available for use in criminal activities everywhere in Hong Kong. Second, many European officers who were captured as prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation were so physically or mentally hurt that they were no longer qualified for the police job. Third, some Chinese policemen fled to the Mainland in the turmoil, while some served the Japanese army during the occupation. The British police officers at the helm had to decide whether to employ those Chinese policemen who had worked before and during the Japanese occupation. From December 1945, the British government took on a series of strategies to tackle the three obstacles mentioned above with the aim of reconstructing the Police Force immediately. 58

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Fig 3.2

The return of the Union Flag in 1945.

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In fact, as early as 1943, the Colonial Office of the British Government which was in charge of Hong Kong colonial administration had established the Hong Kong Planning Group, in preparation for the takeover of Hong Kong after the war.8 When the war finally ended, the British government sent a group of officials to take control of Hong Kong’s basic police work. When the situation became stable, the British gradually transferred more police officers from other colonies to Hong Kong in order to rebuild the force. At the same time, those Chinese policemen recruited before the War also needed to pass through the vetting exercises before their police identities were reinstated by the British colonial government. The colonial government also revised the recruitment strategy. Europeans were still the main recruits for the post of Inspector, but more local Chinese were employed in the post than had been before, and the Chinese also became the main recruits for the more-junior positions. The economy of Hong Kong was still under reconstruction in the post-war period. It was not easy for residents to earn a living. Together with the severely ruined police system, social order was severely lacking. In regenerating the Police Force, the first problem was a shortage of manpower. As mentioned above, the British officers had become prisoners of war: they were no longer up to the job of protecting the public after spending several years in prison camps. Some European and Indian police officers had left Hong Kong and disappeared. Most of the Chinese policemen fled to the Mainland during the Japanese occupation. Not many policemen had continued their service in Hong Kong. The manpower available was not enough to maintain social order effectively. In effect, the management of the Police Force could be described as a commander without army.9

8. Kwan Lai-hung. (1993). Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation . Hong Kong: Joint Publisher. [Chinese] 9. Sinclair K. (1994). Royal Hong Kong Police: 150th Anniversary Commemorative Publication, 1844–1994 . Hong Kong: Police Public Relations Branch, Royal Hong Kong Police Force.

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The authorities coped with the situation of staff shortage in two ways. Firstly, they disregarded the issue of loyalty and incorporated some Chinese nationals who had served the Japanese during the occupation into the reconstructed Police Force. After passing the vetting exercises conducted by the British government, those policemen who had worked for the Kempeitai would be absorbed and temporarily nominated Police Constable Japan (PCJ). All of them were then sent to police school for retraining. They could only become policemen officially after satisfactory completion of this re-training: After the Japanese surrendered, the Force was revived and those who had served before the occupation were re-commissioned. Policemen recruited by the Japanese during the occupation were also absorbed into the Force due to the shortage of manpower. However, because they were recruited during the Japanese occupation, the letter “J” preceded their serial numbers. Squadron J survived briefly before it was rendered obsolete together with Squadrons A to E, following the decision to stop categorising the rank and file according to the letters of the alphabet.10

Secondly, the authorities also stepped up the policy of open recruitment in order to fill the vacancies immediately. Most policemen recruited during the war could be reinstated once they reported for duty to the authorities with simple proof of identity. In the situation of incomplete file records, some people fished in troubled waters. They pretended to be former senior policemen and gained successful entry instantly. Some former junior policemen falsely claimed to have held the rank of Sergeant before the war, and they were thus promoted. A retired policeman

10. Hong Kong Police. (2004). Offbeat , Issue No. 777.

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narrated an interesting case that shows how chaotic the police recruitment was:

I had a colleague who was also a policeman before the war. He knew that a Sergeant, one of his ex-colleagues, had passed away during the occupation. After the war, he applied for the job in name of the dead colleague; and became a Sergeant. He even changed his own family name, and thus his children’s!

In September 1945, the British government summoned 32 British Police Inspectors from Palestine in the Middle East to prepare for the restoration of the police system in Hong Kong. At the end of that year, the Police Training School was re-opened for providing basic training to the newly recruited and re-joined policemen. In 1946, another group of British Inspectors who had been stationed in Shanghai were sent to Hong Kong, and the recruitment of local Chinese nationals as Inspectors began. Those Indian policemen who had survived the Japanese occupation in concentration camps were repatriated to their hometowns, and recruitment from India ceased. Instead, the Hong Kong government started to recruit Pakistanis to join the force, and at the same time decided not to recruit Europeans for rank-and-file posts anymore. The shortage of police manpower quickly reversed after the change of political environment in Mainland China. From 1948, a large number of people crowded into Hong Kong from the Mainland, and many of them were highly educated. This resulted in gradual changes in the recruitment and reconstruction of the Police Force.

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Table 3.1 Numbers of Police Before and After the Japanese Occupation11

Categories of Personnel Gazette Officer (Superintendent or above)

Before Occupation

After Occupation

1941/2

1948/9 16

29

265

229

52

128

Cantonese (Guangdong) rank and file

797

2,205

Northern (Shandong) Chinese

164

446

Indian

752

172

/

57*

Expatriate Inspector Native Inspector

Portuguese

Table 3.1 shows the changes of Hong Kong Police Force personnel before and after the Second World War. First, the number of Chinese Inspectors in 1948 was 128, more than double the number in 1941, just before the fall of Hong Kong. Obviously, it was driven by the post-war British government policy of recruiting more Chinese Inspectors.12 Second, the number of Chinese rank and file policemen soared from 797 before the war to over 2,000 in 1948. Meanwhile, the number of policemen from Shandong Province grew to over 400: more than double that before the war. Third, the number of Indian policemen plunged from the peak of 750 to 170. After the war, the government repatriated the remaining Indian policemen and, after Indian independence, replaced them with Muslim Pakistanis.

11. Hong Kong Government. (1949). Report of the Commissioner of Police, 1948–49. Hong Kong Administrative Reports . Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer,. 12. Ng Chi-wa. (1999). Establishment and Early Development of the Police System in Hong Kong (Unpublished PhD thesis). The Chinese University of Hong Kong. [Chinese]

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What we found the most remarkable in the data was that there were 57 Portuguese from Macau who served as temporary Inspectors in 1948–1949. The Portuguese officers, commonly known as “Westerners”, were fluent in Cantonese but they worked as Inspectors for only a brief period. After resignation, some of them worked for the security of Hong Kong banks, and some went back to Macau. According to official information, the Portuguese officers were mainly engaged in “special duties” in Hong Kong, but there was no further open explanation of these special duties involved. According to some retired police officers, these “Westerners” mainly worked on secret investigations and rooted out spies in the Police Force.

3.5.1 Recruitment Procedures A series of objective, transparent and fair procedures are a necessary prerequisite for the selection of public servants. The recruitment of the policemen is definitely no exception. Currently, academic background is the most important reference when assessing the application of policemen. Applicants are required to have passes in five subjects, including English and Chinese, at HKCEE level. Additionally, they have to be physically fit and able to meet specified standards. If they are also able to demonstrate their passion for serving the public in the interviews, they will be probably admitted. If interested, one can simply download a registration form from the government’s website, fill it out and send it to the Recruitment Department. Policemen from the older generation may have a special feeling when they review the application procedures of today. In the early fifties, being a policeman was a very enviable position. The monthly salary of a policeman was 124 Hong Kong dollars, two to three times more than the 30 to 40 dollar wages of an apprentice. Before the opening of the recruitment centre in Admiralty and the Police Training School in Wong Chuk Hang,

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police recruitment normally took place in government agencies or police stations in the urban areas. In early 1948, the recruitment office was in the YMCA in East Street in Yau Ma Tei. The Western Police Station was also used for recruitment later. In that era of no Internet or television, people who were interested in joining the Police Force had to pay attention to notices posted outside the police stations and to queue up for an interview at the designated time and place. As a result, whenever there was police recruitment there could be up to two or three thousand people lining up at each specified location to apply. Table 3.2 Selection Criteria for Police Recruits in the 1950s Male Applicants

Female Applicants

Age 18–25 years (17.5 will be considered)

Age of 19–25

Weight: over 110 lbs

over 92 lbs

Height: 5 feet 4 inches

5 feet

Education: Primary 5

Primary 5 or above

Marital status: married or single

single

Table 3.3 Recruitment Counters in Hong Kong Police Stations in the 1950s Counter Location Monday

Western District & Kowloon City

Tuesday

Sham Shui Po & Causeway Bay

Wednesday

Tsuen Wan, Yau Ma Tei & Hung Hom

Thursday

Wanchai & Wong Tai Sin

Friday

East District & Mongkok

Saturday

Yuen Long

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How did the interview proceed? A retired policeman recalled that he heard the news of police recruitment in Yau Ma Tei from his friends and thus went to line up outside the police station for interview. At the venue, the candidates, as many as two or three thousand, were required to pass through a way where a row of bamboo canes were hanging overhead. This arrangement was used to measure the candidates’ height. Any who were able to go through smoothly, without touching the bamboo hanging at about five feet and five inches (165 cm) above the ground, were eliminated immediately because it indicated that they were shorter than the required standard. This initial screening with such an objective criteria was remarkably effective. Candidates who passed the height selection would be instructed to stand in a row of about 50 people. An expatriate Superintendent examiner, accompanied by a Chinese Inspector and a Sergeant, slowly walked in front of the candidates and reviewed them one by one. When the supervisor found a candidate to his liking, he swung the baton and cried “You come out!” in poorlypronounced Cantonese. The candidates who had not been called were immediately told to leave by the back door. There were probably three to four selected in each group of 50 people. Based on that proportion, the success rate of passing the interview of the first stage was only about eight to ten percent, which was comparable to that of today. Those candidates who were able to pass the “interview by impression” were offered a more difficult test. Today, all applicants have to attend individual and group interviews. In the fifties, the language ability of the applicants was tested in the form of dictation. That examination might look very easy but in fact it was not easy for most candidates, who might not have completed primary school education. The chief examiner, who was a Chinese Inspector, would pick up a Chinese newspaper and dictate a section of it. The candidates were required to write down the words accordingly. The newspaper reports, in vernacular or colloquial Chinese, baffled a lot of the candidates.

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Once the examination was completed, the examiner marked the work. For those samples with more than a dozen incorrect words, the examiner would call out the candidates’ names and ask them leave instantly. No more than 20 people stayed in the room by the end. A retired policeman who joined the force in the 1950s shared his experience of the application process: I attended the examination at the Central Police Station. Every candidate was required to stand in the parade ground for height check. For those whose height and age met the standard required, they joined a written test on the following day. The test was a Chinese dictation. When the test was passed, a body check followed. We had to put off our clothes and have the medical check, by doctors, in underwear only.

The successful candidates would be directed to Central Police Station, nicknamed the “Big House”, for medical examination. In the meantime, they were required to have integrity checks. The same as today, the concept of referee was found in the recruitment in the fifties. Every applicant had to submit two letters to prove his good character, normally including one from his current employer, with company-sealed verification. When the police recruitment officers received these letters, known as “shop guarantee”, they would contact the employers. The recruitment office also had its own integrity checks with the applicant in a police station. These checks were particularly concerned with verifying that the applicant had no political connection with the Communist authorities in Mainland China. After about a month, it would issue a formal letter of appointment and inform the appointee of the date to attend the training camp. For most policemen in the 1950s and 1960s, politics was always a taboo subject. The policemen did all they could to present themselves as politically neutral. In fact, after the riots

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Fig 3.3

Policemen in Central Police Station, 1950.

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Table 3.4 Comparison of Recruitment Process of Policemen in the 1950s and 2000s Entry Test in 1950s

Entry Test of Today

Entry Requirement

Primary school

Five passes in HKCEE (including Chinese and English)

Location of Registration

1945–47: St Stephen’s School

Before 2002: Queensway Recruiting Centre

1947–48: Prince Edward Road (near the current Mongkok Police Station)

After 2002: Online application

Police Recruitment Office in YMCA, East Street, Yau Ma Tei 1948: Specified divisional police stations Interview Process

1st Stage:

1st Stage:

Height check with bamboo

First interview by two chief examiners

Screening by reviewing 2nd Stage:

2nd Stage:

Written test – Chinese dictation

Physical test

No 3rd Stage

3rd Stage: Second interview by three chief examiners – focus on the knowledge of political issues and policing work

Physical Test

No

Yes

Integrity Assessment

“Shop guarantee” from two employers

Two referees

Political ties with Mainland China not allowed

Connection with illegal organisations not allowed

Training Period

3 months; extended to 6 months later

6 months

Training Location

From end of war to 1948: Police Recruitment Office in YMCA, East Street, Yau Ma Tei; and training camp

Police Training School, Wong Chuk Hang, Aberdeen

After 1948: Police Training School, Wong Chuk Hang, Aberdeen

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that broke out on the Double Ten Day festival in 1956, the government fully realised that left- and right-wing factions were struggling with each other in Hong Kong.13 This caused social unrest and even involved spies infiltrating the Police Force. The government understood the importance of the Police Force remaining politically neutral in light of the partition between Taiwan and Mainland China. As a result, integrity checks were tightened up in the recruitment process of policemen in order to ensure that members of the force were not connected with Beijing or Taipei. Under the more stringent recruitment procedures, all appointees were required to submit two deeds of security, signed by civil servants currently in their post before their formal admission to the force. If an applicant were found to have direct or indirect contact with Mainland China or Taiwan, he or she would be immediately dismissed, even after having passed the initial examination and commenced training in the police school. A retired policeman recalled, When I joined the Force in the sixties, there was no provision of banning policemen from visiting relatives in the Mainland China. Despite this, we all knew it was better not to return to our hometown in the Mainland to avoid being charged of connections with the left wingers. Most of us kept our Mainland relatives at a distance, and dared not write letters to them. Some colleagues who were very afraid of getting into trouble did not even dare to enter the local department stores selling products from China in order to avoid any impact on their career advancement.

13. “Double Ten Day is the national day of Taiwan (the Republic of China), and marks the uprising on 10 October 1911 that led to the creation of the Republic of China in 1912.” 70

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3.5.2 Equipment, Training and Beat Patrol After the war, there was a lack of goods and materials, including police equipment. According to the Annual Report of the Hong Kong Police Force for the year 1946/7, policemen on duty did not have a full set of equipment because of the delayed delivery of the custom-made equipment, such as handcuffs and batons, from Britain. A retired policeman described the early post-war situation: When I joined the Force in 1947, there was no standardised equipment for the members. Some of us were armed with a Colt pistol while some had revolvers. 24 bullets were provided to each of us but without a speed-loader. After loading the bullets required into a gun, the rest of the bullets were kept in the pockets of one’s clothes, or even strapped to the body by a belt, like a guerrilla. In those years, no handgun holster was provided and we had to buy the holsters by ourselves.

Police recruits in the 1960s were required to have completed primary school. In the six-month police school training, there was an examination every two weeks. The trainees usually could not answer the questions well because they were not highly educated. Discipline was the prime focus in the training. A retired policeman made the following comment on corporal punishment: In those years, the police training was very strict. If a trainee was able to get through the six-month training, it was very helpful to his personal growth in the future. There was corporal punishment, but it was not used haphazardly. The instructors made use of it to enhance the trainees’ alertness. One was thus aware that he could not make a mistake, and he would be punished for any misstep. As a result, all the trainees were extremely careful and disciplined in order to avoid mistakes and punishment. 71

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Fig 3.4

Police recruitment advertisement in the 1960s.

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Currently, it is common for two policemen be out on the beat together at night, commonly known as a “double beat”. However, in the sixties, there was no such system of double beats. Each policeman was responsible for patrolling a designated area and he was the only one on his beat at nights. In case a policeman was absent from duty in the nearby beat and there was no manpower to replace him, one may be required to patrol on two different beats and sign the visting books on both beats. It sometimes happened that one policeman had to work on three beats in one night. There was no wireless equipment at that time. When the policemen came across any emergency and needed to report to their superiors, they would ask shop owners for the use of their telephones most of the time. In the evenings or in remote areas, the policemen would use the dedicated police telephones. They had to open the iron box hanging on police telephone poles on the streets using a special key; and use rotary diallers inside that connected to police stations directly. This means of communication remained unchanged until pagers became available in the 1970s. Unlike today, in those years, inspectors did not need to patrol the streets, but were responsible for inspecting the patrolling of their subordinates. Every day, sergeants distributed work to police constables before they went on patrol. Inspectors would go to inspect the constables’ work from time to time. For some special locations, such as traffic black spots, the inspectors would meet their subordinates at a specific time and join the patrol in order to learn more about the scene. A similar inspection system continues even today. An ex-inspector recalled: Being the inspector of a patrol squad, I had to inspect the work of my subordinates as one of my main duties. But since there was no radio and pager before, it was hard for me to contact my team members when they were out on duty. Therefore, I usually agreed a specific

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meeting time and place with them before they left the police station.

3.5.3 The Birth of the Emergency Hotline Before the Second World War, there was no wireless system linking the police headquarters and the divisional police stations. It often made the communication among them difficult. In 1948, the Communications Branch of the Police Force was officially established and operated under the management of the Transport Department. From then, the “999” emergency system was formally set up. The police stations in different districts and marine police were then able to connect with the headquarters instantly. In 1950, the 999 system was extended so that the general public was able to report incidents using the hotline.

3.6 Summary Before the Japanese captured Hong Kong, the European and Chinese members of the Hong Kong Police Force fought against the enemy courageously, although they failed in the end. In the meantime, some newly-joined Chinese recruits suddenly found that their expatriate senior officer fled or become prisoners of war during their police training. Some Chinese policemen faced no real choice but to join the Kempeitai and serve the Japanese during the occupation. As subordinates of the Japanese, they realised that the Japanese had planned the occupation of Hong Kong well in advance. Under the Japanese policing system, ironfist military rules were in force, with no consideration of human rights. After the hard “three years and eight months” of the occupation, Hong Kong was placed under British administration again, and its Police Force was quickly reorganised. The Hong 74

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Fig 3.5

Official identification: A Police Warrant Card in the 1960s. The holder’s blood type was printed for use in emergency situations. 75

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Kong government recruited a large number of police officers from the United Kingdom and different areas of the Commonwealth and sent them to Hong Kong. The police officers became the backbone of the police management and led the renewal of the Police Force. In the post-war society, it was ideal to work for the Police Force. Whenever there was police recruitment, it attracted a large number of candidates. In the early period of the force reorganisation, equipment like warrant cards, uniforms and firearms was seriously inadequate. Some policemen even had to buy their uniforms and equipment from their own pockets, which of course does not happen today. With changes in society, the Police Force made some important changes in its recruitment and organisation in the 1960s. It recruited its first batch of policewomen in 1951. It also began criminal investigation training courses in 1952, in order to upgrade the skills of CIDs while handling cases. In 1957, the police training camp was officially opened to enhance the antiriot capability of the Police Force. In 1962, the Marine Police became an independent police district, strengthening the Police Force’s capacity to act effectively against the growing number of illegal immigrants. Those changes undoubtedly demonstrated that the Police Force was making progress with time. In the mid-sixties, two large-scale incidents of social unrest happened in Hong Kong. One of these, the 1967 Riot, was to prove the greatest test of the ability of the Police Force to maintaining social order.

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4.1 The 1956 and 1966 Riots The Hong Kong Police Force, modelled along British colonial police lines, had seldom experienced large scale disturbances until the 1950s. Although they had procedures in place to deal with such problems, inadequacies of communication, equipment and tactics manifested themselves during the rioting of October 1956. The 1956 riots in fact exposed the insufficient anti-riot capacity of the Police Force in response to an internal security crisis. Neither the riot squads nor the regular police were sufficiently equipped or trained to prevent wider spread problems without the assistance of British assistance.1 The insufficiencies were many: improper training among officers for internal security management, insufficient police facilities and firearms, and miscommunication between the authorities and citizens. Firstly, the police training was unable to prepare them to control violence effectively in different areas. There were no regular police unit for crowd control and the deployment of the British military eventually aggravated the violence of the disturbances due to the excessive use of force. A retired policeman recounted the situation during the 1956 riots: I wasn’t a policeman in 1956 but I was told by many seniors that some policemen died suppressing the riots. The encounter motivated the police to form an anti-riot squad and anti-riot police. We got help from the military since the police were short of human resources. But the point was that the military was trained differently from the police. The military should be on sentry at the crossroads, but not out there fighting. They shouldn’t have come out, but that’s what they did. They ignored the order and marched

1. Lee, C. H. N. (1995). Society and Policing in Hong Kong: A Study of the 1956 Riot (Unpublished thesis). The University of Hong Kong. [Chinese]

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out, hitting people and growling at them ferociously. Lots of people, I heard, were killed along Tai Po Road, especially in the district of Sham Shui Po: an area inhabited by the poor, who needed to work even at those difficult times.

After the riots in 1956, the Hong Kong Police Force took the initiative to modernise and strengthen its paramilitary forces to deal with large-scale riots. In addition, the government intended to “purify” the Police Force by introducing a more stringent vetting exercise in the recruiting process. Learning from the unpleasant experience, the Police Tactical Contingent (PTC) was set up in 1957. It was composed of four companies, each with about 170 anti-riot policemen. Meanwhile, a new set of anti-riot tactics was taught to the PTC members. The practice of delegating the riot drill training to each police division was revised. The PTC became the central institution which taught the frontline policemen the anti-riot tactics on a regular basis.2 New tactics were also introduced to the anti-riot platoon formation aimed at increasing the flexibility and effectiveness of crowd management.3 The logistics coordination in the rioting period was revisited and measures were taken to improve the coordination within the force.4 Meanwhile, the riots highlighted the problem of inherent mobilisation between two auxiliary forces, the

2. Before the reform, each division was responsible for providing riot drill for its men. While some divisions adhered strictly to the order, in others training was on an irregular basis. 3. The old platoon could only break up by individual sections, and each section was equipped with only one type of riot weapon. Each officer could “choose” whatever position he wished to take up. In the new one regime, each officer was assigned a fixed post carrying a designated weapon. 4. For example, there was no sleeping or rest accommodation. Neither was there sufficient provision of food and drinks. Sometimes, the police had to force their way into shops to quench their thirst leaving notes to the stall owners to claim back the charge from police headquarters. Very often a large number of prisoners were brought to the station but the arresting officer became mixed up about who had committed what offences. There were also problems in keeping track of equipment being drawn, damaged, or ammunition and tear-gas being discharged.

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Special Constabulary and the Police Reserve, and catalysed the integration of two auxiliary Police Forces. The Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force was reorganised and all the members were trained to provide supporting functions to the regular force in an emergency.5 The outbreak of the 1956 riots also made the government awaken to the fact that she had to be aware of the intrusion of PRC Beijing and ROC Taiwan figures in the Police Force. Unlike the selection exercises in the early 1950s, the police recruitment procedure was more regularised. All recruits had to prove that they did not have any political affiliation through a stringent vetting exercise. All applicants were now required to submit at least two referee reports written by serving civil servants before their appointment could be verified. These new vetting procedures, making sure that no member of the Hong Kong Police Force had any political affiliations with either the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan, later proved to be an essential and successful step contributing to the allegiance of the police to the colonial government in the subsequent anti-riot policing actions.

4.2 Establishment of the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force After World War II, the Hong Kong Government re-established a police reserve team composed mainly of European and Chinese

5. The auxiliary police force provided strong back-up to the regular units throughout the 1967 disturbances. They were called upon to safeguard the police stations, and transport the detainees and prisoners. In later stages, they were even deployed to the frontlines to suppress the violence. See Hong Kong Government (1968). Events in Hong Kong, 1967: An Official Report . Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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who were able to speak English, with the aim of supporting the regular police in their work. In 1945, there were about three hundred members. Later, the government allowed the European members the same law enforcement powers as regular policemen had under the provisions of the Police Reserve Ordinance of 1947. In addition, it became committed to the enhancement of the professional level of the police reserve. All members were required to participate in a two-week intensive training course. Having completed the training, the members were assigned to support the regular Police Force in different departments and functions, including general duties, emergency unit, marine, communication etc. In the initial period after the war, most British members of the police reserve worked as police constables only, under the command of Chinese corporals and sergeants, because they did not know Cantonese and lacked police experience. The police reserve team operated separately from the Special Police Constabulary which was re-organised by the government. The Constabulary recruited Hong Kong-born Chinese and offered only basic training to its members, without even marching drill. Its members worked for eight hours a month and mainly supported the regular police officers. The Police Reserve and the Special Police Constabulary did not work closely together. Members of the former were mostly foreigners, together with some of the Chinese elite. They had higher academic qualifications and were proficient in English. Most of them even had service experience in voluntary units before the war. Conversely the members of the Special Police Constabulary were British-nationality Chinese who were forced to join by law. They belonged to different contingents of the Constabulary. In the bank-run turbulences in 1952 and the 1956 riots, both the Police Reserve and the Special Police Constabulary were mobilised for public order management duties but they performances were both less than satisfactory, with evidence from

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Fig 4.1

Police human chains blocking the protestors outside the Government House at Upper Albert Road in May, 1967.

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the number of injuries and casualties.6 In late 1956, there were a total of 1,806 members of the two forces. The government later merged them into one and, as we saw in Chapter 2, renamed it the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force in 1959. Since then, all auxiliary police work has changed from forced recruitment to salaried part-time service.7

4.3 The 1967 Riots 4.3.1 The Riots The 1967 riots are generally regarded as a spill-over of the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China. Chairman Mao started the Cultural Revolution in 1966. This first led to a rise of revolutionary sentiment among the leftists in Macau, the Portuguese colony. On 3 December 1966, the leftist organisations in Macau initiated a general strike, which paralysed the Portuguese-led government, and “liberated” Macau. All Kuomintang (Chinese National Party) members were driven out of Macau, and the government apologised to and agreed with many demands of the leftists. The leftist organisations in Hong Kong were encouraged and thought they could follow in the footsteps of the Macau leftists, which triggered a struggle with the British colonial government.8 In spring 1967, there was a prevalence of labour struggles in Hong Kong. The leftists hoped to turn Hong Kong into a second

6. Lee, C. H. N. (1995). Society and Policing in Hong Kong: A Study of the 1956 Riot (Unpublished thesis). The University of Hong Kong. 7. Hong Kong Police. (1957). Police Annual Departmental Report 1956/57 . Hong Kong: Government Printer. 8. Jin, Yao-ru, the chief editor of the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po and a member of Hong Kong and Macau Work Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1967. See Jin, Yao-ru (2005). Fifty Years in Hong Kong . Hong Kong: Jin Yiuru Memorial Foundation. [Chinese]

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Macau and thought the government would soon succumb to their demands on labour protection. The Macau authority eventually surrendered to the rioters and political power there was under the left-wing’s control. The leftists in Hong Kong were encouraged and began to take a more proactive role in stirring up turbulence in the territories by utilising the industrial disputes. Since then, the leftist organisations had been under close surveillance by the Hong Kong government.9 The New China News Agency (NCNA), Beijing’s news agency in Hong Kong, was a de facto branch of the Beijing government in Hong Kong, and the highest one, which carried out Maoist policy directives. The NCNA also coordinated the leftist organisations in Hong Kong including schools, labour unions, banks, department stores, newspapers, and community organisations.10 The local dedicated Maoists, apparently inspired by the Cultural Revolution in China, took advantage of the opportunity to challenge colonial rule, and the ensuing riots lasted half a year, from May to December 1967. The colonial government’s account says that the riots in 1967 can be understood in three developmental stages, with reference to the sequence of the following events: (1) Demonstrations to gain public support; (2) Stoppages of work to paralyse the colony’s economy; and (3)

9. John McGregor, the Assistant Director of Commerce and Industry of Hong Kong Government in 1967, recalled that the government had received intelligence that a similar territory-wide anti-colonial campaign would be mobilised by the local communists in early 1967 and thus started to organise a propaganda campaign in preparation for the verbal attacks from leftists (Hong Kong Economic Times , 7 November 2000. 10. Wong C. Y. (2001) studied the strengths of leftist organisations in Hong Kong by citing the analysis from a document published by the Kuomintang (the Chinese National Party) in 1967. According to Wong, the organisation of local leftists should be under the coordination of the NCNA and it could be categorised into different “fronts”: the labour front was comprised of trade unions; the students fronts were comprised of middle and primary schools; the financial fronts were made up of banks; the economic front was composed of department stores and travel agents; the cultural front included the newspapers, magazines and theatres; and finally the rural front included the rural committees.

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Fig 4.2

The anti-riot policemen lined up to block the street in 1967.

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Urban terrorism to undermine citizens’ morale.11 Between May and December 1967, the police were fully mobilised to handle different types of encounters organised by the leftist leaders, ranging from mass protests and general strikes to cross-boundary shootings and urban bomb threats. The official statistics show that 15 people, including several policemen, were killed and many were wounded.12

4.3.2 Reforms Introduced after the 1967 Riots The 1967 riots exposed the insufficient capacity of the Police Force and the limitations of coercive strategies in internal security management. More importantly, the government was alarmed by its failure to remain in touch with the local urban communities, apparently because of the undemocratic political system as well as prevalent corruption of the police department. Subsequent reform programmes therefore aimed to bring fundamental changes to the Police Force and thus triggered the path of increased police professionalism, beginning in the 1970s. After the riots, both Governor Sir David Trench and his successor, Sir Murray MacLehose, did what the report into the 1966 riots had recommended: narrowed the gap between the government and the people, and created a sense of belonging among the citizens. The strategy in internal security management had been moving away from a traditionally reactive and repressive style and becoming more proactive and consultative. After the 1967 riots, the police reorganised the Police Training Contingent (PTC) and renamed it the Police Tactical Unit (PTU). All members of the force were required to undertake comprehensive internal security training so as to strengthen the police’s anti-riot capabilities. The

11. Hong Kong Government. (1968). Events in Hong Kong, 1967: An Official Report . Hong Kong: Government Printer. 12. Ibid .

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crowd control tactics were also revised and the female officers began to be deployed to handle dispute cases and to manage crowds. Organisational Reform of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force The riots in 1967 did not bring abrupt changes to the political terrain. There was still no universal franchise, and citizens’ rights in public gatherings were still strictly controlled by the public order legislations. However, the riots brought far-reaching impacts to the subsequent development of the transformation of the Hong Kong Police Force. Soon after the riots, Police Commissioner Edwards Eates stepped down and was replaced by Charles Sutcliffe. He took a number of significant actions to reform the Police Force. Two major structural transformations of the Police Force after the riots included the incorporation of the Criminal Investigation Division into the uniformed branch and the creation of a new rank: Station Sergeant. In the 1970s, the Police Force reorganised its internal command structure with the publicised objective of better devolving authority and responsibility to the lowest practical level.13 However, the real trigger of such reforms might have been the public’s scepticism towards the Police Force at the beginning of the riots. On paper, the colonial government repeatedly expressed its appreciation of the reliability and excellence of the Hong Kong Police Force in containing the “political confrontations” and “bomb campaigns”. As the Hong Kong government’s 1968 Annual Report states: The force composed of expatriate officers and Chinese subordinates was a united, reliable, professional and integrative institution to restore the law and order

13. Jones, C. & Vagg, J. (2007). Criminal Justice in Hong Kong . London: RoutledgeCavendish.

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Fig 4.3

The Government announced the death of police personnel in July 1967, after the Sha Tau Kok shooting incident.

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of Hong Kong. They exercised their duties with the greatest steadiness and restraint under the severest provocation and effectively dealt with the many and varied situations with which they were confronted during the period from May to December.

However, the existence of syndicated corruption in the Police Force was indeed well known. Most citizens suffered and the established mechanisms to combat corruption within the establishment were basically ineffective. Prior to the outbreak of a confrontation between police and protestors after an industrial dispute in May 1967, the government doubted the reliability of the multi-ethnic Police Force and wondered if it would be split when the leftists appealed to the local policemen to change their allegiance. It also wondered whether the strength of the Police Force would be sufficient to handle a society-wide disturbance. When sit-ins escalated into street violence which was suppressed by the more hard-line strategies of the police, the general public was inclined to be sympathetic to the strikers who called for fair treatment from their employers. Thus conciliatory strategies were initially adopted and coercive strategies were not introduced until the policing environment developed in a manner more favourable to the government. Paradoxically, the Hong Kong policemen became heroes in the public eye after the riots due to their contribution to restoring social order. But the dilemmas faced by the government leaders throughout the riots enabled them to identify the inadequacies of the force. Contrary to the leaders’ expectations, the major problem of the Police Force was not its cohesion, due to the loyalty of the Chinese policemen. The local Guangdong and Shandong, Pakistanis and European officers were relatively united when facing the common enemy and their cooperation was surprisingly smooth. Instead, the leaders were particularly impressed by the lack of communication between the citizens

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and the police at the beginning of the riots, and concluded that people’s low trust of the police was probably due to the widespread corruption before the riots. This triggered Governor David Trench to give his blessing to the new Commissioner, Charlie Sutcliffe, launching a series of internal reforms so as to increase interface of the police with the public, and more importantly, to tackle corruption inside the force.14 One key feature of the structural reform was the removal of the independent line of command of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) from the Police Headquarters to the Police Districts. Before the reform, there were very few expatriate officers in the CID and most of the CID detectives were locals. The heads of CID were Chinese Staff Sergeants and they did not have any kind of accountability to the District heads, who were mostly expatriates. The independent command structure developed a distinctive type of collegiality within the CID, and it also inappropriately empowered the Chinese Staff Sergeants who headed teams of CID subordinates in all Police Districts. More unfortunately, the mechanism also disabled the District Commander of each district from supervising the performance of CID members in his jurisdiction. An expatriate inspector recalled the loopholes in this setting: I was a police inspector before the 1967 riots. Theoretically I was more senior than the Chinese plain-clothes Staff Sergeants, but in fact some were quite arrogant. Apparently they received generous hospitality from local leaders in restaurants. Some even had a private driver for transportation. They were quite well-off and apparently they had alternative sources of income apart from the monthly remuneration of being a policeman. Meanwhile, they

14. Sinclair, K. (1994). Royal Hong Kong Police: 150th Anniversary Commemorative Publication, 1844–1994. Hong Kong: Police Public Relations Branch, Royal Hong Kong Police.

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did not quite respect the expatriate officers in police stations, and the British superintendent dared not alienate them.

Under the new structural organisation, the CID was no longer an independent unit directly accountable to the Regional Headquarters. The boundary between the uniformed and the plainclothes divisions was removed and CID was placed under the command of the Station Commanders, and had a parallel status with the uniformed division. The new arrangement substantially cut down on the autonomy of the detectives, and facilitated the Station/District Commanders acquiring supervisory power over the potential inappropriate behaviour of their plainclothes subordinates. Meanwhile another structural transformation wrought by Commissioner Sutcliffe was the abandonment of the old rank of Staff Sergeant. The holders of this rank were either promoted to officer grade as Inspector, or re-titled as Station Sergeant. At the same time, a large number of Sergeants were also promoted to Station Sergeants. The police never thoroughly explained the reasons for these reforms. However, it was quite clear that the structural reorganisation might target the eradication of traditional and powerful conglomerates inside the CID, which were developed to the point of corruption syndicates in some cases. This could not be effectively controlled by the police heads, and it significantly de-legitimised the police authority. Strengthening the Relationship with the Public Another notable move introduced by the Hong Kong government after the riots was its attempt to improve the image of the Police Force. In the report reviewing the 1966 disturbances, the government realised the importance of “improving the public image of the force”. The suggestions from the evaluation report had yet to be pushed forward and further riots occurred in 1967. In the government’s publications, the early policing approach 91

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was described as quite aggressive and autocratic and the general public had a very negative attitude towards the force. In fact, the Hong Kong Police Force could be regarded as a civil force with paramilitary capabilities to deal with internal emergency situations. In daily operations, front-line policemen performed patrolling duties and had to make sure the decisions they made when discharging their duties were in compliance with the Police General Orders and the Hong Kong legislation. In case of internal disturbances, the civil Police Force would however be turned into anti-riot platoons. The discretion of individual policemen was removed and all policemen were held accountable to their commanders so as to suppress the disturbances, and the use of violence would be more liberal. In general, the police organisation stressed the strict command, discipline and loyalty of its members. Under the top-down line of command, the consciousness of rank was quite obvious and subordinates were required to obey all lawful orders. Apart from the primary objective of maintaining law and order, there was neither a clearly defined organisational vision nor any long-term mission for the Hong Kong Police Force. To polish the image of the Police Force among the citizens, once again press campaign strategies were emphasised. Propaganda materials were produced to promote the professionalism of the Police Force. For example, a pamphlet was published by the government in 1968 to introduce the Hong Kong Police Force overseas.15 In its introductory section, it stated clearly that the purpose of the booklet was to inform the reader of the attractive prospect of pursuing a career in the Hong Kong Police Force, which could “offer opportunities for a life that will be anything but dull”. More importantly, it quoted the excellent performance of the Police Force as recognised by the

15. Hong Kong Government. (1968). Hong Kong: Report for the Year 1967 . Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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public during the 1967 disturbances: “in recent disturbances the Hong Kong Police Force won renewed praise for their training and behaviour”. It also quoted an appreciative report from the London Daily Mail: “Throughout the acutest provocation the police have shown outstanding immaculate discipline and restraint. In all my reporting experience, including police action in the worst trouble spots in Africa in the past seven years, I have seen nothing like it”. Two more key actions were carried out by the Hong Kong government to intensify the communication between the police and citizens. First, steps were made to narrow the gap between police and citizens to foster the public trust towards the Police Force. The police took more proactive and preventative roles in the community, going beyond traditional law enforcement.16 A number of programmes were introduced to incorporate citizens into policing Hong Kong. The Police Public Relations Wing (PPRW) was established after the 1967 riots with the objective of improving the police’s image among the public. Apart from the daily propaganda promoting police activities, the PPRW also produced television programmes with the assistance of Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) which was broadcast on the Chinese channels TVB and RTV. The major contents of the programmes included the reconstruction of criminal cases; appeals for eye witnesses and crime information; notification of the registration numbers of wanted motor vehicles; advice on crime prevention and an introduction to various aspects of police work.17 Another noticeable step was the establishment of Junior Police Call (JPC) in 1974. It was aimed at creating a better relationship between youth and police by providing a means

16. King, M. (1997). Policing and Public Order Issues in Canada: Trends for Changes. Policing & Society, 8 . pp. 47–76. 17. Hong Kong Police. (1981). Annual Departmental Report . Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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whereby the young people could actively participate in the fight against crime by responding to police requests for assistance. By 1975, its membership numbered 73,000 youngsters aged 9 to 17 years old. Later on, the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974 was aimed at tackling syndicated corruption. This was not only a move to alleviate the public’s distrust towards the police but it also laid the groundwork for a reformed Police Force. The Complaints Against Police Office (1983), Police Public Information Bureau (1968), Police Community Relations Officers (1974) and Neighbourhood Policing Units (1974), as well as Junior Police Call and the Police Cadet school were also established.18 The police experience in 1967 hence changed state-society relations, as it triggered the leaders’ determination to enhance the interface between the Police Force and the public. Probably inspired by the advantages of the press campaign during the 1967 riots, promotion, communication and negotiation were all the underlying objectives of these reforms. The administrative style has become more consultative since the 1970s. As Jones argued, the government attempted to establish the right to rule, not by its success against the communists nor the delivery of prosperity, but on its claim that it consulted the public and had the consent of the people to rule after the 1967 riots.19 Enhancing the Anti-Riot Capacity It is true that the 1967 riots did not bring abrupt changes to the political terrain. There was still no universal franchise, and citizens’ rights to public gatherings were still limited by

18. Jones, C & Vagg, J. (2007). Criminal Justice in Hong Kong . London: RoutledgeCavendish. 19. Ibid . 94

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legislation. However, the policing experience had far-reaching impacts on the subsequent development of a public order policing strategy in Hong Kong, which was moving away from the traditionally reactive and repressive style in colonial policing and becoming more proactive and consultative. As King mentioned, the Hong Kong Police Force revised its crowd control tactics and shifted the working principles from advancing, attacking, sweeping up, containing, isolating and dispersing after the 1970s.20 The new crowd control tactics placed more emphasis on de-escalation and prevention, and communication with the dissident group leaders would be sought to reduce the potential risk of violence. A trainer of the anti-riot squad pointed out the uniqueness of Hong Kong’s public order policing: The anti-riot tactics were “home-made”. I could not represent the authority but I do know that we were not copycats. For example, we used what we already had, like rattan shields, which British did not have. It was Hong Kong that invented the strategy. Actually the research we were doing in Hong Kong had no precedents. Now whenever and wherever there are riots, the Hong Kong police respond in an organised way, which is wholly different from what’s being done in other places.

The attempt to enhance capacity began with structural reform of the anti-riot squad. The old Police Training Contingent (PTC) was renamed and upgraded by a new specialised protest control unit, the Police Tactical Unit (PTU), in 1968. All male police officers were to undergo training (or refresher training) in

20. According to King, the Hong Kong Police Manual of Internal Security, 1970 mentions three main categories of riot suppression tactics, namely; dispersing a crowd, sweeping an area, and cordoning an area. The military should be used on the outer cordon which will permit the maximum number of police officers to be concentrated inside the area selected. 95

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internal security duties, including drill, crowd control techniques, platoon and company exercises, map reading, first aid and special operations against vice, gambling and narcotics.21 Simulation exercises were provided to enhance the discipline of the force and their readiness for public order control. The new unit thus acted as an immediate reserve of manpower for use in any emergency and could aid in large-scale crowd control duties. All police officers, irrespective of their rank and seniority, could be deployed to the PTU and there they underwent 12 weeks of training. The trainees would then return to their police district and undergo an 18-week operational attachment under the commander of the police district.22 According to Sinclair, “the discipline (of the PTU) is strict, the exercises stringent, the pace exhausting”. Its aim was to produce a regular stream of companies trained in riot control and other techniques aimed at public protection.23 As described by Jones, the restructuring meant the Police Force had a good proportion of well-trained officers who could form reliable reserve strength for emergencies.24 This pattern of internal security formation subsequently attracted interest overseas. The PTU’s training centre began to receive visits from senior members of foreign Police Forces, including representatives from British Police Forces. The Royal Hong Kong Police Riot Manual (revised in 1967 and issued to all officers at inspector level and above) later formed the basis of the manual employed

21. All male officers had to undertake the internal security management training after the establishment of the PTU in 1969. For female officers, PTU training was not compulsory. Since 1994, all newly admitted female officers were required to arm when they were on-duty. 22. The Police’s Commissioner Report in 1973 stated that, by the end of 1972, there were always ten PTC Companies that had completed the internal security training and were ready for deployment at any time. 23. Sinclair, K. (1994). Royal Hong Kong Police: 150th Anniversary Commemorative Publication, 1844–1994. Hong Kong: Police Public Relations Branch, Royal Hong Kong Police. 24. Jones, C & Vagg, J. (2007). Criminal Justice in Hong Kong . London: RoutledgeCavendish.

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by the London Metropolitan Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.25 Deployment of Policewomen on the Frontline In addition, more non-confrontational elements were incorporated into policing and protest control after 1967. The strategy of conflict de-escalation was emphasised in dealing with public processions. Under the new strategic foundation, policewomen appeared to take a more significant role in the sphere of public order policing in Hong Kong. The deployment of policewomen in internal security assignments became a regular practice whenever a soft approach was deemed appropriate in confrontational scenarios. A retired policewoman recalled: Because the protests were usually fronted by females and students it might have caused trouble if our male colleagues confronted them directly. From then on policewomen were included in the management of crowds and demonstrations. I had several experiences in dealing with female protesters in 1970s after the PTU training camp. Stepping into 1980s, I had of antiriot experience several times in the New Territories.

The Hong Kong Police Force started to recruit women constables in 1951 but their sphere of work was basically limited to indoor duties. Policewomen were normally assigned to charge-room duties, to guard and fingerprint female prisoners, and to assist with enquiries in relation to women and children. Occasionally, they might have outdoor patrols accompanied by male officers during public events like race meetings and soccer

25. King studied the transformation of policing in Canada and pointed out the Royal Canadian Mounted Police developed its anti-riot operational menu based on the tactical framework developed by the Hong Kong Police Force since 1970. King, M. (1997). Policing and Public Order Issues in Canada: Trends for Changes. Policing & Society, 8 , pp. 47–76.

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Fig 4.4

Policewoman at the report room in 1960s.

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matches, but their involvements were usually ad hoc and not a regularised practice.26 This situation was completely changed after the outbreak of the riots in 1967.

4.4 Summary Many studies have argued that the changes within public order policing are a reflection of much wider social changes and concerns in a country. Hong Kong policing is somewhat unique despite its partial inheritance from the Royal Irish Constabulary. The paramilitary model of policing featured the centralised command system, the application of disciplinary codes among officers and the availability of an abundant group of mobile reserves for policing social disturbance. Heavy reliance on military aid, another feature typical of paramilitary policing, was also an integral part of Hong Kong policing. The encounters of the Police Force with society-wide violence in 1967 triggered the transformation of policing in Hong Kong in several ways. It pushed forward the institutionalisation and modernisation of the police system. Alarmed by the creditability crisis of the non-fully localised Police Force when facing the suspicion of its representative nature, the government showed its attempts to build a more legitimate, consensual and community-based policing framework immediately after the riots. The institutionalisation efforts included consolidating the Police Force’s capacity for internal security protection and regularisation of crowd control tactics during disturbances. All members of the force were taught the key procedures for handling the public order events. Following the stringent test of its anti-riot capacity, the PTC was expanded and tailor-made public order control

26. Calderwood, A. (1974). In Service of the Community, 1949–1974, Silver Jubilee of the Women Police in Hong Kong . Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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tactics were developed with emphasis on reconciliation over enforcement. The shift of strategy to being less confrontational in public order situations was characterised by using less lethal weapons like baton rounds and plastic bullets. The role of the military was gradually reduced and its involvement was kept to a low profile and only assumed the role of external cordon. Apart from the reforms in the Police Force, the 1967 riots also taught the colonial government the essence of public support in legitimising its authority. After that, the government became more responsible and responsive by canvassing public support and by providing channels for the public to air their grievances. The Government Information Service (GIS) was established in 1971, and one of the remarkable steps to close the gap between the government and citizens was to use the word “territory” instead of “colony”, and tore-title “the Secretariat of Chinese Affairs” to “the Home Affairs Department” in all government documents. City district officers were also created to organise ceremonies to honour local dignitaries and a “fightcrime” campaign was held annually. Apart from these actions, a number of advisory and consultative committees were also established and some well-known members of the Chinese social elite were appointed as members. This strategy aimed to include Chinese citizens so as to improve government’s capacity to rule was regarded as “administrative absorption” of politics by the sociologist in Hong Kong. We may also witness the mission changes of the Hong Kong Police Force after the 1967 riots. Many academic analyses regarded the riots of 1967 as a turning point in Hong Kong’s history, as the colonial policing system began to change from an autocratic approach to one that recognised the needs of the community and public support. In the 1960s, the force was authorised as an arm of government to suppress political dissidents. A famous notion suggested there was “apartheid”

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between the colonial government and the Chinese communities.27 In other words, the state and society in the early colonial history were believed to be minimally integrated. After the riots, the Police Force took a proactive approach to be more accommodating to citizens. The Police Force was publicised by the government as an institution to maintain law and order and safeguard the property of the citizens. In the 1980s, the government even sought to narrow the gap between the police and society by launching community-oriented programmes. A series of programmes were then launched towards this goal: for example, introducing the City District Officers Scheme, setting up a “fight crime” committee, establishing the police community relations officer scheme, creating Junior Police Call, and establishing neighbourhood policing units.

27. Scott, I. (1989). Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong . Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

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Section II A Glance at Different Branches of the Hong Kong Police Force

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Chapter 5 The Criminal Investigation Department: Policemen in Plain Clothes

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Thanks to the movies, the general public has been given two completely different images of policemen: either tough, uniformed beat cops, or intelligent police detectives. However, when asked to compare the uniformed branch to the criminal investigation team, several retired police officers noted that it would be impossible to be a “perfect policeman” without the expertise of the CID.

5.1 Criminal Investigation before World War I In 1878, the London Metropolitan Police was the first force to set up a separate Criminal Investigation Department, or CID. From then on, there have been two major divisions of the modern police force worldwide, into uniformed police and detectives. Since detectives do not wear uniforms on duty, they are also known as “plain clothes” policemen. The Hong Kong Police Force was established in 1844. By the late nineteenth century, there were detectives dedicated to the investigation of criminal cases, rather than being expected to work a particular beat, and they began to make use of the fingerprint identification method to facilitate criminal investigation from 1904 onwards. However, it wasn’t until 1923 that the Criminal Investigation Department was finally formed. It marked the first official division between uniformed and plain clothes police in Hong Kong. In the early days, the CID officers were referred to as “concealed police” who conducted their investigations secretly. Later on, they were called “sundry police”, mainly because they had to investigate different kinds of cases and their work was more diversified compared with their uniformed counterparts. The CID was located at the Police Headquarters, with the Island Investigation Division and Kowloon Investigation Division, directly governing the detective teams of different police districts. Due to the nature of their work, it was around this time that the plain clothes police were first dubbed “detectives”.

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Factually or not, it was generally believed that the detectives outranked their uniformed peers, and it was often regarded as a promotion when a uniformed policeman was transferred to the CID. In truth, however, the same rank structure existed in both the plain clothes and uniformed divisions, with the positions of Constable, Corporal, Sergeant and Staff Sergeant II in both divisions. In each police district, generally speaking, there was only one Uniformed Staff Sergeant II and one Detective Staff Sergeant II. Staff Sergeant II was the most senior among the rank-and-file of the Police Force, and as such tended to be highly respected by his or her team. After World War II, the position of Staff Sergeant in the Island Criminal Investigation Division and the Kowloon Criminal Investigation Division was responsible for managing the detective teams of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon respectively, and so holders of the position were regarded as “Detective Staff Sergeant I”. Since all those in the position were Chinese, they were also aliased “Chinese Chief Detectives” and were held in high regard in the Chinese community. Despite this, this power only extended to the rank-and-file; in their daily operations, they still had to report to Inspectors and Superintendents. Neither the CID nor the uniformed division was subordinate to the other, but they operated independently under the Police Force’s structure. The detectives reported to the Detective Staff Sergeant II of the same district while they reported to the “Chinese Chief Detectives” of Hong Kong Island or of Kowloon, a reporting structure that remained the same until 1974. From 1974, as we saw above, a new system came into play: the detectives of a district were governed by the Station Sergeant, and as such the independence of the CID gradually disintegrated. Although the detectives were not senior to uniformed constables, it was generally considered an honour to be a “sundry policeman” in the Police Force in 1950s and 1960s.

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5.2 Staffing and Equipment Today, CIDs work with some of the most advanced investigative technology in the world. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the investigative facilities available were limited at best and downright primitive at worst. There was often a shortage of police cars available to support investigations, to the extent that detectives often used public transportation during the course of their work, and photographic equipment was similarly scarce. At the time, clerical staff based in Police Headquarters were responsible for taking photographs and matching fingerprints, but due to a heavy workload they were often unable to handle all of the job requests from their colleagues. As a result, detectives learned how to collect evidence and worked on their own, without any professional training. Even harder to imagine is the fact that much of the investigation equipment belonging to detectives before 1950 was personally owned. Except for the handguns, equipment (such as handcuffs and gun bags) had to be bought out of the detectives’ own pockets. There was also a lack of room for detaining suspects. A big iron cage was therefore placed inside every police station’s catch house — today the reporting room — to be used for the detention of suspects. When the cage was full, the detectives had to temporarily release suspects arrested for lessserious crimes. Plain clothes policemen did not need to wear uniforms when they were on duty. However, when they attended important ceremonies like the annual police parades, they would wear Tang suits made of silk — again, bought by themselves out of their own pocket. In contrast, the two Detective Staff Sergeant I, nicknamed the “Chinese Chief Detective”, would wear uniforms with a red sash (commonly called a “bridegroom”). A retired detective recalled:

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Fig 5.1

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Detectives in 1949. The two Detective Staff Sergeants were in uniform but all Detective Police Constables were in plain clothes.

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I attended some large-scale events like annual parades every year. To prepare myself for the events, some colleagues and I would go to a tailor to have him make us a set of black silk Tang suits in Sham Shui Po. Matched with a pair of white-cloth shoes, the Tang suits became our uniforms in the official ceremonies.

No criminal investigation training course was offered by Hong Kong Police Force until 1952, despite the fact that the CID was set up in 1923. Only after the Detective Training School was established in 1970 was comprehensive investigation training provided to the detectives. According to a retired policeman who worked as a detective in the 1950s, there was a lack of an official training system for new detectives during those years. With no working guidelines, handbook or common rules, the newcomers could only use their own wits at work and learn from observing the skills of their colleagues. It was common for a new member to ask a more experienced detective to be his mentor and learn the investigation skills in person. The unofficial mentorship system made the relationships between detectives extremely close, and the experienced staff highly respected. As that the same retired policeman recalls: When we were fresh sundry policemen, we rarely got a chance to meet the Detective Staff Sergeant. He would grant us an interview only after we had worked for a period of time and made some achievements on the job. We all respected the seniors very much. They were not only our superiors, but also our teachers when it came to methods of investigation. Whether or not we could keep working in the CID all depended on how well the seniors and the Detective Staff Sergeant were satisfied with our performance. It was an admirable job, being a detective at that time, and we attached a great deal of value to the opportunity.

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Another retired policeman who was a detective in the 1960s stated that it was not easy to be transferred from the uniformed division to the CID in those days. Having connections was often a necessary requirement of a successful transfer. If an applicant did not know anyone in the detective team, it became very difficult for him to be recruited as a detective; even if an applicant was selected to join the detective team, he was not considered to be an official detective in the first few months. During a kind of probation period, the new member was given the nickname of “helping sickle” and was regarded as a probationary detective. If his job performance was well-received and he was able to develop a good relationship with colleagues in the team, he would be affirmed as a detective officially by his Detective Staff Sergeant; if not, he would be sent back to the uniformed division and resume his original post. Not all detectives were well-educated. Some of them would draw pictures in the official documents of investigation in order to report the cases in detail to their colleagues. A retired detective said he had once handled a case that occurred at the Mid-Level of Hong Kong Island. In the report prepared by his colleague, there was a drawing of a ladder, designed to illustrate that the incident happened in Ladder Street, indicating just how important it was for detectives to develop additional skills.

5.3 Investigation and Interrogation Skills In the 1960s and 1970s, detectives did not have the support of advanced technology and forensic expertise. They conducted investigations using their own good sense, experience and the teamwork. A retired policeman who worked on criminal investigations for many years stressed the importance of common sense in case investigation. He still remembered certain cases clearly:

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I once took up a murder case in which a foreigner’s corpse was abandoned in a suburban area and the victim was probably killed by a professional assassin. My colleague found a cloth belt on the dead body and suspected that it was the assailant’s weapon. He stated in his report that the weapon was a “Judo belt”. I re-examined the piece carefully and was pretty sure that it was not a Judo belt since I had learnt Judo before. I speculated that it was a bathrobe belt from a luxury hotel. I asked my subordinates to check it with all major hotels and finally identified the hotel that the murderer checked in previously. With further investigation, we finally arrested the murderer and closed the case successfully.

Another retired detective pointed out that the criminal investigation was the work of diversity, and that technology was sometimes no better than the human brain. If one was meticulous enough, one could solve cases, even from matters that sound irrelevant. He recalled a case where: There was a dentist robbed in his clinic. The robbers ransacked the clinic and found the dentist’s credit card. After forcing the dentist to speak out the password, one of the robbers went out to withdraw money while another stayed in the clinic to hold the dentist under duress. When the culprit saw the dental moulds in the clinic, he said casually, “You also use products from this company!” We later found that the company was a very big manufacturer of dental moulds. We then focused on its staff in our investigation. Finally, we spotted the target and arrested the culprits successfully.

Sometimes, less-orthodox methods would be used by detectives looking to get their man. A retired detective recalled: When the suspects absconded, we sometimes went to the homes of their family members in the middle 112

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of the night. We not only visited the family members, but also visited all their neighbours in the same street and checked whether they knew where the suspects were. Under that kind of public pressure, their family members would often reveal their hiding places. Of course, the police couldn’t use that kind of disruptive method nowadays.

A retired detective explained how the detectives would break the defence of suspects psychologically, using special tricks: Successful detective work depended on both fortune and creativity. There was once a case in which we had tried everything, but still could not collect sufficient evidence to prosecute an alleged murderer. As a last resort, we took the suspect to the deceased’s home under escort at midnight. In the dark, it was so heartbreaking for him to see the ritualistic paper offerings and incense that the suspect burst into tears and admitted that he killed the victim on an impulse.

The same retired detective also stated that they sometimes even used personal emotions in order to find useful evidence: In another case of murder, we could not find any clues after questioning everyone we could find, whether they were directly or indirectly related. While we were stuck without any progress of investigation, I noticed that there was a junior staff member working in the suspect’s company. I approached her and became friends, though I was not sure that it could help the investigation. After a period of time, in an incidental situation, it was she who helped us in finding out the offenders. Finally, the case was solved.

Another retired detective keenly shared with us how he learned to be brave and attentive in the investigation training: 113

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We were required to attend classes in the mortuary as part of the training. Right before we entered the mortuary, there had been already a few trainees that had ended up retching. Later in the class, the coroner wiped the dead body with his own hand, and then put that hand into his own mouth. He asked all the students to do the same in order to see how it tasted of the corpse. We followed what he did, but could not help vomiting. Only one of the trainees was fine with that: the reason, of course, was that he noticed that the coroner only pretended to put his hand into his mouth. That was only a trick that the coach used to train up the observation of the class and make sure we were paying attention!

Supporting Teams The vast number of different crimes requires different professional support to ensure a speedy resolution to the investigation at hand. As early as the 1950s, the following support teams could already be found in the CID: Laboratories: mainly responsible for conducting laboratory tests on victims injured in assaults and dead bodies in murders; also responsible for the authentication of evidence (in terms of quantity, composition, properties, etc.). Firearms Bureau: identifies the type and characteristics of the firearms and ammunition picked up by on-site investigation by firearms officials. Identification Bureau: provides fingerprint and handwriting identification, as well as preparing photographs of the crime scene for the coroner’s reference. Criminal Records Room: keeps all criminal records and information related to crimes for the police officers’ reference. The records could be shared with the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol).

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Fig 5.2

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The CID graduates in 1956. CID Trainees received training in the Police Training School before the Detective Training School set up in 1972.

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In the 1950s and 1960s, some Detective Staff Sergeants were very powerful: many kept their own private drivers employed for travelling between home, police stations and crime scenes, and it was a relatively common practice to hire a “room boy” for miscellaneous work in and around the police station. In the past, such a “room boy” was employed solely by the Detective Staff Sergeant and he was responsible for serving the team by preparing beverages, buying breakfast, having incense ready and so on. Occasionally, he would assist the detectives by preparing statements and fingerprints of victims and suspects, playing the “actor” in identification parades, and even drafting official documents. To make his work easier, the room boy usually lived in the police station. From the mid-1970s, after the organisational reform of the CID, the room boy role continued, but instead was employed collectively by the CID officers, with the hiring cost shared between them all. In the past, Detective Staff Sergeant established an alternative approach to law and order by having delicate relationships with triad society members in different districts. This contributed to the rarity of serious violent crimes. As described by a retired detective: The social order was not bad in 1950s and 1960s. There was the so-called underground law and order in every district. Whenever a serious crime occurred, we would ask the district’s triad boss to hand over the criminals involved. In case of picking pockets, the lost property could usually be found within three days through the triad’s help, provided that the incident’s time and place were clearly stated. If any outsider threatened the social stability in a district, we would be clued in quickly and were able to settle the case easily with a little prompt action.

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usually kept a low profile and would not resolve disputes by the use of force if they could help it. Another retired detective recalled: The triad leaders in those days were not arrogant at all. They didn’t dress in trendy or strange styles. In fact, they were rather old-fashioned in appearance. I once took a statement with a suspect who appeared to be calm and polite; it wasn’t until later that I found out he was actually a faction triad leader.

People who ran crooked businesses liked to fawn over detective policemen in order to obtain special protection. A retired detective described his past working experience: When we went to check business licenses or we had a case investigation in a night club, the managers of the clubs were so hospitable and they quickly got a sofa for us. We were not required to pay bills for our meals. If we insisted on doing so, the managers would angrily claim that we weren’t treating them as friends!

Many retired detectives agreed that it was easier to crack cases in the 1950s and 1960s. Whenever there were serious crimes like armed robberies or murders, it caused a furore in the community. The CID would also take the case seriously and deploy as many detectives as possible to search apartments and hotels, as well as every port, like the Hong Kong–Macau Ferry Terminal, in an attempt to intercept the suspects. At that time, Hong Kong’s outbound traffic was not as well-developed as today and it was difficult for the perpetrators to hide themselves for long. Along with their close relationships with different people, the detectives easily accessed the intelligence and made the arrest. A retired detective stated that: In our times, few people dared to challenge the police. We didn’t need to worry about ideas like ordinance of

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Fig 5.3

Detective Staff Sergeants attended training course in 1968.

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privacy, habeas corpus, human rights etc. Moreover, there was no specified procedure that we had to follow during an investigation. As long as we did our best, we could often crack the cases.

In the 1970s, society became more complicated. The number of armed robberies and kidnapping grew noticeably, with some thieves even learning how to commit crimes from the movies. A retired detective remembered vividly a robbery in a public housing estate: As Lunar New Year was approaching, there were a number of collective robberies in the public housing estates in Kwai Shing. Several robbers copied a plot from the movie “The Private Eyes”, played by Michael Hui and Sam Hui, where they ambushed [people] in the building lobbies with knives in the early morning. When the sleepy residents went to take the lifts in the lobbies, they were robbed one by one. Moreover, the drug related crimes were rampant as heroin, replacing opium, become the most popular drug. It was also the result of the fact that the Hong Kong Chinese started to participate in drug smuggling.

Informers and prosecution witnesses For extremely serious crimes, the police will often put up a police reward in cash at a certain amount with the purpose of appealing to the general public for useful information. If the information provided leads to the case being solved, the provider of the information will be offered the cash reward. Different from the information provider under the police reward system, an informer provides criminal intelligence to police officers under special arrangements. According to a retired detective, in the past, they invited those individuals who were actively involved in the criminal community as informers — or, as they were called, “connectors”. The connectors helped in the collection of crime-

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related information and updated the police on the status of criminal groups, in return for a sum of money from the policemen. The police operation was not as mature and systematic as today. When a detective wished to use informers, he was not required to comply with any regulation, but only to make a request to his superiors. If his request was accepted, the superintendent would take a certain amount of “confidential operations allowance” from a safe deposit box in the police station. The allowance was used for the payment of the informer, commonly known as an “informer fee”. In the 1970s, the police endeavoured to break down the drug business, which made the number of informers involved in drug cases the highest out of all types of crime being investigated. The value of the informer fee offered was calculated by the weight and purity of the drugs confiscated in the corresponding cases. If a criminal was found guilty of drug trafficking in Hong Kong, he would be sentenced under a system of tough penalties. As a result, when the drug smugglers found themselves in an unfavourable situation, some of them would agree to be the prosecution witnesses against the leaders of the trafficking gang in order to testify under immunity at trial.

5.4 Reverences for Guan Ti and Canteen Culture In a police station of the 1960s and 1970s, there was a spacious office dedicated for the use of the detective team. Although the detectives usually worked in the field, they would make use of the room for the discussion of cases, document preparation and even interrogation. Since it was believed that the success of detection depended more or less on good luck, a statue of Guan Ti was placed for worship in the office. Detectives are used to worshipping Guan Ti on special occasions when, for example, a new senior officer assumes office, a major case is settled or a colleague gets promoted. All the officers of the detective squad join together, with their senior invited, and conduct a ceremony wishing for an even better 120

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future and smooth work. Sometimes they hire people from a roasted meat shop to help manage the ceremony, to ensure that they go through the correct rituals. Before the ritual, water boiled with lemongrass, pomelo and leaves of wampee is used to clean the shrine of Guan Ti. Offerings (including a whole roasted pig and a piece of pig tongue) are prepared, which symbolise that everything is going smoothly: in Cantonese, the pronunciation of “tongue” is same as “smooth”. Other items — five different kinds of fruits, wine and beverages — are also on the offering list. In fact, not all police stations have a statue of Guan Ti placed in detectives’ office. In smaller stations or police stations built in later years, the detectives’ offices are relatively small or divided into a few smaller rooms. The statues there are then placed in the staff canteen of the station. The staff canteen tends to be the detectives’ favourite place, where they can gather together for a short break, to discuss cases and engages in some unofficial intelligence sharing. A retired detective described this canteen culture: We used to informally discuss cases with colleagues in the canteen because we might be overheard when we discussed the confidential information outside of the police station. The canteen was also our gathering place before and after work, where we enjoyed chatting with our peers. Most of my best friends I first met in the canteen.

When there were large-scale operations that required the support of colleagues from other districts, the supporting officers might be arranged to stand by in the canteen. Whenever the detectives’ office could not accommodate a large number of suspects who were arrested in an operation, the canteen would also be used for the taking of statements. The temporary staff who worked as the “actors” in identification parades would also wait for instructions in the canteen. In the 1970s and 121

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1980s, canteen was the place that many detectives visited most frequently.

5.6 Summary In 1960s and 1970s, CIDs carried guns throughout the day. When there were serious cases, they often worked day and night in police stations. Many detectives said that, if a serious case could not be solved, it would leave them feeling uneasy. It was not uncommon that they forgot to eat and sleep while searching for clues. The trustful relationship among detectives was regarded by many as being akin to that of Damon and Pythias: strong, noble, and long-lasting. With this sense of belonging, the detectives took pride in being the members of the investigation team. However, this was not always ideal. Gradually, the CID became seen as an “independent kingdom” and many people said that the Chinese Detective Staff Sergeant represented authority and corruption. In the early 1970s, the senior management of the force was already aware that the power of the CID had grown excessively. The criminal investigation unit worked so independently that it had often stopped following the orders of its superiors. The Commissioner, C. P. Sutcliffe, restructured the police departments and placed the CID under control of the newly-established Operations Wing. Moreover, there were no more openings for the post of Staff Sergeant I, or so-called “Chief Detectives”. The ranks of Corporal and Staff Sergeant were abolished, while the new rank of Station Sergeant was added. Under the new organisational structure, many detectives were promoted as Station Sergeants and therefore their power and authority became highly diluted and much less focused. A number of Detective Staff Sergeants II, nicknamed “Detective Staff Sergeant”, were promoted to Inspectors in the officer level but were assigned to those job duties without virtual authority. The new structure

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effectively shattered the deep-rooted connections among the detectives that had grown for several decades in the CID. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) was established in 1974, and was devoted to the fight against syndicated corruption in the police force. The CID became the most obvious target of the ICAC, and many detectives ran scared. Those detectives who went through the years from 1974 to 1977 stated that it was the “Dark Ages” for the CID. Every day, their superiors and colleagues were taken away to assist the ICAC investigation, resulting in extremely low morale in the detective team. In 1977, the conflict between the Police Force and the ICAC intensified. To settle the political disputes, the Governor, Sir Murray MacLehose, announced a “partial amnesty” for most corruption offences committed in the past. In the late 1970s, the force began a formidable reform drive and the CID was developed into an even more professional investigatory team.

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Chapter 6 The Marine Police: Gatekeepers of Hong Kong Waters

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Many people think that being in the Marine Police is a leisurely job, enjoying stress-free work on a boat and eating sea food on a daily basis. In reality, the Hong Kong Marine Police did not even sit down for meals when they were on duty. For them, it has always been a case of Mission: Impossible.

6.1 Establishment of the Marine Police In Chapter 2, we described how in 1842 the Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China authorised William Caine as Police Magistrate, with a remit to be in charge of the law and order on Hong Kong Island. At the same time, Pottinger, the Hong Kong Governer also appointed William Peddar as Marine Magistrate, and gave him the power to police Hong Kong waters. This is widely regarded as the inaugural act in the formation of the Marine Police. Under Peddar’s leadership, it was formed as a team operating independently from the land police, and comprised solely of Europeans and Chinese, except for some Indians recruited in 1922. However, it differed from the organisation of the land police in that Chinese policemen made up the majority of the force.1 The Marine Police did not have a particularly grand or glorious beginning. It was mainly responsible for harbour patrols; the Royal Navy was responsible for managing the seas beyond. The Piracy Prevention Ordinance was enacted in 1914 due to the rampant piracy within and outside Hong Kong waters.2 Under this ordinance, all vessels travelling between Hong Kong and Chinese ports were made to have security guards stationed onboard, and

1. Chief Magistrate’s warrant. (5 May 1842). The Friend of China and Hong Kong Gazette , p. 1. 2. Hong Kong Government. (28 August 1914). Hong Kong Government Gazette, 337 . Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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policemen were granted the right to search them. To support the law enforcement, the Police Force was committed to strengthen the sea-searching unit of the Marine Police in both scale and structure. Two European and 26 Chinese were employed as search officers in 1914. Together with 158 guards stationed on vessels, its purpose was to minimise the number of crimes at sea.3 In 1922 some Indian policemen joined the team as security guards. Regardless of this expansion, the Marine Police’s equipment was limited, and they possessed just a few sampans in the 1920s. During the Second World War, all the Marine Police launches were commandeered by the Japanese army. A few of them were blown up by the Allied forces, and at the close of hostilities, the rest were considered to be no longer seaworthy without extensive repairs. In the post-war period, it was extremely dangerous to navigate the mine-riddled Hong Kong waters, and frequent accidents occurred when the Marine Police launches were on duty with a number of policemen being injured or killed in the line of duty. In 1948, the Police Force officially recruited the first batch of post-war Marine policemen, with a total of 30 members. In the 1950s, the Marine Police set up its temporary office in Foshan in Mainland China, moving its operations back to Hong Kong once its headquarters building in Tsim Sha Tsui was renovated.

6.1.1 Marine Police or Marine Security? At this time, both the Marine Police and the land police were part of the Hong Kong Police Force; despite this shared remit, they both maintained distinct organisational practices designed to reflect the differing needs of their personnel and the service required. It was a difference that was partly embraced by the police

3. Hong Kong Government. (1915). Report of the Captain Superintendent of Police. Hong Kong Administrative Report 1914 , Appendix J. Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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Fig 6.1

Marine police graduates in 1950. Their uniform was similar as the Royal Navy of the British Armed Forces.

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force as a whole. Before the 1960s, Marine Police and land police conducted recruitment separately; applicants were force to affirm their preference beforehand and attend different recruitment centres accordingly. The Marine Police was seen to be a separate construct, distinct from the police force (and its often-flawed reputation), and as such it was common for candidates who wished to join the force despite familial opposition to enrol as members of the “Marine Security” team instead, avoiding stigma while still choosing the police as a career. The post-war Marine Police contained all the same rankings as the land police, including not only inspectors and rank and file, but also other postings including engineers and chefs. Despite working on the Marine Police launches, these supporting staff were classified as civilians. In December 1947, when the Marine Police was restructured, the civilians working aboard were required to attend the Police Training School and they became policemen officially afterwards. Thereafter, all work, except the chef, on launches was taken up by disciplined staff.4 A retired marine policeman who joined the force in 1950s recalled, At that time, even the mechanics who worked in the cabin were officially transferred to train as policemen. I didn’t know the specific reason behind it, perhaps, after the riot of Double Ten Day in 1956, the management of the force was afraid that the civilian staff would suddenly resign when encountering dangers on job. At the time of recruitment, we were assigned the badge numbers commonly starting from 3000. The first official Marine Police number was 3401. But those transferred staff got larger number: they were nicknamed “Large Number” and were more easily identified as a result.

4. Royal Hong Kong Police Force. (1974). Offbeat , Issue No. 56. 129

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From civilians to disciplinary personnel on board In issue 37 of Offbeat, there was an interview with Mr. Ling Mo, an engineering supervisor of marine police launches. Mr. Ling joined the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom in 1940 and transferred to the Hong Kong Police Force as a civilian in 1962. He further transferred to a disciplinary officer in 1964 as the first civilian working on launch who joined the Police Force. His main responsibility was to ensure the 47 marine police launches operated smoothly. He therefore worked very closely with the Government Dockyard in Yau Ma Tei, which managed the repair and maintenance of all police vessels.

From the 1950s, the Hong Kong Police Force increased local recruitment of Chinese inspectors. Meanwhile, all Marine Police inspectors were transferred from the land police, and no Chinese inspector was recruited directly by the Marine Police. Inspectors from the land police were required to complete training in navigation and marine engineering before they worked on board. To ease the operation, the Police Force tended to appoint those officers who had previous experience with the marine division in management, or other similar roles. From 1960s, it attracted many European nationals in the auxiliary police to join the marine police and engage in the work together.

6.2 Organisation and Recruitment Like those of the land police, all new recruits of the Marine Police were required to complete a six-month fundamental training course in the Police Training School. Before 1963, the Marine Police trainees would firstly form their independent squad, and subsequently trained collectively with the other land police recruits. After completing the normal police training, they had to 130

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take another three-month training in the Marine Police Training School on marine police work.5 The Marine Police training was mainly composed of two parts. The first part covered the on-deck knowledge and skills, namely maritime law and radio communications. The second part addressed the professional knowledge on vessel mechanics. The trainees could not go on duty unless they had passed the relevant examinations. The courses provided by the Marine Police Training School were later accredited by the Hong Kong Marine Department, and so all of its graduates were able to obtain the relevant operation licenses at the same time. Usually, there were more than 30 graduates in a class. In the passing-out parade, they wore square-collared sailor suits, which were significantly different to the uniform of the land police. Swimming difficulties Many people thought that all marine policemen were strong swimmers, and always acted like natural born seamen. In fact, being able to swim was not an requirement for recruitment into the Marine Police. A small number of marine policemen still did not know how to swim when they retired. Just as was the case with the citizenry at large, it was very possible for marine policemen to be seasick when working aboard during extremely bad weather. A retired marine policeman who joined the force in 1950s shared his plight when he was new to the job: I was unable to swim when I attended the training school. Unlike what my friends imagined, there was no kind of “seasickness test” before getting the job. In the very beginning, when working in choppy seas, I vomited so frequently that I really wanted to quit. Gradually, I adapted to the working conditions and worked on board for several decades.

5. The Marine Police Training School was set up in 1966, located at the headquarters of the Marine Police District. An average of 300 recruits completed its training every year. Royal Hong Kong Police Force (1973). Offbeat , Issue No. 12.

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A small-sized Marine Police launch required from 6 to 16 staff members on duty; 10 to 18 in a medium-sized one; and more than 20 in a large one. Every time the marine policemen were due to go on patrol and surveillance at sea, they first gathered at the Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui and then went on board in Yau Ma Tei Government Dockyard. Since the large Marine Police launches were too big for the Dockyard, they anchored at Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter to prepare for embarkation. The work schedules varied depending on the size of the required launches. In the early years, the average speed of Marine Police launches was seven to ten knots per hour. Patrolling outside Hong Kong waters, the launches travelled away from the base for long periods of time. The policemen working in large launches were divided into team A and B. Every time the launch went to sea, both teams worked together for the first four days; on the fifth day, the launch returned to the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter for maintenance and replenishment. Team A took rest ashore while team B stayed aboard “on watch”. On the sixth day, team A came back to join team B and all of them went to sea again for another four days. When the launch came back and berthed on the tenth day, it was the turn of team A to remain “on watch”aboard, and team B was allowed to go and take rest ashore. As a result, the marine policemen only had one day off for every nine-day patrol when they served in large launches.6 On the other hand, policemen working in medium-sized launches had one day off after working for a day. Small launches served for patrols of Victoria Harbour with three groups of policemen working in rotation every day. A retired marine policeman recalled:

6. Royal Hong Kong Police Force (1977). Offbeat , Issue No. 116.

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Fig 6.2

The 7th graduation passing out parade on 4 December 1965 (Conversion Class).

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Fig 6.3

The passing out parade of the Marine Force, 1965.

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At that time, I could have a day-off after 24 hours on-duty. Let’s say, if I reported for duty in Tsim Sha Tsui at noon, I would be off duty at noon the next day. When serving in those launches patrolling in the Victoria Harbour, I worked for eight and a half hours a day. Before and after the eight-hour patrol, my colleagues and I would attend a briefing by our superiors for 15 minutes. Besides, our roster changed every week.

An article in the police magazine Offbeat depicted the work of marine policemen in launch Police No. 1 in 1977. In good weather conditions, they patrolled the waters easily. By contrast, when typhoons arrived, they had to fight against the stormy sea: a job so alarmingly dangerous that not many people were able to handle it. Apart from maintaining the law and order in the Hong Kong waters, marine policemen were also responsible for inspecting ships and their licenses from time to time, participating in rescue operations, searching for missing persons, patrolling outlying islands of Hong Kong and so on. Sometimes, they were called to extinguish hill fires as well. Understandably, the most unfavourable work was the responsibility of retrieving corpses from the water. Since the marine policemen often took up cleaning, repairs and even woodworking on board, it was not convenient for them to work in uniforms; instead, they wore blue-twill clothes in the style of a Chinese tunic suit when working on deck. For those working in engine rooms, boiler suits and white-cloth shoes were worn. Though the marine policemen rarely wore uniforms on the launches, they did wear their uniforms when they first went aboard, as well as on land.

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Fig 6.4

Ship mechanics working on a police launch in the early 1960s. They were civilians, not policemen.

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Marine police on British vessels When patrolling on the sea, the marine policemen always kept close contact with the British Royal Navy stationed in Hong Kong, and they supported each other in the execution of their duties. From the 1960s to the 1980s, there were one or more Hong Kong marine policemen on duty in each Royal Navy mine-sweeper in order to facilitate any search operation. A marine policeman who had worked on British naval vessels said: Our Marine Police launches usually worked in Hong Kong territorial waters, but the British Navy vessels could operate in open ocean areas. Whenever the British naval forces encountered suspicious ships entering Hong Kong waters, they would stop them, and we marine policemen would go aboard and perform a search. If any illegal immigrants or prohibited materials were found, we would arrest the suspects and take them back to Hong Kong using the naval vessel for further investigation. In peacetime, it was our responsibility to maintain law and order, but without the back up and support of the British Navy, we would definitely have been unable to fulfil our duty quite as well.

6.3 “White Dolphins” In the early 1960s, the role of the Hong Kong Marine Police was not limited to the maintenance of law and order in Hong Kong waters. The challenges of the job became almost unimaginable, as two massive human exoduses burst out from the mainland. In the late 1950s, the “Great Leap Forward” campaign in Mainland China led to serious famine in rural areas, followed by the Cultural Revolution in 1967. As a result, during the early 1960s and the 1970s, many mainland residents living along the coast left their homes and tried to enter Hong Kong, either by the land route or by sea. The marine policemen stationed at the marine borders were responsible for countering illegal immigration. To cope with the human exodus, the Anti-Illegal Immigration Branch

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was set up in 1962. In 1965, it was combined with the Marine Police District, with 1,150 policemen and 20 launches in total. In April and May of 1962, the number of illegal immigrants coming from the mainland and Macau to Hong Kong soared. The Police Force was burdened with an unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants from the mainland. As a result, it established the Illegal Immigration Prevention Bureau in August 1962, which specialised in handling illegal immigrants arriving by water. The Bureau was under the control of the Marine Police and commanded by an Assistant Commissioner. Its personnel was assigned by the Police Force in order to strengthen the manpower of the Marine Police. Additionally, the Marine Department and the Customs and Excise Department supported the Bureau with additional ships while the British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force provided it with logistical support. Thereafter, the Bureau and the Marine Police were officially combined to form the Marine Police District.7 Whenever the marine policemen found any drowned exile in the sea, they were required to pick up the corpse and deal with it. In normal cases, when a corpse was found on land, policemen would carry out a basic investigation and then call specialist corpse-handling workers to handle and move the corpse from the spot. However, it was a totally different case if a dead body was found in the sea. Since corpse-handling workers would not handle bodies offshore, marine policemen had to bring the corpses on to land before carrying out any investigation. Therefore, corpsehandling was one of the marine policemen’ major duties. In 1962, the total number of corpses handled reached its peak and hit more than 5,500. The situation was still vivid in the mind of a retired marine policeman:

7. Hong Kong Police Force. (2008). Police Museum . Hong Kong: Police Museum, Hong Kong Police Force.

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The period between the years 1961 and 1962 can be regarded as the harshest one for the marine police. We handled at least seven to eight “white dolphins” (the nickname for corpses) everyday. The corpses were decomposed in different ways. Dealing with bodies without skulls or limbs, I felt very uncomfortable at the beginning, but became insensitive after coming across a lot of them. When a corpse was found, we dropped a piece of canvas from our vessel, placed it under the dead body skilfully and lifted it up slowly. If we did not do it in that way, the decayed body which had been soaked in sea water for a long time could fall apart easily. After wrapping them in white cloth, we took some photos of them for record use. We then put them aside on the deck and brought them to Tai Lam Chung Pier or Aberdeen Pier for further handling.

The Cultural Revolution broke out in Mainland China in 1967, and lasted for a decade. Apart from causing another wave of large-scale exile, numerous people were killed or persecuted to death along the Guangdong coast as a result of the political campaign. The dead bodies were abandoned in the Pearl River and along the seashore, and subsequently drifted into Hong Kong waters. As a retired marine policeman remembered, many corpses were found in Hong Kong every day during the time. Some of the corpses were tied and swollen; some terrible cases were even missing their skulls and limbs and smelled awful, with maggots gushing out from every orifice when the bodies were lifted up with canvas. It was said that an inspector who had just been transferred from the land police became mentally ill after watching the corpse handling, and finally quit the job. In the areas of Lau Fau Shan and Tsim Bei Tsui in Deep Bay, marine policemen often found numbers of corpses of mainland fugitives at that time. The region was a tidal plain. It became part of the sea at high tide, but the border of the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong looked much closer at low 139

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tide. Consequently, when the tide was out it was one of the main access routes for the illegal immigrants. The empty-handed people attempted to enter Hong Kong waters by “partly walking and partly swimming”. Unfortunately, some of them became bogged down and trapped in the seabed mud, and were finally drowned when the tide came in. Even those who survived the crossing were often badly lacerated by razor-sharp oyster shells. In the 1960s and 1970s, Sha Chau at Castle Peak Beach became the tomb of countless numbers of illegal immigrants. A popular ecological and scenic spot nowadays, the sight of many skeletons visible at low tide gives an eerie reminder of the region’s history. Facing such disgusting tasks, marine policemen took different measures to make the job more bearable. They smeared Chinese medicated oil on their noses, or clogged their nostrils with orange or lemon peel in order to avoid the foul smell from decayed corpses. In cases where a corpse could not be lifted even with herculean effort, the policemen burnt joss sticks at the bow and stern, and prayed to the dead person: “We are coming to help you. Please cooperate with us and release your body!”. Whether through divine intervention or merely due to the comfort gained by performing an act of faith, many reported that it eased their work most of the time. In 1980, the government carried out the “Touch Base Policy” under which all illegal immigrants arrested would be repatriated instantly to the mainland when their identities were verified. As a result, the number of illegal immigrants plunged.

6.4 Anti-Riot Support The Commissioner of Police would assign the Marine Police to support the maintenance of public order ashore if needed. In 1956, large-scale riots occurred in Kowloon and Tsuen Wan, and

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marine policemen were called to support anti-riot activities. One of the marine policemen involved recalled: At that time, the triad society members robbed every household. Many people died in the riots. I was assigned to anti-riots duty in Shum Shui Po. Someone flung stones at me in Shun Ning Road and called me “running dog”. After the riots, every first and ninth of October, we had to stand by in a government secondary school in Tsuen Wan in case any riot happened. I still remember that there were lots of mosquitoes at night. Though we did not have to take further action against rioters, we were attacked by mosquitoes every time!

The 1967 riots lasted for half a year. Social order was severely damaged. The land police were always credited for their anti-riot actions by the general public, but in fact the Marine Police also contributed to the social order significantly, despite the fact that there were only 400 marine policemen commanded by a Chief Superintendent under New Territories Police District. At times of social unrest, most of the marine policemen were called to stand by in the Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsim in case their land colleagues needed any support. Suppressing riots in various Kowloon districts, the marine policemen wore white naval-style uniforms which were different from the uniforms of their land counterparts. This made the rioters mistakenly believe that they were from the British Navy. A marine sergeant who took part in the anti-riot duties ashore described, “It was very strange that rioters were not afraid of the regular anti-riot policemen, but were frightened into running away once they saw our white-hatted team!” Situated in Tsim Sha Tsui, the Marine Police Headquarters served as one of the canteens for anti-riot policemen during the 1967 Riots. Society was very chaotic, and some merchants went

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on strike, resulting in a shortage of food and daily commodities in the city. The good relationship between the marine policemen and the residents of outlying islands worked to the advantage of the Police Force and guaranteed it a stable supply of fresh food from the islands. Marine Police launches even transported the food and daily necessities from the islands to the Marine Police Headquarters for storage. This arrangement helped to minimise the impact of food shortages for the police during the riot period. “The Chief Chef” In the critical period, some anti-riot land policemen arranged to take their meals in Marine Police Headquarters owing to the shortage of food in urban areas. A Marine Police officer who worked in the Marine Police Headquarters during the riot said: Handling the three meals a day for our marine colleagues was already not easy. It made us even busier when the antiriot land policemen were aware that we had good food and came to join our meals!

6.5 Vietnamese Boat People When Saigon was defeated by North Vietnam in 1975, a wave of Vietnamese refugees burst out. A large number of refugees illegally entered Hong Kong waters to seek political asylum from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. Many of them started their exile to Hong Kong from Cholon, a city in Vietnam, or the seashore of Guangxi province of China. They then sailed downwind to Hong Kong by wooden boats. In the most alarming period, the Small Boat Division of the Marine Police intercepted several boats and arrested hundreds of “boat people” every night. The police launches were not enough to cope with the situation and the Marine Police even borrowed ships from the Marine Department. A retired marine policeman recalled the situation:

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The captains and sailors of those borrowed ships were from the Marine Department as well. We marine policemen were only responsible for escorting the boat people. I myself worked in MD41, Marine Department Launch No. 41, for a period of time.

The boat people were escorted to the police launches for registration. The marine policemen bound their hands in order to prevent any armed attack. The immigrants were then transported to Tai Lam Chung Marine Police Base and underwent quarantine. Because they had been at sea for a long period of time, their bodies usually carried an awful stench. Most of the Vietnamese boat people coming to Hong Kong in the early periods were very pitiful. They had lost their families during the war, and they were obliged to come to Hong Kong for their very survival. A retired marine policeman shared a touching story: It was October of 1978. Most of the Vietnamese refugees who came to Hong Kong at that time were well-educated professionals. Some of them were even doctors and teachers. To flee the war, they had no choice but to leave their homes. They were overjoyed when their boats entered Hong Kong waters and they met us, the marine officers. One day, we gave a group of boat people food and arranged from them to take showers ashore. They thanked us gratefully because they had not taken a shower for more than a month! One of them, a young girl, resettled in Canada later. After seven years living there, she came back Hong Kong and called the police hotline 999 to search for us, the team of marine policemen who had given her a “cordial reception” before, and she wished to thank us in person. At that moment, I found the work of the Marine Police very meaningful!

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However, the Vietnamese coming to Hong Kong in later periods were rather different in conduct and behaviour. A retired marine policeman described angrily: We once intercepted a wooden boat from Vietnam. A Vietnamese man onboard asked me, “Will you give me any cigarettes? Are the cigarettes of Viceroy Brand? Will pork and chicken be provided in meals?”. It infuriated me and I replied instantly, “If you speak any more, I will kick you into the sea!”. Some time later, I was assigned to station the refugee camp in Stonecutters, where the Vietnamese often fought with each other and caused trouble. I thought they were not refugees who had fallen into troubles, but instead hooligans who caused it!

6.6 Deportation of Criminals and Carrying Senior Officials Nowadays, the procedure for repatriating the foreign nationals who are convicted of crimes in Hong Kong is extremely complicated. First, the police have to work through a number of documents about the criminals. They then need to contact corresponding departments in the deportee’s home country and set up the repatriation mechanism. After all this, they must repatriate the criminal according to the procedure mutually agreed by the home country and Hong Kong. In the 1950s, the Hong Kong Marine Police was responsible for deporting criminals from Hong Kong. On the day of deportation, the criminal was kept in a small boat, which was hauled out to sea on a rope by a Marine Police launch. After offering the deportee some food, the marine policemen cut the rope and let the boat drift to any nearby isolated island. Some of those marooned re-entered Hong Kong territory after a few 144

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Fig 6.5

Mui Wo Police Station in 1966. The most right one in the first row was a female searcher, also known as “Auntie.”

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months. In some cases, the marine policemen sent the criminals to the border in trucks and handed them over to the land police for further handling. Before the Cross-Harbour Tunnel opened in 1972, providing the first road link between Kowloon Peninsula and Hong Kong Island, the Marine Police had another important duty — to escort the local senior officials travelling between the two sides of Victoria Harbour. Marine policemen were stationed on two yachts, the Lady Maurine, reserved for the governor, his family and guests, and the Clementi for senior government officials. Apart from the two yachts, which were managed by the Marine Department, the Hong Kong Police Force had dedicated ships to carrying officials of the rank of Assistant Commissioner or above between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. The Marine Police launches in the harbour were on call for transporting police officers and government documents or materials between the two places. Ship launching Chinese fishermen and sailors like to ask deities’ guidance. The Tankas, the so-called Boat Dwellers, are accustomed to worship Tin Hau. Unsurprisingly, marine policemen were also worshippers of the patron of the seas. Whenever there was the launching of a Marine Police launch, or the appointment of a new launch commander, the ritual of “Worshipping the Bow of the Ship” was performed. All the joss sticks, chickens and roasted meat required in the ritual were bought and prepared by the subordinates of the launch commander. Led by the newly appointed commander, the ritual was carried out to ask for smooth work under divine protection in the future. A similar ritual took place whenever any marine police launch completed large-scale maintenance and returned to sea. With officers of Commissioner level on board, the launch would travel to waters near a Tin Hau Temple and make three turns there in the hope of favourable weather and smooth work thereafter. A retired marine policeman still remembered: Land police worship Guan Ti while we marine police worship Tin Hau. Our “worshipping the bow of the ship” ritual was 146

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more or less the same as the Boat Dwellers’. In the paper offerings shop, we simply told the shopkeepers that we were going to worship the bow. They would then pack for us the sacrificial offerings, including paper offerings, red and green charms, as well as paper ingots and candles. Some oranges or bowls with rice were also prepared as censers.

6.7 Life Onboard Unlike the modern and well-equipped Marine Police launches of today, the launches before 1960s did not even provide fixed beds for officers. Each marine policeman was assigned a hammock which was indeed a piece of canvas held up by ropes. One side of this temporary small bed was fixed to the hull of the launch and the other side was attached with two iron chains. The sleeper was therefore easily thrown onto the deck in stormy weather. Even worse, the ropes that fixed the canvas tended to cause skin abrasion to the sleeper. Looking like bunk beds with two levels, the hammocks were usually placed in the cabin at the bow or by the side of the control room at the rear. When they were not in use, they would be hung vertically on the iron hooks to keep the passage clear. Unable to sleep well—Recalled by a retired policeman On my first working day in a large launch, my hammock was near two big iron pipes at the bow. When sleeping, I often heard a “gark gark” sound from the pipes. It was so deafening that I could not fall asleep. I later found that the two iron pipes were the tubes for the anchor chain. The swing of the ship made the anchor chains move in all directions inside the pipes and caused the metal-hitting-metal sound. Later, I worked in another ship where my hammock was at the rear. The sound from the motors there was as annoying as the one from the pipes at the bow. I slept badly all night long until I adapted to the noisy environment after working aboard for a period of time. 147

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At mealtimes, the commanding officer usually directed the launch to move to relatively calm waters. Mirs Bay and Lei Yue Mun were not the favourite place for meals because the tides surged there all the time. When they were heading somewhere for an assignment, the marine policemen took their meals as they went along. They then divided into two groups: one group took their meal, while the other group navigated the ship. The two groups rotated after the first had finished their meals. Working at sea, the marine policemen used to catch fish to enrich their meals. Sometimes, they caught small squid by hanging a lamp at the side of the ship at night, which attracted lots of squid to swim closer to the ship. Since the cooking utensils and ingredients were limited, they usually boiled the seafood in water, and ate it together with just ginger, green onion and soy sauce. “Moving back and forth” during meals Most land policemen usually returned to their police stations and took their meals in canteens at official mealtimes. But for the marine policemen, there was a totally different way of having meals on the cramped deck. In a marine police launch, there was only a small dining table for the foreign inspectors and none for rank-and-file policemen. The swaying of the ship and the lack of space did not allow the latter to sit together for a meal. They therefore developed and employed a so-called “move back and forth” dining approach. A retired marine policeman talked jokingly about how they took meals on deck: Without a table in the launch, we could only use the hatch cover as our dining table. We closed the hatch well and placed the dishes on the cover. Everyone got a bowl of rice and stood around the cover in the shape of inner and outer circle. When those in the inner circle were taking food from the cover, the colleagues in the outer circle helped them to maintain balance with their own feet. After that, the innercircle colleagues would move to the back and let the outer-

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circle ones come up to take food. That “move back and forth” approach was applicable when a group of more than ten persons dined together! During meals, we also needed to watch out for billows in the offing. When we saw billows were coming, we would protect the dishes at the same time, naturally, otherwise the dishes would be swung onto the deck or even into the sea!

6.8 Summary The professional performance of the Hong Kong Police Force in maintaining law and order have traditionally been well appreciated by the public. Despite this, many people unintentionally overlook the Marine Police because it has less contact with the general public. In fact, the Marine Police have long been working on the security of the marine district on the furthest outskirts of Hong Kong. Contrary to the custom whereby military forces are responsible for defending a country’s border, the Marine Police patrol the territorial waters in Hong Kong. In the past 50 years, the Marine Police have faced different challenges nearly every decade. In the early 1960s, they handled a large number of fugitives from Mainland China. In the period of the 1967 Riots, they were called to support the anti-riot duties of the land police. In the late 1970s, they faced the influx of Vietnamese boat people as well as illegal immigrants from Mainland China. During the waves of exile in different decades, the Marine Police also took up the job of corpse handling in Hong Kong waters.

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Chapter 7 Anti-Riot Teams: From Police Training Contingent to Police Tactical Unit

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With the past experience gained in the anti-riot work and crowd control as well as modern crowd management techniques, the Hong Kong Police Force has became more professional in antiriot management.

7.1

Anti-Riot Training before the 1950s

The first anti-riot team of the Hong Kong Police Force, the Police Training Contingent (PTC), was established in 1957. Prior to the PTC, anti-riot training was offered by Indian or Pakistani instructors from different police stations. Policemen were given simple anti-riot training on an irregular basis. In other words, it was limited to the most fundamental anti-riot training, and not every policeman was trained. Obviously, that training mechanism was not standardised or well-developed, and not suitable for the needs of a modern police organisation. On Double Ten Day (10 October) in 1956, a large-scale riot broke out in Hong Kong. Triad gangs carried out organised robberies in both the Shek Kip Mei and Tsuen Wan districts which caused countless injuries and deaths. The government’s subsequent report pointed out that the failure to suppress the riot in time by the Police Force was one of the major reasons for the rapid aggravation of the situation. The Double Tenth Riots were significant in that they seriously tested police internal security arrangements for the first time in a riot setting and required police riot units to resort to the use of firearms, in addition to smoke weapons […] 59 people lost their lives in the riots […] Following the riots, the police internal security system was critically examined and improvements were recommended to unit structure, weapons, communications and mobility. Such recommendations included a proposal to establish a specialist unit dedicated to internal security training.

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When the police strength proved inadequate to cope with the riots in 1956, the Hong Kong government promptly asked the British Army to support the riot suppression. Since the military had not received any training in urban crowd management, they often used excessive force; additionally, the policemen were not sufficiently trained in the use of the anti-riot equipment like rattan shields and tear gas, and so their enforcement operations commonly resulted in casualties. Communication between police officers and commanders was also an issue because they were not familiar with the anti-riot formation in a real situation. Technological limitations meant that the commands could not reach any team members located more than 200 metres away from the speakers of the communication system. Officers could only act according to the circumstances at critical moments. Meanwhile, the citizens were not clear about the curfew arrangement and still went outdoors during the riots. A retired policeman who participated in the anti-riot work in 1956 recalled: The communication channels were not well-developed at that time. Most people did not even know what curfew was. I worked in Yau Ma Tei at that time. Many people who went out to go to work were arrested for breaching the curfew law. Some of them were even mistaken for rioters and shot to death by the supporting British soldiers or policemen.

Problems also arose in the anti-riot support and procedures. For instance, there were no sleeping facilities provided for the anti-riot policemen when they were due rest breaks. Official food supplies were also not readily available, and policemen therefore had to take food and beverages from shops, leaving a note for the shop owner to recover the cost from police headquarters. When a large number of suspects were brought to police stations, or detained in Chatham Barracks, the policemen who arrested them were not clear about which ordinances where to be applied

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for different offences. There was also no set procedure to record the anti-riot equipment drawn from the stores and used, like ammunition and tear gas. The transport support of the police, as poor as its internal communications, was shown by the lack of trucks to drive the policemen to the rioting scenes. Even police cars were vulnerable to attack by the rioters. According to official sources, 59 people died and a further 164 were injured during the riots in 1956. Among the dead, 33 people were killed by rifle fire from the anti-riot officers. Wrapping up the anti-riot experience in 1956, the Police Force reformed the anti-riot rear services and handling procedures. It also restructured the reserve force and arranged for all auxiliary policemen to receive anti-riot training, in order to provide adequate support for the regular policemen in an emergency.

7.2

Police Training Contingent

Learning from its failures in 1956, the Hong Kong Police Force decided to enhance its anti-riot capacity and established a professional anti-riot team to handle possible future riots. The Police Training Contingent (PTC) was officially set up in 1957, dedicated to internal security. Its first training base was a military camp in Fanling, known as “Militia Slope” by the local residents, where the British Army was quartered simultaneously. In the early phase of its establishment, there were two companies of PTC; later on, to meet the demands of the time, it grew into four companies, three of which served in Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and New Territories respectively. The fourth company, also known as the “Imperial Guards”, was stationed in the police headquarters and worked on urgent assignments under the command of the Commissioner.

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The PTC specialised in the anti-riot training of the Force, replacing the previous training arranged by individual police districts. Under the former system, there was no training standard. Policemen were divided into individual groups, each of which was equipped with only one kind of anti-riot weapon, and were even allowed to choose their favoured sentry post. Under the new structure of the PTC, all police inspectors and constables were provided with brand-new and standardised anti-riot tactics training and equipment. In order to enhance their anti-riot capability, each of them was assigned a fixed post and carried a designated weapon. The PTC enlisted policemen from different police districts, who underwent an eight-week anti-riot training course which covered judo, first aid, use of firearms, crowd management and more. The anti-riot drill (the most important part for internal security) was considered to be the main focus of their training. The trainees formed teams of 41 men, and every four platoons formed a company. After completing the training, the PTC policemen resumed their posts. Whenever riots occurred, they immediately reformed their PTC team and company and rushed to the scene for support. However, the demands of reallife experience often conspired against them: the PTC went through an extremely difficult ordeal during the 1967 Riots, when policemen were sent to perform anti-riot work in different districts after just three or four weeks of intensive training. The first batch of policemen joined the PTC on a voluntary basis, but policemen of the second and the following batches were assigned to the PTC. Due to its reputation as a poor career path, it was not uncommon at that time for the heads of many districts to try and send their “disobedient” policemen to the PTC.

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Fig 7.1

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The scene in the 1956 riots.

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7. Anti-Riot Teams: From Police Training Contingent to Police Tactical Unit

The First Chief Instructor: Guyett Mr. Guyett was the Chief Instructor of the Tactical Unit when the PTC was first established. Before joining the Hong Kong Police Force, Guyett served the Royal Engineering Regiment of the British Army. He was therefore rather experienced in anti-riot work. He worked as drill and shooting instructor in the Police Training School before the appointment of Chief Instructor of the PTC. In 1951, he acted as the Chief Drill and Musketry Inspector in the Police Training School. After the riots in 1956, he was assigned to carry out a comprehensive review on the anti-riot tactics of the Force. During his 14 years of service in the PTC, Guyett formed numerous training foundations, leaving a strong legacy for future generations of policemen. He retired in 1972.

7.2.1 Training Travel Allowance The PTC training base in Fanling was far from urban areas. A travel allowance was offered to those policemen under training in the early days. A retired police officer who handled administrative work in the PTC in those days recalled his work issuing travelling coupons: Fanling, where the training contingent was located, was rather remote. I went to work in my own car, and used to drive to the base from Hong Kong Island via Tai Po Road. I left home at sunrise and it was already dark when I got home from work. I was responsible for issuing railway tickets in the contingent. Every time, I marked the trainees’ numbers on the coupons and a sergeant took the coupons to exchange for about 40 tickets at the railway station. He then distributed the tickets to the colleagues. Inspectors were entitled to first-class tickets, while constables were offered tickets of second or third class.

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7.3

The Police Tactical Unit

Since the anti-riot capacity of the Police Force was found to be insufficient at the beginning of the 1967 Riots, a shake-up was in order. The PTC was renamed the Police Tactical Unit (PTU) in 1968, with its Fanling training base unchanged. The PTU was often referred to as the “Blue Berets”, in reference to the blue berets worn as part of the uniform. Upon its establishment, an immediate manpower reserve of five PTU companies was ready at any time. Each company of the PTU consisted of 170 members under four platoons. Every platoon comprised of two inspectors the platoon commanders — five sergeants, and 34 constables. Inspectors and sergeants received extra training, the so-called Cadre Course, and so went to the training camp earlier than the constables. The constables joined them for the following 12-week training. The training was extensive, including anti-riot drill, crowd control, interception and search, strike and demonstration management, procedures of operating a roadblock and curfew, usage of baton and shield, take-off and landing in a helicopter, along with many other necessary skills. Usage of weapons was the major part of the training course. Trainees had to learn how to use a Greener gun, AR15 rifle and long-and-short-distance tear gas, with 500 hours of training in total. More than one-fifth of the hours were spent on outdoor physical fitness training. After completion, all of them resumed their work in their original police districts for 12 weeks. Apart from crowd control, the PTU was also available for rescue work; in the event of a landslide or other such large-scale disaster, it was the PTU constables who were called. In the 1970s, the PTU held a stern and tough image in the mind of the general public. An ex-PTU officer explained: The general public liked and feared us at the same time. Since we did not arrest illegal hawkers and 158

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Fig 7.2

Police Tactical Unit (PTU) operated in circumstances which required unconventional skill-sets, such as take-off and landing in a helicopter.

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prosecute wrongful drivers, we seldom conflicted with the average citizen when we were on duty. Our anticrime operations were directed at active triad society members and wicked youngsters, and so the general public usually appreciated our work. Meanwhile, we always took action in groups and special uniforms. Thanks to our fierce-looking image, bad guys and citizens alike used to flee from us!

In the 1970s, there were numerous social movements in Hong Kong, even if not on a scale as large as the social disorders that occurred in 1956, 1966 or 1967. After the establishment of the PTU, anti-riot and social order management techniques were changed, and the use of force became the last resort. Whenever a large-scale assembly happened, PTU would be deployed to the scene to support the regular police. In normal cases, the commander would ask the team members to await orders and stand aside, in order to show the public the sheer strength of the police presence. Only in case of things getting out of control would they try to suppress the troublemakers by force. In the mid-1970s, conflicts between the officers of the Housing Authority and squatters over the clearance of squatter residents happened frequently in Hong Kong, and the PTU was ordered to be present at the scene. Although clearance by force was common, actual bloodshed rarely occurred in these policeresidents conflicts. In late 1980s, along with the trend of western nations, the PTU gradually adopted more non-opposing drill control tactics. It enhanced its ability in crowd management under the primary principles of minimised use of force.

7.4

Special Duties Unit

The PTU was a professional anti-riot team, but not a special force against terrorists. In 1973, a small team of sharpshooters was established specifically for emergencies. The Sharpshooters 160

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Fig 7.3

Police Tactical Unit (PTU) in training.

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Fig 7.4

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The candidates of the Special Duties Unit (SDU) received training in Sek Kong by the British Army in 1974.

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7. Anti-Riot Teams: From Police Training Contingent to Police Tactical Unit

Team was not a specialised elite troop; instead, its members were regular policemen. They were called to serve the Sharpshooters Team only when necessary. The team was called in during the sensational Po Sang Bank robbery in 1974, for example, leading to riveting televised scenes of the confrontation between police and robbers in the bank. In 1974, members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by terrorists in the Olympic Village in Munich. The shocking incident alerted the Hong Kong government to the possibility of a terrorist attack in Hong Kong. In July 1974, the Special Duties Unit (SDU), a specialist antiterrorist team, was formed. Because of the tiger badge on their uniform, they were soon nicknamed “the Flying Tigers”. The general public knew very little about the recruitment, training and operation of the SDU. As a retired policeman recalled, upon the official establishment of the SDU, the Police Headquarters ordered the commander of each district to select their outstanding officers to go through about one month of training in the Shek Kong Barrack. Though it was a try-out, all the coaches involved were British military personnel stationed in Hong Kong. They were also responsible for assessing the ability of each trainee. After the training, all the trainees resumed their normal duties; and attended a number of interviews. Only a select few were finally picked to join the first batch of Flying Tigers. The SDU training was very stringent. The trainees frequently performed the role of “destroyers” in military and police drills, in order to find out any loophole in the operations of different departments. They stayed at their base, spending most of their time training while they awaited orders from the Commissioner. There was no specified term of service for the SDU members. Whenever a member’s physical prowess deteriorated and he failed to meet the SDU’s strict standards, he would be ordered to leave the team.

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In mid-1975, when the horror of the Munich massacre was still vivid in people’s mind, there was a rumour that some terrorists had declared their intention to damage Deutsche Lufthansa aircraft and cause casualties throughout the world. In 1977, the Airport Security Unit (ASU) was thus formed in the Hong Kong Airport Police District and the policemen who were originally stationed in the airport were enlisted. The ASU mainly targeted aircraft hijacking and counterterrorism operations. All of its members were armed with AR15 automatic rifles and frequently patrolled in the airport lobby. They also defended the runway, escorted visiting political leaders, guarded valuable government imported materials, and sometimes even supported other departments, such as Immigration Department and Hong Kong Customs.

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Chapter 8 Inspectors and Policewomen

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Chinese detectives of the 1950s and 1960s are always portrayed in the movies as movers and shakers. But have you ever heard of the Chinese Inspectors as all-powerful?

8.1 The Inspectors: The Middle Management of the Force 8.1.1 Expatriate Inspectors The Hong Kong Police Force today consists of 27,000 disciplinary officers, and about 2,200 inspectors who are responsible for frontline management. When Hong Kong was a British colony, it was common practice to recruit inspectors from Britain and other Commonwealth countries. The overseas recruitment came to an end in 1995, when the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty back to China was confirmed. The colonial government carried out a localisation policy thereafter. As of today, there are still more than 200 expatriate officers serving in the Force. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was no Hong Kong government office in Britain. As a result, the foreign inspectors were recruited by the Crown Agents representing the Hong Kong government. Upon their arrival in Hong Kong, the inspectors underwent training in the Police Training School. A training class was usually comprised of three member types, namely those employed from Britain, those from other British Commonwealth countries, and Chinese local recruits. The overseas-recruited inspectors enjoyed more fringe benefits than their locally-recruited Chinese colleagues. Allowances were added to their salaries. After the first three-year contract, they were entitled to return to their home countries on vacation leave. However, due to the limited living quarters for expatriate inspectors, they were required to move out from the

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quarters and rent other places by themselves during their vacation leave. Generally, the expatriate inspectors developed a good relationship with their local subordinates and colleagues. They were required to take Cantonese courses so that they could communicate with local Chinese people. An expatriate inspector shared his experience of learning Cantonese: We foreigners often found Cantonese very difficult to learn. But just like learning other languages, we could do it only if we didn’t mind being embarrassed. I found that if one can master the tone of Cantonese, he can at least communicate with the Chinese people. Most staff admired their expatriate bosses’ boldness in speaking Cantonese, which naturally overcame the misunderstanding between the subordinates and the expatriate inspectors and facilitated their future cooperation.

8.1.2 Chinese Inspectors We may imagine that the management staff of the Hong Kong Police Force were all from Britain, the ruling country of Hong Kong, and that it was extremely hard for the Chinese to be promoted to management level in those years. In fact, interestingly, as early as in 1843, the first Chinese inspector of the Force, Mr. Yeung Cho, was appointed. After the liberation of Hong Kong in 1945, openings for Chinese inspectors increased drastically. In the end of 1952, there were more than one hundred Chinese inspectors, nearly a quarter of the total number of inspectors in the police force. In 1954, Fong Yik Fai became the first Chinese Chief Inspector. In 1961, the first Chinese Senior Inspectors, David Lam and Augustine Lim, were appointed.

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In the past, applicants for the post of police constable were first screened for height, and some of the tall-enough candidates would be selected to attend a dictation test based on the chief examiner’s impression. Those candidates who passed all the tests and a physical fitness assessment would be employed. However, the recruitment criteria and procedures for Chinese inspectors were different. Chinese applicants for the post of Inspector were expected to be secondary-school graduates. Good listening, oral and writing skills in English were required. As a result, most directly-employed Inspectors were outstanding students from the local English-speaking secondary schools. Those Chinese candidates who met the basic criteria were invited to an interview in English. Sometimes they would be interviewed even by the Commissioner of Police. After passing the oral session, applicants were assessed by an English written test, which was no longer in the form of dictation but questions and answers. Some of the questions were situational and applicants were asked to express their personal points of view in different situations. A retired Chinese police officer who was recruited in 1945 recalled that there were only 10 to 20 Chinese inspectors at that time. During the interview, like those in modern days, he was required to prove his Chinese and English writing and oral skills. He was asked by the then-Commissioner of Police, D. W. Macintosh, how to handle an armed robbery. The retired officer recalled: Later, I found that many interviewees failed in that session. Some of them were not fluent in English and responded to the questions slowly. Some of them suggested firing immediately and dealt with the emergency poorly.

The finalists of the application process were required to undergo a physical fitness test in Central; and they would be assigned to undergo inspector training if and only if they passed the fitness test. 168

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Fig 8.1

The Police Officers in 1880.

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At that time, many Chinese inspectors had a disciplinary forces service record before recruited to the Hong Kong Police Force. A retired Chinese police officer recalled: During the war against the Japanese, I worked in the defence forces. In 1949, I applied for police inspector. In the inspectors’ training class, more than ten trainees were Chinese. Many of them had served the police reserve or acted as St. John Ambulance Brigade members. I think the British believed that those Chinese with voluntary work experience were more qualified for the post.

The remuneration of Chinese inspectors was very generous in those days. The monthly salary of an inspector was 45 Hong Kong dollars in 1945. Compared with a worker in a plastic flower factory, who earned only 20 to 30 dollars a month, an inspector was in fact a very high paid job. A retired Chinese police officer who applied for the job in 1945 recalled: A secondary school graduate was regarded as highly educated at that time, though the jobs available were not as many as what a university graduate had. I had applied for three jobs, namely a position in a shipping company, as a Customs and Excise officer and as a police inspector. A few months later, I received three employment letters simultaneously. After discussing it with my wife, I came to the conclusion that it was too dangerous to work at sea. Thus I finally took the job of police inspector, which was referred to as a “golden rice bowl” at that time, because of its attractive salary and the stable nature of the job.

The newly employed inspectors were assigned to undergo training in Police Training School in Wong Chuk Hang. At the beginning, the Western and Chinese sub-inspectors would be separately trained. Before formal employment, they underwent 170

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careful vetting exercise and had to prove that they had no political connection with the Mainland, with two Justices of the Peace as their guarantors. Clearly, the British-led police force was cautious to prevent any potential external attack when recruiting Chinese police officer. At that time, it was impossible for a Chinese rank-andfile policeman to be promoted to management level because the internal mechanism of promoting from constable to inspector was not yet established. It was not until 1957 that the first Cadet Course was held for rank-and-file policemen who showed high potential. Those who successfully completed the course would be promoted to the rank of Sub-Inspector.1 Most of the Chinese inspectors joined the Police Force in the 1950s and 1960s did not have remarkable development in the early stage of their career. However, their outstanding work performance gave many of them the opportunity for further study in Britain. From 1950 onwards, many elite Chinese inspectors were sent for training in Britain, and they were also the pillars of the Hong Kong Police Force in the 1970s and 1980s. Those directly-employed Chinese inspectors understood that their promotion opportunities were very limited. A retired Chinese police officer recalled: I was employed in 1952. After training, I was assigned to work in a police station. At that time, there was even no Chinese Chief Inspector. I could only follow the instructions from my expatriate superior and there was not much room for any accomplishment. Under my boss, I was expected to fulfil my own duties only, with zero expectation of job promotion. The expatriate colleagues who came from my training class

1. Hong Kong Police (1958). Annual Report by the Commissioner of Police , 1957/58. Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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were promoted rapidly while the Chinese inspectors were usually at the end of the promotion list. In those days, our relationship with our British inspector colleagues was pretty fine, and especially good with the Scots. Only few of the English were found to relatively arrogant sometimes.

The training conducted in Britain was attended not only by Chinese officers, but also police officers from different parts of the British Commonwealth, like Trinidad, Malaya, Cyprus, Barbados, Kenya, Grenada etc. The training programmes were divided into two major parts. The first part was a criminal investigation course covering forensic science, case inference, investigation tools and law. The other part addressed general police duties, including beat patrol, traffic accident investigation, protection of women and children, prevention of cruelty to animals, and use of diaries. Apart from teaching theory, the training of general police duties also included the demonstration of daily policing operation. The trainees were given the opportunity to visit different departments and organisations, including the Houses of Parliament, law courts at all levels, the Mint, the Royal Mews and the police kennels. They even had the opportunity to meet British police officers face to face. In the last two months of the training course, students would be attached the local forces in different districts in order to learn the practice of daily policing. The Chinese inspectors who completed the course returned to Hong Kong after the examination and a passing-out parade.

8.2 Relationship with the Chinese Detectives In the 1950s and 1960s, regardless of the fact that the detective and uniformed divisions of the Hong Kong Police Force operated separately without much partnership, the detective team was much more influential over all. Due to having closer contact with

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Table 8.1 Some Well Known Chinese Police Officers Who Trained in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s Year of Training in Britain

Name

Rank in 1968

Remarks

Fong Yick-fai

Chief Superintendent

1958

Chu Chun-man

Senior Inspector

1956

Lee Fook-kee

Inspector

1956

The first Chairman of International Police Association—Hong Kong Division

Charles Lee

Inspector

1957

A famous Chinese inspector whose story has been told in a movie

Cheng Cheuk-tin

Senior Inspector

1958

The first Chinese Chief Superintendent and Police Training School Commandant

Lam Ying

Senior Inspector

1967

Li Kwan-ha

Senior Inspector

1968

The first Chinese Commissioner of Police

Szeto Chi-yan

Acting Senior Superintendent

1961

The first Chinese Assistant Commissioner of Police

Chan Cheung-chuen

Superintendent

1961

Ko Chun

Assistant Superintendent

1961

Cheng Chik-shin

Assistant Superintendent

1962

Lau Yan-to

Senior Inspector

1965

The first Chinese police officer who qualified as a barrister

Security Manager for the Chinese University of Hong Kong after retirement

Source: Hong Kong Police Magazine (1968 ).

the society, the Chinese detectives were especially prestigious and powerful. Under the rank structure, the Chinese detectives reported to inspectors and expatriate superintendents. In reality, being the team leaders, they were able to give a hard time to any new inspectors that they disliked. The Chinese inspectors, upon

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graduation from training school, realised that wholehearted cooperation from Chinese detectives was critical for smooth work. They understood the limitations of the system, and they were unable to change their reality immediately, no matter how unreasonable it may have been. Being the meat in the sandwich between expatriate superintendents and Chinese detectives, the Chinese inspectors kept a relatively low profile in those years. Even if they had their own insights over the development of the force, most of them would rather concentrate on their own jobs than get involved directly, and they performed only their role as the communication bridge between expatriate bosses and Chinese subordinates. A Chinese inspector recruited in 1960s described his situation in those days as follows, At that time, the young Chinese inspectors often found that the great power of detectives was inconsistent with their rank. At the beginning of my career, I certainly treated the detectives cautiously and silently. I told myself that it was very reasonable for an inexperienced inspector to get opinion from detectives, most of whom had experience of more than ten years. Otherwise, I would not have been able to perform well. We, the educated Inspectors, acted as the middleman between the detectives and the superintendents, who could actually communicate with each other directly. It was very important for us to survive and skilfully adapt to the working environment.

Gun War at court: A retired officer recalled An armed gang robbed Miramar Gold Dealers in Jordan Road. We arrested six robbers: very dangerous men. When the six suspects were arraigned in court the second time, they grabbed guns from

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the court policemen. One of the suspects held a court policeman as hostage, and injured another one. At that time, my expatriate superintendent ordered “Fire!” immediately. I took the lead and said at once, “Please don’t open fire. I have another way to persuade him.” Knowing that the gang leader was very filial, I went to his home and asked his mother and wife to go to persuade him to surrender at the South Kowloon Magistrates Courts. His wife knelt down, and even his mother squatted down to beseech for his surrender. I promised him that, with the presence of his wife and children, if he put down the weapon and surrendered, we would not maltreat or hit him. The incident had dragged for more than five hours. During the hours, the South Kowloon Magistrates Courts at Gascoigne Road became very crowded, even armoured vehicles came to stand by, as if there was a formidable enemy. At last, we made the criminal surrender without using a single bullet. I should be regarded as one of the first-rank negotiators, right?

Nowadays, the Staff Relations Branch is dedicated to the management of staff welfare management. In the old days, although the Chinese inspectors were not the backbone of the police force, they did contribute in certain areas — especially as police-community relations — and played an important role in developing the state of police welfare. Among those Chinese inspectors deployed to work in the Welfare Office of the Force, one even became the first Chinese officer-in-charge. The expatriate Superintendents often did not understand the frontline staff when setting up welfare policies. An officer recalled one of the Welfare Office meetings: We discussed the construction of bowling alleys at the Police Recreation Club. An expatriate superintendent suggested that the bowling alleys should be provided to staff of both officer level and rank and file on a first-come-first-served basis. I raised my hand in disapproval, and the expatriate officers were puzzled.

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I explained to them that the hierarchy nature was rooted in the police force and the senior officers were always given priority. If the bowling alleys were shared by staff of different ranks, the lower-rank staff would give way to the late-coming officers even if they arrived earlier. As a result, the rank and file would not have any chance to enjoy the alleys. He then counterproposed dividing the alleys into two zones, one for officers and one for rank-and-file staff.

The first internal newsletter of the police force is the Hong Kong Police Magazine. At that time, a Chinese inspector was appointed as the chief editor of the magazine and he often visited police stations in person so as to solicit the welfare related requests from front-line colleagues. A notable example revolved around the quality of the catering service, and the editor served as a sort of food-tasting ambassador in different police canteens when he received complaints from colleagues. He might be invited to settle the family disputes of colleagues, and could even be in a position to withhold a portion of the salaries of some colleagues who managed finances poorly, passing the withheld amount to their family members. In fact, he was not only an editor and reporter, but also took the role as welfare and public relations officer. Some time later, the Hong Kong Police Magazine was further developed as the biweekly journal Offbeat. Thankfully, due to its increased scope, the editing and interview work of Offbeat are no longer undertaken by just one individual. It is generally believed that the police force started the work of improving police-community relations after the 1967 riots, such as the development of the Police Public Relations Branch in 1968 and the launch of Police Report, first broadcast in 1973. However, the Police Force had already started in the late 1940s to use the mass media to promote better communication and cooperation between the police and citizens. A Chinese inspector wrote scripts based on some cases of drug trafficking, theft and fraud and these plays were performed by actors and dubbing artists. The plays were broadcast in the form of radio plays and short films by Rediffusion. The 176

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“Police and Citizens” programme on Rediffusion could be regarded as the predecessor of Police Report. Forerunner of police report A retired inspector who had been an instructor in the Police Detective Training School recalled his experiences: I was responsible for a so-called “Police and Citizen” programme in 1949. That programme was similar to today’s Police Report, and was broadcast on Rediffusion Radio. Rediffusion catered for radio broadcasts at first and started television recording later on. I acted as the director and scriptwriter of “Police and Citizen”. A group of freelance actors were recruited to play the role of drug addicts. Crimes were re-enacted to educate the public on how to prevent crimes like pick pocketing, as well as things traffic accidents. But since radio was not available to all households at that time, the programme could not reach many people.

Today’s Hong Kong Police Force is one of the most professional law enforcement agencies in the world. This is generally regarded as the result of its large-scale reform in organisational structure, authority, as well as remuneration since 1970s. One of the early Chinese inspectors noted that the completed Police General Orders also indirectly led to the rapid modernisation of local policing. In those days, the management of the Police Force stressed the continuous update of various Orders, and made it a code of practice. That, in turn, directly standardised the work of frontline staff, and indirectly increased the ability of policemen to cope with different crimes and emergencies. The individualised working style in the Police Force before the 1970s was gradually phased out under the standardisation of the Police General Orders. It formed the foundation for a law enforcement agency that stressed professional legal procedures. Most of the Chinese inspectors employed in the early days possessed the qualities of devotion and obedience. Although they were not university graduates, most of them graduated from local 177

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English secondary schools, with outstanding school performance, clear minds and strong powers of observation. Positioned between the expatriate superintendent and the powerful Chinese detectives, the Chinese inspectors did not find it easy to develop their full potential. As a result, they usually worked pragmatically with a low profile. They fulfilled their duties and worked quietly under the unfavourable internal and external environment in the 1950s and 1960s. They cherished their hard-won and stable careers, and strove for their own career prospects and the overall modernisation of the police force. Therefore, influential Chinese inspectors were rarely found in those days. Compared to those well-known Chinese Detective Staff Sergeants, they were comparatively “low-profile” in the force, and seldom noticed by the mainstream society. In early 1970s, the Chinese inspectors became the first batch of Chinese training coaches and trained up lots of policemen from then on. Many of the more recent senior management officers in the Police Force were the Chinese coaches’ most able students. Although the Chinese inspectors employed in the 1940s and 1950s could not manifest their strengths fully under the policing system, they did make tremendous contributions in the aspects of police welfare, police-citizen relations, and police training.

8.3 Policewomen: Evolved from Female Searchers “Policewomen are not substitutes for policemen. They should not be limited to certain jobs that the policemen cannot fit in. They actually possess some unique talents and can outperform their male counterparts in certain police work. Their presence makes a great contribution to the police force.” Ann Calderwood, the first female Chief Superintendent in the Hong Kong Police Force, 1974 178

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8.3.1 The First Batch of Policewomen Before the 1950s, middle-aged women, nicknamed “Aunts”, were employed in every police station. Most of them were the family members of the policemen. Dressed in dark blue uniforms, they supported the force in certain aspects, even without formal police training. When female suspects were arrested, the Aunts helped carry out the body search, as well as assisting with fingerprint-taking, recording oral statements, and even sending the female suspects to and from jails under escort. They were also responsible for washing uniforms and cleaning work in the stations. Along with the social changes, however, a shortage of Aunts became a common issue in police stations. Since the Aunts were not disciplinary staff, their identities were sometimes questioned by the suspects. Hui Kam-to: The first Chinese female Sub-Inspector in the Police Force Ms. Hui Kam-to, alias Kimmy Koh, joined the Police Force as subinspector in 1949. Like the female officers of western police forces in the early days, she mainly played a supporting role to her male colleagues. Being an overseas Chinese from Malaysia, she was proficient in Chinese, English, Malay, Japanese, and many Chinese dialects. She mainly undertook interpretation and awaited orders on the go. She also participated in detective investigation in cases like street robberies, gambling and drug trafficking, though they were not her regular work. After 12 years of service in the Police Force, she retired in 1962.2

According to the official information from the Police Force, 44 Female Searchers served in 1949.3 In the same year, the police force recruited its first female Sub-Inspector, Ms. Hui Kam-to,

2. Hong Kong Police. (2004). Offbeat , Issue no. 699. 3. Hong Kong Police. (1949). Annual Report by the Commissioner of Police , 1948/49. Hong Kong: Government Printer. 179

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alias Kimmy Koh, who proposed recruiting female policewomen to replace the Female Searchers. In 1951, Kimmy recruited and selected the first batch of policewomen, ten in total. It marked the beginning of policewomen in Hong Kong police history. Like their male colleagues, all the enrolled policewomen had to undergo half-year training in Police Training School in Wong Chuk Hang beforehand. Their training course specifically addressed the ordinances over women and children and the related code of practices. Officials from the Social Welfare Department were invited as guest speakers in their school training.4 There was no uniform for the first batch of policewomen in the training school. The so-called “uniform” was a pair of blue trousers, together with one’s own white shirt and a pair of white socks as well as a white canvas belt. From the summer of 1953, uniforms were provided to the policewomen. The summer uniform included an open-neck khaki shirt, an A-line skirt, a black belt with silver buckle, a pair of flat shoes and flesh-coloured stockings. The winter uniform included a navy blue jacket, a white shirt, a black tie and stockings.5 After training, the policewomen were assigned to serve in the criminal investigation team in different police districts. A retired policeman who had worked with the first batch of policewomen recalled how popular those policewomen were: The ten first-batch policewomen were sent to work in different police stations after the three-month training. The small number of them clearly could not accommodate the needs of every police station. They were limited to large stations and a station was served by one policewoman only. That was why they

4. Hong Kong Police. (1952). Hong Kong Police Magazine . 5. Royal Hong Kong Police Force. (1977). Offbeat , Issue no. 49.

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Fig 8.2

The first batch of ten policewomen receiving training in Police Training School, 1951.

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Fig 8.3

Ms Kimmy Koh (front row, second from left), the first Sub-inspector, with her first batch of Woman Police Constables in the Kowloon CID Headquarters in 1952.

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were very treasured. They neither had regular work, nor put on uniforms. Despite this, cases relating to women, abandoned babies and missing girls had to be handled by them. Whenever those cases happened, a policewoman would go to investigate in company of a police car and a policeman. In 1952, a year later, more than ten second-batch policewomen were employed.

Despite the independent organisation of the Hong Kong policewomen in the 1950s and 1960s, their recruitment procedure was more or less the same as that of their male colleagues. At that time, there was a widespread opinion in Hong Kong society that good guys would not work as policemen. It is not difficult to imagine how bad the parents felt when their daughters were recruited as policewomen. In fact, female candidates were significantly fewer in number than males. According to several policewomen who joined the police force in the 1960s, there were only about four or five women enrolled among the 40 or 50 candidates in each recruitment exercise held in divisional police stations. Seemingly the female candidates enjoyed a much higher success rate than the male candidates did in the job application. Apart from different physical requirements, all female candidates were required to pass the dictation test, just like their male counterparts. This was a big challenge to the female candidates because most of them had reached primary education level only. Due to the small number of female trainees, there was no class specifically for policewomen in the Police Training School in the 1960s. The policewomen trainees joined the men’s classes and received their training together with the male candidates. Since the female trainees took shorter steps than their male fellows, marching in a disorderly manner frequently happened in their foot drills. To strive for unity, those female trainees had no choice but to march at their male colleagues’ pace. Although the policewomen did not need to carry guns on duty, they had to learn the use of .38 revolvers in the training school. They could

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not graduate if they failed to make 128 shots on target during the ten-session course.6

8.4 Directing Traffic and Handling Abandoned Babies To equip themselves to work in special departments, the policewomen could further attend specialised courses based on their interests upon the completion of the general training. From 1977, policewomen were entitled to apply for the Marine Police, but few of them were interested to join. Many policewomen could not tolerate the uncomfortable life on the police launches, and quit the training. In contrast, many of them enjoyed serving in the traffic branch. In the traffic branch, most of the policewomen were assigned to “hit the traffic”, namely to direct traffic in heavy-traffic urban areas and to educate the public in road safety in schools and community centres. Interestingly, traffic policewomen had a special work schedule, specifically 8–10 am, 2–4 pm and 5–7 pm. During the peak hours of traffic, the female “traffic hitters” stood in traffic control kiosks in the center of road junctions and directed the traffic by waving their luminescent sticks. In other working hours, they went to advocate road safety in schools and community centres. Apart from duty in individual departments, the policewomen were called to support their male colleagues whenever there were cases that the policemen found inconvenient to deal with. For instance, when there were assemblies with female participants, policewomen could be sent to maintain the law and order at the scene. Other cases, like taking statements in sexual assault cases,

6. Royal Hong Kong Police Force. (1973). Offbeat , Issue no. 10.

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Table 8.2 Comparison of Policemen and Policewomen in the 1950s and 1960s Policemen

Policewomen

Number of Officers

More than 8,000

Less than 400

Interview Procedure

Phase 1: Height measurement and screening

Same as policemen

Phase 2: Written test – Chinese dictation Successful Rate of Job Application

Approximately 1 out of 100

Nearly 1 out of 10

Salary

In 1961, entry point was $240 per month

Less than policemen’s;

Job Assignment

Work in different departments

Mainly supporting work in different police districts; many worked on traffic control and road safety education

Anti-riot Training

Trained in Police Training Camp before 1967 and PTU after 1967 riots

None before 1967; 1 to 2 weeks’ simple anti-riot training provided in PTU Training Camp after 1967 Riots

About 25% lower of policemen’s entry point in 1961

body searches of female suspects and follow-ups on abandoned babies were also taken by policewomen. A retired policewoman who often handled abandoned babies recalled: Under the Protection of Women and Juveniles Ordinance, we had to follow up the case if their parents reported it to the police for girls under sixteen who ran away from home. Prior to investigation by detectives, we, the policewomen, would take an oral statement from the girl and take her to see a doctor for a body check. After the body check, a policewomen would take the girl to Po Leung Kuk for temporary

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lodging until they attended court. In some cases, the mothers were sentenced to imprisonment and their babies were sent to a Children’s Home until they grew up. Besides, I handled a number of abandoned babies whose parents could not be found. The court sometimes sentenced them to be raised in a Children’s Home. I once took an abandoned baby to an orphanage. A nun there asked for my name and then gave my name to the baby girl. I felt like the baby was my own child!

In the early days, the organisation of policewomen was separate from that of their male colleagues. The policewomen were paid lower wages and benefits as well as working different shifts. While the policemen worked on three shifts in a day, the policewomen basically worked on morning and afternoon shifts, without the night shift. The morning shift was from 8 am to 4 pm, and the afternoon one was from 4 pm to midnight. Even if the policewomen were assigned to work overnight at a police station, they were not required to patrol the streets at night, but simply stand by in the police stations. In the daytime, policewomen usually patrolled together with their male fellows, or acted as duty officer in the report room. From the 1970s, when “equal pay for equal work” was implemented in the Police Force, policewomen were finally allowed to go out on patrol alone in the daytime. No night shift The female trainees had to undergo shooting training in the Police Training School in the early days. However, the policewomen were not supposed to patrol with guns. There were only three shooting training courses during their half-year training. The onduty policewomen were usually accompanied by police cars and policemen. Indeed, the major responsibilities of the policewomen were different from those of their male colleagues. They were dedicated to dealing with cases related to women and children, such as abandoned babies and missing adolescent girls.

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8.5 The New Anti-Riot Force Apart from directing traffic and handling abandoned babies, policewomen played a very important role in crowd management. Although policewomen were mainly responsible for logistical support inside police stations, they would be sent to the front line to manage crowds on special occasions and critical moments as early as the 1950s. For instance, horse racing at Happy Valley Racecourse every weekend and big festivals were the troublespots where the policewomen often maintained law and order. A policewoman described her first anti-riot experience in 1953, I was under the Central Police Station at that time. It was rumoured that a bank was going bankrupt. Many women gathered in front of Government House in Central and ask for the Governor’s intervention and protection of their bank savings. My boss thus sent me to support other colleagues to handle the demonstrators there. As far as I know, that was the first time of having policewomen participating in riot control in Hong Kong.

Policewomen were frequently called upon to help quell a number of confrontations. The policewomen were sent to support the operation because of the many women and children involved in those disputes. They were often treated unpleasantly, with stones and even excrement being thrown by the agitated residents. That could be regarded as the beginning of local policewomen’s participation in maintaining law and order. When large-scale riots occurred in Hong Kong in May 1967, the largest number of policewomen yet was sent to carry out frontline anti-riot work. At the early stage of the riots, many women and children demonstrated unceasingly outside Government House. The senior management of the Police Force was fully aware that a tough anti-riot approach against the crowd was not appropriate. Non-violent tactics were then used in riot control, and so the 187

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policewomen from various police districts were sent to back up the anti-riot operation outside Government House. One of the policewomen who participated in the 1967 riot control recalled that she originally worked in a police station and was suddenly assigned to anti-riot duty outside Government House in mid-May of 1967, without any prior training in riot tactics. Once she arrived at Government House, she and all the front-line officers were instructed to stay calm and not to react when facing the racket and harassment from the rioters. Later, she and other female colleagues even formed a human chain to block the crowd from entering Government House with no weapons in their hands. During the 1967 riots, which lasted for half the year, the policewomen not only handled the female and young demonstrators with their male colleagues but also played an important role in logistical support. For example, when female demonstrators were arrested, the policewomen helped to interrogate the suspects, took their fingerprints, and even escorted them to and from detention centres. During the riots, the policewomen were divided into small groups and went to deliver food to the anti-riot team members who were on duty on the streets. Meal ambassadors In 1967, I was stationed in the Central Police Station. When the riots burst out, many women and children demonstrated outside the Government House. Our male colleagues were not very caring towards kids and students. So whenever women and students were at the front of the crowd, we policewomen would stand in the front against them while our male colleagues would stay at the back to protect us… Sometimes, we gathered together and delivered hundreds of lunch boxes, milk tea, fruit, and even cigarettes to the male colleagues who worked outdoors in various districts. Sometimes, we were also responsible for questioning the female suspects arrested in riots and escorting them to and from the police stations, hospitals and courts.

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Indeed, during the early stage of the riots, the presence of policewomen in the front-line crowd management helped minimise conflict and bloodshed resulting from demonstrations. Official photographs show that the policewomen, who were always neglected by the general public, proved to be an integral part of the anti-riot tactics during the entire riot period. They were able to handle the women and children in the demonstrations more effectively than their male counterparts. The assignment of unarmed policewomen in the demonstrations was obviously an aspect of the “soft tactics” used to avoid stirring the riots to further violence. After the 1967 Riots, policewomen no longer took the role of just supporting their male colleagues. Their participation in crowd management became regular from then onwards. From the 1980s, all policewomen were assigned to the newly-established Tactical Unit and underwent the threemonth anti-riot training group by group. Thereafter, they were assigned to reconcile disputes on the front line.7 Dowry of marriage There was a big difference in the salary and benefits between the policemen and policewomen before the 1970s. The monthly salary of the policewomen recruited in early 1960s was approximately $180, while their male counterparts were paid $240 per month.8 Additionally, the policewomen were not provided for under the pension scheme. Perhaps the senior management of the colonial government did not expect that the young policewomen would work until retirement after marriage. The policewomen were not entitled to housing benefit as the male colleagues were. Nevertheless, the monthly salary of policewomen was still extremely attractive when a young female worker could generally earn only tens of dollars a month.

7. Hong Kong Police. (2004). Offbeat , Issue No. 699. 8. Hong Kong Police. (1961). Annual Report by the Commissioner of Police, 1960/61 . Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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However, policewomen were entitled to a little-known marriage allowance, the so-called Dowry Fee. All policewomen who had served the Force for five years without any record of misconduct could apply for such a special allowance of approximately three thousand dollars when they married. There was, however, a condition of this enviable benefit: that the husband-to-be should not be a police officer in the same grade as the applicant’s. That means that a female constable was not eligible for the Dowry Fee if she was going to marry a male constable. The policy seemingly encouraged the marriage of officers in different grades. In addition, married police couples were not allowed to work together in the same police station.

8.5.1 Female PTU Officers The Hong Kong Police Force recruited its first batch of policewomen in 1951. They attended the anti-riot training course in the Police Training School for just its last two weeks. They were not armed with guns on duty. In turbulent situations, policewomen were called in to ease the tension. In the years of riot suppression, the role of policewomen was not remarkable, but with the social transition in 1980s, the policewomen came to play an apparently different role in public order management. The early PTU comprised only male police officers. Later on, the Fanling training base provided formal anti-riot training to individual policewomen, who could then be assigned as PTU members to work in social conflict incidents when needed. One of the policewomen who had undergone anti-riot training recalled: In the late 1970s, I had been sent to attend PTU training several times and participated in anti-riot work that involved female demonstrators. I was once called to take up duty in Lam Tin district where a

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dispute arose from discontented residents over the demolition of squatter residences by the Housing Authority. I was assigned to stand at the frontline of the crowd to disperse the demonstrating female residents. Some of the female demonstrators threw plastic bags of faeces at me and I failed to escape from the attack. I was teased by my male colleagues when I came back office with my foul-smelling body!

In late 1980s, there were rapid changes in Hong Kong society. Street demonstrations happened from time to time. In addition, there were certain large-scale festivities every year that required large numbers of well-trained anti-riot officers on duty. Subsequently, the Hong Kong Police Force made fundamental changes in its policy of public order maintenance, gradually shifting from riot control to negotiated management. Since more and more women and children participated in demonstrations and large-scale festivities, more policewomen underwent formal anti-riot training and took up frontline duties. The Police Force started to recruit policewomen for its Emergency Unit from the mid-1980s. The Emergency Unit provided immediate support to the regular police by being the first to arrive at the crime scene. Because policewomen had not undergone any firearms training and were never armed with guns, they faced tremendous difficulties in this job, which put them and their colleagues in extremely dangerous situations. From 1994, all policewomen were required to attend firearms training; and that facilitated their work to a high degree. In the early 1990s, an industrial dispute involving an airline company occurred in Hong Kong. A large number of female cabin crew planned a public demonstration. Obviously this was disadvantageous to the PTU, which was traditionally comprised of male members only, and it anticipated some difficulty with law enforcement in this case. Policewomen from various districts were called together for the first time and formed an ad-hoc

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female anti-riot team. They waited at the airport and were ready to maintain law and order should conflict break out. Luckily, the staff and the employer reached an agreement at the last minute and no large-scale demonstration resulted. After that incident, the importance of female anti-riot teams was realised. As a result, the first Tango Company, comprised entirely of policewomen, was officially formed in 1992. Unlike the other PTU companies, the Tango members who had undergone anti-riot training were called from different police districts only when necessary. Nevertheless, the establishment of a female company was a breakthrough in the non-gender-specific PTU. In 1996, the first two female inspectors became the platoon commanders of the PTU. In 1997, female officers could be found in the membership of every tactical unit. They were trained and worked together with their male counterparts. From that time onwards, the role of policewomen in the frontline management of public order was secured. An incumbent policewoman recalled, I received the training with more than ten policewomen in the PTU training base in Fanling in 1997. At that time, the base facilities, anti-riot equipment and training procedures were all designed for men and therefore not completely suitable for us. We had to adapt to the traditional settings. Indeed when we had our hair cut short and put on the uniforms and riot gear, we really looked like men. When I joined the PTU for the second time in 2004, every aspect of the setting had been improved. Most importantly, the male PTU colleagues had already become used to our presence.

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were found on duty during street demonstrations and large-scale festivities. Starting from 1995, policewomen were included in the conventional organisation of the PTU. All newly recruited policewomen were required to undergo not only the firearms training but also the complete anti-riot training. In fact, the participation of policewomen in anti-riot work represented a change in the policing philosophy in Hong Kong. In the past, the police maintained public order mainly by force. Events proved, however, that the use of force could cause many problems and even adverse impacts. From the late 1980s, the general public became more demanding towards the Police Force, as they became aware that their basic human rights were wellprotected by law. Along with the social change, intelligence-led and coordination management gradually came to be emphasised by the police. As they are (generally speaking) less aggressive and more empathic than policemen, the policewomen sometimes performed more effectively than their male counterparts in public order management. In the policing environment of today, their accomplishment at work is seemingly not limited by their relatively smaller and lighter physique. Established in 1957, the Police Training Contingent offered anti-riot training that was strictly theoretical until the Star Ferry Riot in 1966, followed by the 1967 Riots, when the anti-riot team proved its worth. The PTU was officially set up in 1968. It was a modernised anti-riot team dedicated to internal security. Meanwhile, the British Army completely withdrew from the maintenance of public order in Hong Kong. In view of the PTU’s achievement, many overseas police forces, such as the Macau Public Security Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the London Metropolitan Police etc., sent officers to Hong Kong to learn from its experiences. The Canadian force even adopted the Hong Kong anti-riot handbook as its prototype.

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Fig 8.4

The first batch of marine policewomen with their male instructor in 1976.

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8.6 Marine Policewomen The first female police officer, Ms. Hui Kam-to, was recruited in 1949, but the first marine policewomen were not appointed until the end of the 1970s. Prior to that, the Marine Police received support from the on-duty Female Searchers in Island District on request when dealing with cases involving women and children. The civilian “Aunts” were under the direct supervision of the District Commander. In the 1960s, there was regular secondment of policewomen from land districts to the Marine Police. The seconded policewomen basically worked inside the control room of Marine Police Headquarters, and sometimes went to maintain law and order in different islands. Their participation in the Marine Police was only temporary, however. Alongside the increasing number of female clients and suspects in different policing scenarios, there have been acute demands for the support from policewomen, which have thus triggered the necessity of having regular policewomen on the police launches. In 1977, the police force officially recruited the marine policewomen from among the land policewomen in various districts, with the target of 40 policewomen in the first batch. The transferred policewomen were assigned to undergo professional training in radio communications. After training, they were stationed in the control room of the Marine Police and dedicated to handling the communications with Marine Police launches as well as between Hong Kong and the overseas law enforcement departments. At that time, Morse code was being used in radio communication, and communications with law enforcement officers inside and outside the borders was required. The policewomen recruited had to be proficient in oral English, and possess good calculation and analytical abilities. In view of these special requirements, the Marine Police required the applicants take an entry test. Those selected were trained once more when they started their marine job. After completed the training and passing the examination, they would be granted the ordinary

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navigation diploma. In case a trainee was found to be below the standard during the training, her training would be terminated and she would be transferred back to land police. One of the first-batch female radio operators in marine police recalled her application: I originally worked in land police and often had hard days spent in the traffic kiosk for traffic control. One day, in the police station, I saw a notice about inviting policewomen to transfer to the Marine Police. I thought that it would be good to work in the Marine Police’s control room on shore at fixed working hours instead. Determinedly, I went to apply for the job transfer. Unexpectedly, the entry requirement for the new post was very high. Before the interview, there was a written examination composed of two parts. The first part was English dictation and the second part was mathematics calculations. I still clearly remembered that some were about “ree planting”, which recalled logic training we had studied at primary school. Fortunately, I passed all the tests!

In addition to basic navigation, the marine policewomen needed to be able to withstand the working environment with high temperatures, noisy machinery and greasy dirt. They also needed to spend their working life on the rough and unpredictable seas. All this deterred many interested female officers from applying for the Marine Police. The end of 1970s was the biggest boom time of the Marine Police. In view of the increasing number of illegal immigrants, the Police Force decided to further expand its marine wing and modernise its equipment. Several new marine police launches were employed at that time. The marine recruitment officers started to step into the Police Training School and seek out potential female Recruited Women Police Constables to join the marine. Since then, the

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policewomen who joined the Marine would not only work inside the control room, but also undergo professional training and examinations for licenses in engineering and navigation together with their male colleagues. At the same time, recruitment notices were posted in various police stations to invite policewomen to transfer to the Marine Police. They were required also to work on police launches in the wind and waves, along with their male colleagues. Prior to any official task, they received an eight-week training on the use of the rudder, the rules of navigation, the duty of a mariner, work in the engine room, rope pulling, and other crucial topics. They could not work on police launches until they completed the training. After three years of this work, they were required to attend the Class 3 Navigation Certificate Examination; having passed that, they were able to steer most of the police launches. Among those policewomen who joined the Marine Police in the end of the 1970s, there was one who selected the turbine work as her first task. She then worked in a blue boiler suit with a spanner inside the engine room of marine police launches, leaving her covered with oil sludge at work. Her attitudes and manners during the interview had greatly surprised the examiner, At that time, I was a uniformed station sergeant when the lady attended the interview in the marine police headquarters. Wearing casual clothes, she said when we met, “Hello, I’ve come for interview, and would like to meet the school principal.” My boss explained later that a candidate with such a personality of toughness was what he was looking for. As such, she was admitted and became the first marine policewoman working in the engine room.

That candid girl worked in harmony with her male colleagues and served the Marine Police for a long time before she retired.

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Table 8.3 Numbers of Policewomen 1950–1974, by Rank Year 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974

SSP – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 – –

SP/ASP – – – – – – – – 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3

CIP – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 4 4 3

IP/SIP 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 8 8 11+1 13+1 13+1 17+1 18+3 18+3 18+2 18+2 18+5+2 20+5 23 26 45

Sgt – – 12 16 20 20 20 20 24 40 48 51 57 59 13 16 16 16 16 17 17 56 92 83 82

Cpl. – – – 6 6 6 6 10 12 16 18 22 31 34 34 38 39 39 39 39 39 – – – –

WPC – 10 26 48 48 48 48 63 90 123 138 160 242 284 285 354 353 353 353+20 357 361+110 380+160 569 573 637

Source: Calderwood, A. (1974). In Service of the Community, 1949–1974, Silver Jubilee of the Women Police in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer. Legend: SSP: Senior Superintendent of Police; SP/ASP: Superintendent/ Assistant Superintendent of Police; CI: Chief Inspector of Police; SIP/IP: Senior Inspector of Police/ Inspector of Police; Sgt.: Sergeant; Cpl.: Corporal; WPC: Woman Police Constable Note: Before 1958, all the newly recruited Police Inspectors would be firstly appointed as “Sub-Inspector”. They have to undertake two years of probation and then being confirmed as ‘Inspector’ if they performed satisfactorily and successfully passed all the examinations. Likewise, Chief Inspector of Police would be firstly promoted to Assistant Superintendent of Police before 1972, but the rank of ASP has abolished since then and those CI would be SP directly when they were promoted. The first female Sub-Inspector, Ms. Kimmy Koh, was appointed as Sub-Inspector in 1949 and promoted to be Inspector in 1952; while the first female Superintendent was Ms. Ann Calderwood, who reported duty in 1958, took full charge to review the prevailing recruitment and training strategies of the female officers. Ms. Calderwood was subsequently the first female Commandant of the Police Training School. The “+” symbol in the table shows the “extraordinary” positions established by the Hong Kong Police Force to meet with the needs at that years. According to official documents, these were not “regular positions” but there were no explicit explanation on the reasons for creating these “extra positions” and their main differences with those regulars.

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The first female Marine Police inspector was transferred from the land police as well. Allegedly, she originally planned to serve the Marine Police for a short period of time and apply for transfer after completing the navigation training. However, she found she was attracted by the work and the life of the Marine Police later on, and she stayed on.

8.7 Summary In the eyes of the older generation in Hong Kong, police work was a masculine profession. In the 1950s, policewomen were recruited to support the policemen in tandem with the diversity and complexity of the community, as well as its continuous economic development. In the 1950s, the policewomen mainly picked up tasks as if they were social workers, including handling abandoned babies and road safety promotion. Some were assigned to Criminal Investigation Department in order to support their male fellows. From 1963 onwards, a team of policewomen was set up in each police district, and each was led by a female inspector. Policemen and policewomen were not under the same establishment, and treated with same work and equal pay, until 1972. Policewomen played an important role for the first time in the 1967 Riots, and were assigned to support crowd management on the frontline. That unexpectedly successful experience made the distinctive contribution of policewomen highly valued. With time, policewomen became indispensable to the Police Force. From the 1980s, more and more of them took up the work of leadership. In 1995, 21 trainees completed the shooting training in the Police Training School and became the first batch of armed female police officers. As some policewomen employed in the 1960s recalled, they were discriminated against, but were treated with care in the male-dominated force. Under that system, policewomen

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were classified as a separate group. Male superiors would not assign the most dangerous tasks to the policewomen as part of the ingrained masculine culture. A policewoman employed in the 1950s recalled that she was not required to work outdoors for a period of time after she told the foreign superior of her pregnancy. Since she was one of the first batch of policewomen, all her male colleagues were curious about the arrangement. She was not treated with discrimination, however, but won widespread acceptance in the police station. In the past, policewomen were rarely promoted to management level, despite their absolutely indispensable nature. Policewomen in the 1950s and 1960s were positioned as auxiliaries in the Force. In those days, policewomen were mainly assigned to perform non-frontline and supporting duties which were relatively less dangerous, including court security, criminal escort, body search, taking oral statements, allocation of resources, community education, public relations, and crowd management. In fact, the policewomen were often counted on to accomplish the duties of the policemen. Hong Kong’s first female Chief Superintendent, Ms. Ann Calderwood, referred to the experience of early British and Hong Kong female officers, and came up with three main points on the role of policewomen in the force.9 First, policewomen were not substitute for policemen. Their value to the force was unique. Second, policewomen were not to be limited to certain jobs that the policemen could not fit in. In fact, since they possessed some talents that their male fellows often lacked, like good communication skills and meticulous minds, the senior officials should let them handle different kinds of police work. Third, both policewomen and policemen were members of the Police Force and thus the on-duty policewomen should wear uniform. This

9. Calderwood, A. (1974). In Service of the Community, 1949–1974, Silver Jubilee of the Women Police in Hong Kong . Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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helped enhance the public confidence in their working abilities. The changing role of the Hong Kong policewomen in law and order maintenance over the past 50 years and more has largely verified Calderwood’s three principles.

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Section III Important Figures of the Hong Kong Police Force Remembered

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Chapter 9 Police Interviews

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9.1 Interview with the Former Chairman of the Hong Kong Police Old Comrades’ Association, Mr. AU Ting Policeman can easily earn a good living and serve the public at the same time, so long as it is a life free of extravagance or vice.

9.1.1 Against the Backdrop of War Mr. Au Ting was born in Hong Kong in 1927, less than a decade after the First World War, and times were good. His father’s catering business in Aberdeen was booming, and Au had spent three years in a traditional private school (sīshú) in Guangzhou before being transferred to a local primary school in Hong Kong. But his graduation was upstaged by the Japanese invasion in the Pacific theatre. Hong Kong fell on Christmas Day, 1941. Luckily, Au’s father had connections with some Japanese officers. He managed to keep his restaurant and enrol his son in a subsidiary school catering to the occupying force, and the toddler picked up some Japanese during his six months’ stay. But their time in the colony was up, and they wrapped up the business and headed for Guangzhou. Under Japanese protection, Wang Jing-wei established the Reorganised National Government of China in Nanjing in 1940. Au’s father pulled some more strings and served the regime as Secretary in the Guangdong military region. The paperwork aside, he became well connected with lots of senior military officers. When Wang’s regime fell after the war, the man joined the navy of the Chinese Nationalist Government and managed the marine firearms as a firearms officer. This is how Au the teenager managed to experience and understand military life firsthand.

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9.1.2 An Application Out of a Whim When the British retook Hong Kong, the administration was devoted to rebuilding the fabrics of society. Au returned to Hong Kong on his own on the year after, and came across more than a thousand people queuing near the Yau Ma Tei YMCA. They were recruiting students for a police training school. Feeling on top of the world, Au applied on the spot even though he had a good job already. He stood out of more than two thousand applicants and became one of six to be employed. Au remarked that you should never offend those powerful examiners in a police recruitment interview. He remembered hazily what happened 60 years ago: The examiner picked a random paragraph in a newspaper and dictated it to the candidates. So we wrote it out. I knew mine was absolutely correct, but the examiner publicly announced that I got the one word wrong. I couldn’t help arguing with him. I explained that he was the one that read too fast and mispronounced it, and I was adamant that I had written down what he said verbatim.

Au received the admission notice from the police eight months later. He went on to find out that he was actually accepted quite a while ago, but that examiner had held on to his application and therefore delayed his admission to the training school.

9.1.3 From Constable to Corporal The Police Training School was officially in service in Wong Chuk Hang in 1948. Twenty-year-old Au started his training in December and was the first batch of trainees. After the threemonth training course, he was assigned to work in Yau Ma Tei

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Police Station, which used to be the most prosperous district in the Kowloon peninsula. Then as now, both Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok were under its jurisdiction. Au served as a uniformed police constable in Mong Kok. When 1949 came to a close, he was transferred to Tsim Sha Tsui’s Railway Police Station and reported to Inspector Fong Yik-fai. Fong had been an inspector of the Hong Kong Police Force since before the War, and served the Kempeitai during Japanese occupation, resuming his service thereafter. He was one of the few officers who served all three regimes in Hong Kong’s police history, and was duly promoted as the first Chinese Chief Inspector in 1954. He would go on breaking barriers, as the first Chinese officer to work in the posts of Assistant Superintendent, Superintendent, Senior Superintendent and Chief Superintendent of Police later on. Au’s superiors appreciated his diligence. After only two years in the Force, he was promoted to Corporal. Corporal was under the rank structure of the Police Force in the early days, with a “two strokes” insignia on the sleeve.

9.1.4 Camphorwood Chest, City Patrol Today every policeman has a personal locker in the police station, but in Au’s days there wasn’t so much as a wardrobe. Policemen bought small cabinets out of their own pockets. The richer constables, corporals and sergeants would buy a big camphorwood chest to store their own uniforms and clothes. Au said with a smile, I had already bought a camphorwood chest when I was a Constable. On the day I was told of my promotion as Corporal, my colleagues celebrated with me. We played poker and I lost my chest. When I was

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Fig 9.1

Au Ting (centre) in full attire with two Station Sergeant colleagues in 1974.

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fretting myself over the cost of a new chest, I was notified that I would be transferred to Kowloon City Police Station, which was the first station equipped with personal lockers. That saved the day (and a small fortune)!

The Kowloon Walled City was under the administration of Kowloon City Police Station then. The curious historical circumstances spelt anarchy, literally: there was no law enforcement from either the Chinese or the British side. It became a haven of prostitution, gambling and drug trafficking. Au pointed out that the Hong Kong Police Force did not normally carry out duties in such a political minefield. But one of his responsibilities was to patrol the Walled City regularly when he served at Kowloon City Police Station. Au said, I usually visited the Walled City with two subordinates and checked out the latest developments there. We all knew that the Walled City was a hotbed for crime. Our only hope was that nothing too serious would happen there.

9.1.5 Learning English on the Job in Tsim Sha Tsui In 1951, at the age of 23, Au was promoted Sergeant and became one of the youngest Sergeants in the history of the force. In his three years of service in Sham Shui Po, the 1953 Shek Kip Mei slum fire left an indelible impression in his long memory. More than fifty thousand were left homeless, and Au was responsible for handling them. Then 1956 came, with the Double Ten Day Riots. Au had been transferred to Tsim Sha Tsui Police Station. A lack of inspectors bumped him up to Acting Deputy Commander. He picked up a lot of conversational English along the way. Au recalled: 210

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There were the routine conversations with expatriate senior officers, and then there were phone calls from other expatriate police officers and senior officials from other government departments. I helped them arrange ferries across the Victoria Harbour. I wasn’t used to speaking English at the beginning, but the daily practice helped.

Another year, another riot, and Au was promoted Staff Sergeant II, then the top post among the police rank and file except a handful of Staff Sergeants I at the Headquarters. Each police district usually had only one Uniform Staff Sergeant II and one Detective Staff Sergeant II. The two heads garnered a lot of respect from the rank-and-file colleagues. Au was supposed to wear a red sash and a new belt, but he had to slap the ensemble together by borrowing bits from his colleagues, because internal logistics had been grounded to a halt by the chaos outside in 1967 Hong Kong.

9.1.6 Earning Bullets for Shooting Lessons Au has loved guns since he was a boy. He was very familiar with firearms thanks to his service in Guangdong’s land and sea forces. As a policeman, he naturally pursued shooting as a hobby. In the police’s annual shooting assessment, he often got full marks and won a lot of cash prizes. After being promoted sergeant, he not only practiced at the police’s shooting range, but also joined the Hong Kong Gun Club and went off for a few rounds in his leisure time. Au said with a wide grin, At that time, an ordinary pistol cost more than a thousand dollars. Bullets were very expensive too. I had to pinch my pennies just to buy a second-hand pistol for practice. Sometimes I volunteered to tutor for the rich members of the Hong Kong Gun Club after work. Since I didn’t charge them any tuition fee, 211

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Fig 9.2

Staff Sergeant Au Ting received anti-riot tactics training in the Police Tactical Unit Headquarters in Fanling in 1968.

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they would give me their surplus bullets at the end of their practice rounds. That was how I earned bullets for my own practice.

The Hong Kong Police Force officially set up the Special Duties Unit (SDU) in 1974. The “Flying Tigers” was mainly responsible for counter-terrorism and had a veritable genealogy. It was re-organised from the Marksman Unit, which was in turn established from the former Anti-Hijack Unit in 1973. Since Au was a good shot, he was one of the first members recruited for the Anti-Hijack Unit. He remembered it clear as day: There were only five members at first, who were nominated by the superintendents from each district. We kept our duties in the police force and served the Anti-Hijack Unit concurrently with no special uniform. When there were exceptionally serious crimes, we were called to the crime spots.

Before long, that small team doubled in size and was renamed the Marksman Unit. Though every member was equipped with guns for every purpose, they did not carry their arms all the time. When the team members were summoned, colleagues from the Emergency Unit would deliver the firearms from their storage place to the crime scene. In 1974, armed robbers took Po Sang Bank and held a number of hostages. Au and his team were called to the scene, but before they could take any action the robbers had surrendered after negotiation. The Marksman Unit did not have a chance to show off their skills, and was disbanded when the SDU was established in its place.

9.1.7 Stability in Prudence The late stages of Au’s service coincided with rapid professionalisation of the Police Force. As a primary school 213

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graduate, Au thought that it was time for him to take a bow. But even after his retirement in 1977 as Station Sergeant of Mongkok Police Station, he marched on with the same devotion which had stayed with him throughout the last 29 years. He supported the founding of Hong Kong Police Old Comrades’ Association a year later; 21 years would go by before he was elected as the Chairman of the Association in 1999. Au is now 86 years old. Although his hearing is going, his voice is sonorous as ever, and the man is always bursting with energy. Looking back on his life as a policeman, he says that a policeman can easily earn a good living and serve the public at the same time, so long as it is a life free of extravagance or vice. Salary and fringe benefits are now better than ever. A passion for what you do is the most important thing when it comes to doing a good job, he added in earnest. Table 9.1 Au Ting’s Career in the Police Force 1948

Constable

1950

Corporal

1951

Sergeant

1967

Staff Sergeant II

1974

Station Sergeant

1977

Retirement

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Fig 9.3

Former Chairman Au Ting of the Hong Kong Police Old Comrades’ Association in The University of Hong Kong, 2006.

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9.2 Interview with the former Chairman of Hong Kong Marine Police Retirees’ Association, Mr. CHAN Cheong Team spirit sits at the core of the Marine Police’s culture. I hope it stays that way.

9.2.1 An Application in Distress Back in 1930, when Mr. Chan Cheong was born, Nantou, Guangdong, was still a walled city. Overlooking Taishan Bay at the gateway of Pearl River, Chan had an easy childhood owing to his landlord father. He was sent to Hong Kong’s boarding schools at a very young age, studying in the Overseas Chinese Primary School and Chi Hong Secondary School until his graduation in 1948. But his plans for a mainland degree was violently derailed by the founding of Communist China in the following year. Deprived of financial support from his family, Chan had no choice but to take up a job. Still, a high school graduate was hard to come by back in those days, and his privileged background led him to frown at outdoor jobs and the ensuing public exposure. He happened to run into an alumnus from his senior class who had been working in the Hong Kong Marine Police for a few years, and the prospect of getting paid for daily boat trips appealed to the young man. So at the age of 22 Chan applied for a position, and was duly admitted.

9.2.2 Rubbing Shoulders with Graduates Although both the Marine Police and its land-based counterpart were under the structure of the Hong Kong Police Force, their trainees attended separate classes in the Wong Chuk Hang Police

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Training School. When Chan attended the six-month training scheme, there were more than 80 marine police trainees split into two classes. Chan was allocated into the Eighth Class of Marine Police, thinking that he was the best-educated of the lot, only to find a whole slew of other men in the same position as his, peppered with the occasional university graduate. The regime change in Mainland China and the subsequent cacophony had ejected many educated youths from local civilian posts, and they had all trickled into the colony. The perks of working at sea, as opposed to handling rough crowds overland, had a ring of carefree leisure to it. To their surprise, their expectations couldn’t be further away from the truth.

9.2.3 Guarding the Air from the Sea Chan was sent to work at the Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui after the course. The newbie looked forward to stemming illegal immigration, fighting smugglers and saving lives at sea. Instead, he was asked to guard some planes at Kai Tak Airport. After the schism across the Taiwan Strait, Hong Kong faced a dilemma. The new regime in Mainland China requested the colonial government to protect Chinese civil aviation in Hong Kong, including more than 30 civil aircrafts at Kai Tak Airport. The Nationalist Government, having retreated to Taiwan, declared that the aircrafts were its property and asked the colonial government to deliver them to it. In what was to become a staple of cross-strait politics over the next centuries, the two sides bickered incessantly. The colonial government was embarrassed by its involvement in the incident but asked the Hong Kong Police to secure the cargo in question. The land police were put in charge, but they were shortstaffed and passed the buck to the Marine Police. More than 40

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Fig 9.4

Tai O Police Station was under the management of Marine Police District in the 1960s. Marine policemen would perform regular patrols at the villages in Shek Pik, Fun Lau, Ngog Ping and Tung Chung. Chan Cheong was on duty and his work was captured by a photographer at Fun Lau in 1962.

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marine officers stood watch around the clock over three shifts on the Kai Tak apron, and Chan was one of them. Most of us had never ever flown. Some of my colleagues had never even seen a real airplane before. At first, we were excited because we got to touch the aircraft and sit inside the cabins. But we got bored with it very soon. That was all I did for a few months before I got sent back for some real Marine Police work!

Chan remembered that the roster called for an eight-hour shift, but they often put in a couple of hours overtime (sometimes more) and they were not left with anything so much as a supper. When a expatriate senior officer found out about it on an inspection tour, he called the Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui at once and asked them to prepare and deliver meals to the on-duty officers immediately, and by Marine Police launch, no less. Said Chan with a tight grin, The food was already cold when it arrived at the apron. It also came with a hint of seawater because the waves had hit the cabin of the launch on the way.

9.2.4 Marine “Garbage Dumping” Duty After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the colonial government retook Hong Kong and had to handle a lot of clearance work. The Marine Police had its share: to dispose of the abandoned munitions in the deep waters east of Hong Kong. In the early 1950s, Chan reported for duty on the Marine Police Launch NO.1. From time to time, his team were ordered to transport abandoned guns or even bombs to a specific location in a deepsea region within local waters. They sank the munitions onto the seabed. Chan shared an exciting tale with a smile:

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Once we disposed of some abandoned arms in a deep-sea region and returned to the base after work as usual. When we met our senior officer, he asked anxiously whether we had done the job. When we said we had dumped everything overboard, he was relieved and said, “Glad that you’re back safe and sound!” We found out that those abandoned weapons had not yet been disabled by the ammunition technicians. It’s lucky that nothing happened during the delivery!

These days, law enforcement follow stringent procedures to destroy confiscated drugs. But in 1950s, the seized cache was often dumped in the same way. The practice ended in the 1960s.

9.2.5 Disposal of Criminals at Sea Apart from discarding abandoned munitions and drugs, one duty that impressed Chan the most was the “disposal” of criminals at sea in the early 1950s. The Special Branch of the Police Force was empowered to classify those who threatened the safety of Hong Kong as personae non grata, or “unwelcome persons”, and expel them from the territory. The Marine Police were responsible for the clandestine deportation of these unwelcome Chinese guests by sea. The colonial government also hired boatmen to handle the secret escort of criminals. One of the boatmen who specialised in that job was called “Long Gown Guy”. On the day of the escort, he would arrange a boat at the Tsim Sha Tsui Railway Pier, and his staff would escort the criminals into the half-sealed boat cabin. Each criminal was allotted a loaf of bread and a few cigarettes. Under the surveillance and guidance of a Marine Police launch, the escorting boat travelled to the region near Hak Shek Kok in Mirs Bay, which was then the border between Mainland China and Hong Kong waters. The subordinates of “Long Gown Guy” then sent the criminals into small boats group by group,

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Fig 9.5

Chan Cheong and his comrades of Class 7 & 8 of the Marine Police Training Course.

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drove the boats to the Chinese border and forced the criminals to go ashore. After the policemen confirmed that the escort was completed, the Marine Police launch would leave. Chan recalled, I felt uncomfortable whenever I received orders to escort criminals. Those expelled criminals could be anybody: wanton murderers, dissidents, or innocent citizens. No matter who they were, we had to witness their abandonment in the remote areas near the Chinese border. Once they went ashore, they might be arrested or shot by the Mainland’s military personnel. They might also starve to death over time. Besides, a few of them were female criminals, and we didn’t want to think what would have happened to them. Fortunately, the Hong Kong government yielded to international pressure and abolished its practice of criminal deportation soon afterwards.

9.2.6 Mistaken as Royal Navies In 1967, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution broke out in Mainland China, and the tempest was spilling over to Hong Kong. Labour disputes escalated into street protests, and riots broke out in turn. The 1967 Riots lasted for six months, during which even the Marine Police was called on to carry out antiriot duties on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon. There was a strange sight: rioters were not afraid of the land police’s anti-riot team, but they fled from the Marine Police. When the anti-riot land police, in formation, went to disperse the crowd, the rioters did not retreat, but even attacked the policemen with Molotov cocktails and other improvised explosive devices. But whenever the rioters met the Marine Police’s anti-riot team, they would drop their arms fearfully and head for the hills. The force debated over this. Since the marine policemen were temporarily seconded for anti-riot works in different regions and 222

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understood that they would get back to marine duties afterwards, they had few scruples and fought the rioters with impunity. The rioters knew better than to put up a fight. Chan was proud: I also found it strange when I was just seconded to the anti-riot team, so I checked it with my marine colleagues. They explained that we wore white hats and anti-riot uniforms which were different from that of the land police’s anti-riot team. Many rioters mistook us for the British Army’s Royal Marines, instead of police officers. It dawned on me why the rioters escaped in fright whenever they met the marine police on the streets!

The riots in Hong Kong gradually died down at the end of 1967, but law and order would not return to Mainland China for another decade. From the end of the 1960s to the mid-1970s, marine policeman, having returned to their marine work, now had another hard job: retrieving bodies from the water. Chan remembered the scene, When we worked aboard, we retrieved bodies from the sea nearly every day. Some of the deceased were found tied and swollen. Some were body parts; they all looked horrible. They were residents from Guangdong who were murdered in the Cultural Revolution. Their dead bodies had drifted into Hong Kong waters along the Pearl River. One of my colleagues had a mental illness afterwards from handling the bodies, and finally resigned.

9.2.7 Professionalisation and Team Spirit Chan worked for the marine police from 1952 to 1986. In his 34 years of service, he witnessed the advancement of its technology and systems, along with a gradually improving working 223

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environment. Marine Police Launch No. 1 was the launch that Chan initially embarked on, and it sailed at a speed of just five to six knots per hour. Chan had to work for four days in an extremely shaky “workplace” before his one day off ashore. But just before retirement, Chan was working on the Damen Mark patrol launch which was an advanced police launch equipped with separate bedrooms and dining area. The policemen had two days off ashore for every day of work aboard. Chan was betting on a peaceful life on the water when he applied for a job with the Marine Police. The surprising ups and downs that he had experienced in the force had given him the most colourful of careers. Even after retirement, he was busy serving his retired colleagues with passion. Chan was elected as the Chairman of the Hong Kong Marine Police Retirees’ Association on its founding in 2000, and it was recognised as one of the official police associations by the Hong Kong Police Force in 2004. Looking back at the development of the Hong Kong Marine Police in the last half century, Chan found that it had become more and more modernised and professional. Team spirit, he stressed, was the foundation of the Marine Police. Marine policemen work in coordination with selfless love. He hopes that the next generation of the Marine Police would inherit and pass on this unique collegial culture and contribute to the safety of Hong Kong territorial waters. Table 9.2 Chan Cheong’s Career in the Police Force 1952

Constable

1968

Corporal

1972

Sergeant

1986

Retirement

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9.3 Interview with Former Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. David HODSON I have never regretted the decision I made in Britain: to join the Hong Kong Police Force.

9.3.1 First Impressions of Hong Kong Mr. David Hodson was born in a small town in Worcestershire, West Midlands. It was 1941, and the Luftwaffe had just given up on the Battle of Britain. And so, growing up in post-war England, he decided to study aircraft engineering. It wasn’t long before the young lad grew bored of the gears and cogs, and on the second year of his five-year course, the aircraft engineering intern came across a newspaper advertisement that was recruiting Hong Kong police inspectors. The name rang a bell. All he knew about Hong Kong came from a handful of films, and Richard Quine’s The World of Suzie Wong came to mind, along with the legendary tart-with-a-heart from Wanchai. But it didn’t make a difference to Hodson. “If I had seen an advertisement for police officers or any other posts in Africa, I would also have applied!” He was looking for new opportunities, and travelling around the world intrigued him. He applied for the Hong Kong Police Force in 1961 and was accepted. At that time, the Hong Kong Police Force authorised the Crown Agents to recruit in the UK. Some Hong Kong police officers who were on vacation in Britain were asked to interview the applicants. One of Hodson’s interviewers was Brian Slevin, who became Commissioner of Police in 1974.

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9.3.2 A Training of Every Creed and Race In 1962, Hodson flew from London to Hong Kong with four other successful applicants. The flight was delayed and they did not arrive until midnight. Their course instructor from the Police Training School received them at Kai Tak Airport, but since the Star Ferry had already stopped service, they had to cross the harbour by Marine Police launch. The training course at the Police Training School in Wong Chuk Hang lasted for six months. There were 20 trainees in Hodson’s training class, five of whom from Britain. Hodson and two others were high school graduates, one had a bachelor’s degree, and the last one was a policeman in the British South Africa Police. The rest were locals. There were a Portuguese and two Eurasians, and the remaining twelve were ethnic Chinese; one of them was female who were fresh graduates from elite secondary schools in the city. There were two odd kids in the class: not policemen, but two inspectors of the Hawker Control Team from the Urban Council. The Police Training School had started to train staff from other government departments. Hodson remembered, These two Hawker Control Team members went through training with us right from the beginning. Although they didn’t join some of the classes, he joined in the Passing-Out parade with us.

9.3.3 A British Border Guard After passing-out from the Police Training School, Hodson worked in Sham Shui Po and Tsuen Wan Police Stations before being transferred to Lok Ma Chau Police Station in 1964. Although he was totally unfamiliar with Mainland China, one of his duties was to handle cross-boundary immigration matters between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Back then, the headquarters of the Frontier Division was in Fanling, exercising 226

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jurisdiction over four police stations in the north: Sheung Shui, Lok Ma Chau, Ta Kwu Ling and Sha Tau Kok. While Hong Kong’s Immigration Department was founded in 1961, taking over the control of land, sea and air crossings from the Hong Kong Police Force, the Department stopped short of Lo Wu until 1965. So in the year before, a dedicated inspector was stationed at Lo Wu to handle the immigration work. Whenever he went on leave, another inspector was supposed to stand in for him temporarily. But there were none in Lo Wu, so Hodson, working in Lok Ma Chau Police Station, rose to the occasion. In those days, there were five types of people moving through Lo Wu. The first was locals carrying re-entry permits to visit the Mainland. Then there were the visa-holders, usually foreigners. Mainland residents would travel between the Mainland and Hong Kong with two-way permits. Guangdong residents carrying one-way permits would come to settle in Hong Kong. As for indigenous inhabitants of the Lo Wu Closed Area, mostly farmers who farmed land on both sides of the border, they held special permits that had no entry limitations. Occasionally there were some special callers. The Queen’s Messengers were mostly retired military personnel, responsible for delivering confidential diplomatic documents from British envoys stationed in Beijing to Hong Kong and back. Hodson the inspector had to deal with all visa holders and those intending to migrate from Guangdong to Hong Kong. A hint of suspicion would lead to a rejection of their entry or departure request. Hodson said: At that time, there was a Sino-British agreement for a fixed daily quota of 75 Guangdong residents to migrate to Hong Kong for the purpose of family reunion. If I found that the immigration applicants were not Guangdong residents, I wouldn’t allow them to enter. In those days, there were also a number of stateless Russians who came from Mainland China to 227

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Fig 9.6

Hodson monitored the border from the British side in the 1960s when Hong Kong Police assumed all-weathered surveillance duty at the Lo Wu border area.

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Hong Kong via Lo Wu as refugees under the auspices of the UNHCR.

Hodson spent quite a lot of time studying the relevant immigration ordinances, even though he was only acting in that post. Whenever he came across a problem, he would ring up his immigration colleagues at once. Hodson said with a faint smile, Although the diplomatic documents couriers were just messengers, they were the Queen’s representatives and most of them were retired military officers. So they were extraordinarily arrogant when they were passing through customs clearance. I had to be particularly courteous to them even though I was the inspector in charge of immigration!

One of Lok Ma Chau station’s responsibilities was to monitor the border from the British side. Hodson would submit a report to his superiors immediately if he saw anything suspicious. He recalled: There was this time when the headquarters informed us that they had seen several tractors on the Chinese side of the border. They suspected that they might be military vehicles and told us to keep a closer eye on them, and to report their movements daily. One day, I reported for work at Lo Wu border and saw one of the tractors by the bridge. I took a close look and found that those were actually Massey-Ferguson tractors made in Britain! In fact, I found the job in the border very pleasant. The air was fresh and we would go bird-hunting whenever we had the time.

9.3.4 The Yuen Long No-go Hodson remembered the regulations that were in place at the time: inspectors stationed at the border had to live in the station quarters. They would have one and a half days off every 229

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week, and could only leave the Border area on their day off. Since Hodson was single at that time, he would go on a hike. We were not permitted to go to Yuen Long at that time. There were several bars in Kam Tin where British soldiers used to hang out at night. Perhaps the ban on travelling to Yuen Long was to stop us from drinking there so as to minimise any possible disputes with the soldiers. When I was stationed in Lok Ma Chau, if I wanted to meet my colleagues, I usually went to the Police Mess in Fanling where I could drink with them. My favourite was a pub called “The Better Ole” near Fanling KCR Station. It was a convenient spot for a drink. When the prohibition on Yuen Long was eventually lifted, we went to Kam Tin for a pint from time to time.

Another job of Hodson’s during his stay in Lok Ma Chau was to withdraw cash from the bank and pay his subordinates’ monthly wages. Pay day was a big thing in the police station. When I came back from the bank after withdrawing cash, I had to count out everyone’s salary and put the money in envelopes. After everyone had queued up for their salary, they could leave at once because there were people out there waiting for them to pay their bills. First of all, they had to pay the canteen owner for the monthly tab. Then there was uniform laundering and haircuts. Lastly, they also had to pay for the “boys”, who were responsible for sundry duties such as leather polishing in the police station.

For the married men, their wives were often waiting to lay their hands on whatever was left. Policemen were not allowed to carry any cash with them when they were on duty in those days. If cash was found on an on-duty policemen, he would be investigated and interrogated on the source of the money. 230

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9.3.5 United Stand against Rioters In his first few years in Hong Kong, Hodson encountered two of the most serious riots in the 1960s. In 1966, the Star Ferry Company increased its fare by 50 cents. Mr. So Sau Chung went on a hunger strike at Central Pier, was arrested, and sparked fullfledged riots in Kowloon which mandated a curfew. Hong Kong Island had not been directly affected by either, but residents taking the ferry to Kai Tak Airport in Kowloon at night needed to show their permits. Hodson was working in Hong Kong Island’s Traffic Division, and one of his duties was to issue such permits. Luckily, the curfew lasted two days only, because the paperwork would have been unimaginable. During the 1967 Riots, violence lasted from May to December. Hodson was transferred from the Traffic Formation to the Emergency Unit, and the defence of Government House fell to his team’s shoulders. In June, he was sent to the Hong Kong Island Police Military Liaison Office (Pol-Mil), located within Central Police Station, as a Controller. The flood of rioting reports gradually turned into reports of suspected explosive devices. Unrest spread to most areas in Hong Kong and the population was running scared. The police had its hands full on all sorts of emergencies. Every policemen who was involved in the response for the 1967 Riots would remember the “Sha Tau Kok Incident”. On 8 July, there was a shoot-out between Hong Kong Police and Mainland militia in Sha Tau Kok village. Five Hong Kong policemen died in the fight. When we heard that some colleagues died in Sha Tau Kok, everyone was in deep sorrow. I wondered why it happened at all and whether it was the prelude to a military invasion. Although I was at a loss for some time, I hadn’t felt threatened. The thought of resignation and returning to Britain did not cross my mind. 231

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Hodson said the police force stood united for the most part. Collegial relationships were strong despite the pandemonium. During the months of rioting, we worked in the police station every day. Although everyone was under pressure and was brimming with anxiety, we managed to have a bit of a laugh every day. There was no barrier between Chinese and expatriate colleagues, no barrier between superiors and subordinates. Everyone fought together and strived to return order to society. It was really a hard time, but I found that it was the most united time of the Hong Kong Police Force.

9.3.6 The “Canadian” Dealer The Narcotics Bureau of the Hong Kong Police Force was detached from the Anti-Corruption Branchin 1954. After expansion in 1961, it became a specialised unit for drug-related crimes. Hodson was promoted to Chief Inspector in 1971, and was sent to the Narcotics Bureau in the following year, responsible for administration and research. Hong Kong had a heroin problem at the time. Drug syndicates smuggled blocks of morphine from the Golden Triangle to Hong Kong and refine it into heroin locally. Some of it is used in the city, and the rest is transported to Europe and the USA. The Bureau officers planned an operation with a foreign undercover agent, who was to be a Canadian dealer shopping in Hong Kong. The investigation officers proposed to their superintendent to second someone from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But he thought Hong Kong Police Force had enough members of its own. He thought of Hodson, who was actually English. Few would have recognised him as he had just been transferred to the Bureau, and he had a gentle air, glasses and all, which made him look nothing like a policeman.

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There was still a big problem. Hodson, posing as the buyer, had to carry a briefcase of US dollars to meet the Hong Kong drug dealer in order to convince him that he was the genuine article. Nowadays, if the police need “prop” money, there is a mechanism for a loan from the Treasury. No such provisions were in place at the time. Without a way to raise the US dollars, the Narcotics Bureau agreed with the Commercial Crime Bureau to borrow counterfeit US dollars that the latter had confiscated. Hodson took the briefcase with him at the meeting and made a successful arrest. It ended on an interesting note: The drug dealer asked me in a suspicious tone whether I was a newbie in that particular line of business when I showed him the US dollars. I guessed I looked so nervous that he might have seen through my disguise. Later on, he told me that US Dollars were not the common choice of currency because they were more likely to be counterfeit. He didn’t realise how right he was!

From 1979 to 1983, Hodson worked in Interpol Hong Kong. He said, People usually think that Hong Kong only began liaising with the Chinese Public Security Bureau from the late 1980s. But from my personal experience, they had actually started contacting each other in the late 1970s.

Hodson was promoted to Chief Superintendent in 1989 and sent to Tsuen Wan Police Station as District Commander. He was later sent back to his favourite Narcotics Bureau. This time, he was no longer assigned to undercover roles, but was appointed as its head. The Drug Trafficking (Recovery of Proceeds) Ordinance became effective in December 1989, and the Narcotics Bureau

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also established a Financial Investigation Group. One of the Bureau’s new duties was to tackle money laundering.

9.3.7 Dealing with Legislative Councillors Three years before the Handover in 1997, Hodson was promoted to Assistant Commissioner, responsible for criminal investigation. Even though he had many years of experience in criminal investigation and had solved a fair share of big cases, he found the job more difficult than any of his previous ones. The Legislative Council passed the “Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance” in 1991, which incorporated pertinent clauses of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty into Hong Kong law, and repealed some outdated ordinances that conflicted with human rights. Some of the ordinances related to policing were affected. Hodson had to review the affected ordinances in a tight timeframe and work with the Department of Justice to make recommendations for the amendment of said ordinances. Besides, he often represented the Hong Kong Police Force in order to explain their point of view before the councillors in the Legislative Council. Hodson recalled, It was a very difficult job. On the one hand, we had to protect individual rights according to the “Human Rights Law”. On the other hand, we had to ensure that the police possessed sufficient power toact effectively. To balance the two was a big challenge to the Legislative Councillors. We strove to get our point of view across. It demanded a lot of political wisdom to handle the situation.

9.3.8 Hong Kong Home Hodson had originally planned to retire in 1997, but the Hong Kong Police Force hired him as a consultant and he did not leave the organisation until 1999, thus concluding a career 234

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Fig 9.7

Interpol Bureau in-charge Hodson with a mainland Public Security visitor in the late 1970s .

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spanning almost four decades, beginning from his probationary inspectorship in 1962. The employment agreement he signed at that time included a commitment not to get married in his first three years’ of service. When he arrived in Hong Kong, there was a consensus among expatriate police officers that marrying local women would damage their careers. Interracial marriage was not common at that time. Young Hodson did not care for those things. When he was still a Probationary Inspector, he dated a Chinese girlfriend in Hong Kong. After the completion of his first three-year contract, he had six months’ holiday and went back to Britain for a vacation. The two got married there and returned to Hong Kong, where he served the Police Force until the eve of the millennium. Hodson applied for the job on a whim, so it came as no surprise that his plan to “see the world for three years” didn’t exactly pan out. 37 years later, he found a career, a life-long companion, and a home in Hong Kong. I have never regretted the decision I made in Britain: to join the Hong Kong Police Force. Table 9.3 David Hodson’s Career in the Police Force 1962

Probationary Inspector of Police

1965

Inspector of Police

1971

Chief Inspector of Police

1975

Superintendent of Police

1983

Senior Superintendent of Police

1988

Chief Superintendent of Police

1994

Assistant Commissioner

1997

Consultant to the Hong Kong Police

1999

Retirement

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9.4 Interview with Former Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mr. Gordon FUNG Siu-yuen If you give it all you’ve got and better yourself day in, day out, there’s no doubt you’ll go far in any one of the departments in the Police Force.

9.4.1 Paying it forward When Fung Siu-yuen returned to Hong Kong after a two-year stint in Thailand, the high school graduate thought he had found a good job as a clerk in a commercial firm. He was taking in HK$600 a month and hardly a bad deal at the time — but the Royal Hong Kong Police Force had a better offer. In 1972, he was employed as a Probationary Inspector, with a handsome wage at $1,450. Like most baby boomers born in post-WWII Hong Kong, Fung subsisted on meagre aspirations of an industrious work ethic that whispered promises of a better life. Little did he know that 35 years of service in a vast array of departments awaited him, along with a host of overseas opportunities which brought him insights into the theory and practice of policing around the world. This former clerk would ultimately find himself at the apex of the Police Force, in charge of the security and prosperity of a people who sought the same in life as he once did. At Wong Chuk Hang Police Training School, Fung joined a dozen students in the inspector training class. Four, including himself, were local Chinese recruits, with the rest shipped in from the metropole that was United Kingdom. One of them, Fung recalled, was a resident of Kenya. Fung assumed that police work was a matter of operations and outdoor work, and he would have nothing to do with studying or examinations once he took up the post. But when the hectic physical training was over, he found himself cramming 237

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for tests and examinations on legal procedures. As the class proceeded with leadership and management skill training, Fung gradually realised what was asked of him: practical experience and professional knowledge wrapped in one policeman. The tight schedule and incessant examinations in the training school meant that Fung had little time to ponder whether he could adapt to the new job, or indeed whether it was suitable for him at all. It was all he could do to pass the tests and not get expelled, and he was holding on for dear life. The completion of his foundation training did little to stem the tide: now he had to attend numerous interviews and promotions assessment for the remainder of his career. Says Fung with a smile, I thought I could toss out my school bag the day I became a officer, but there was no end in sight for these examinations. I sat through them throughout my career.

9.4.2 Street Smarts Professional The gang of thirteen were not immediately dispatched to police districts upon graduation: first came a one-month internship at the Headquarters. Under a chief inspector’s lead, they tried their hand at front-line procedures dealing with drug abusers and gamblers in different districts. There was collecting intelligence, planning operations, making arrests, handling evidence, and preparing prosecutions. It was a useful programme for newbies, says Fung, in that they had a deeper understanding of crime detection as well as the problems their rank-and-file colleagues were facing in various police districts. No two hoods are the same. Fung was eventually assigned to Tsuen Wan Police Station. The young inspector came face to face with expelitited rank and file colleagues who knew every nook and cranny in the district. They had demonstrated their dexterity in handling all sorts of 238

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Fig 9.8

Fung Siu-yuen in his passing out parade as a Probationary Inspector in 1973.

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cases in a perfect blend of book smarts and street smarts. This seamless combination of professional knowledge and local wisdom boosted their productivity. By the mid-1970s, Fung was transferred to another satellite town at the edge of Kowloon: Kwun Tong Police Station had a new Detective Inspector. He investigated numerous cases of robberies and assaults. What amazed him the most was the ferocity of the triad conflicts: There were still many squatters in Kwun Tong, and the triads were particularly active in the public housing estates in Sau Mau Ping and Lam Tin. They often fought over the control of their territories, and the district was duly nicknamed “War Zone”. Wounding cases and gangster fights became the bread and butter of our station.

Some serious cases required Fung to travel from Kwun Tong to the Legal Department in Hong Kong Island for legal advice. He recalled: When an investigation called for some legal advice, I had to get the approval from my superior in my police station as well as a Detective Superintendent before I could head off to the Legal Department. Since there was no Detective Superintendent in my station at that time, I had to bring along my case file and go all the way to the Kowloon District Police Headquarters on Argyle Street for the approval from the Detective Superintendent there. Detective Inspectors from all across Kowloon usually met up with the Headquarters’ Detective Superintendent in the mornings, and we had to queue up one by one and explain the case details. If everything went well, we’d get the stamp right away. Then I’d have to cross the harbour to the Legal Department and seek the legal advice. It took up a

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whole day because public transport wasn’t nearly as efficient as it is today.

9.4.3 Thai Visa Bride: The Task Force What is so special about the “special task force”? Serious cases are the norm, but cases of a special nature sometimes mandate a specific police response as well. Fung spent 18 of his 35-year career in the Criminal Investigation Department, and the first task force he joined was established to deal with a problem with Thai women. In the seventies, it wasn’t easy for many poor middle-aged men to find wives in Hong Kong. Given the political barrier between Hong Kong and Mainland China at the time, Hong Kong men rarely got married in the Mainland. At the same time, quite a few Overseas Chinese, originally from Chiu Chou, were living in Thailand. So it came to pass that a Hong Kong bachelor asked his fellow clansman to set up a date, and it was such a wild success a trend was born. A few opportunistic scammers saw how eager these men were yearning for a wife, and before long, the Hong Kong Police Force began receiving complaints of sham marriages with Thai women. Typically, a local man would meet a suitable Thai woman through an agency. He would put down a dowry — usually more than ten thousand dollars — only to see his fiancée, the matchmaker, and all of his life savings vanish into thin air. Sometimes the bride-tobe became reluctant after the dowry was deposited and fled the scene; occasionally she would file a complaint after the wedding complaining of “matchmaking fraud”. Some were genuine cases, and others were domestic disputes framed within the wider context. But one way or another, crossborder sham marriages proved to be a challenge for police authorities. That the agencies or the women in question had

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Fig 9.9

Fung in his Probationary Inspectorship years in 1974.

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intended to defraud was tremendously difficult to prove, and to make things more complicated, few policemen spoke Thai. The latter problem escalated until a huge back-log of cases piled up. The Police Headquarters founded a task force in 1975, and Fung’s stint in Thailand — coupled with his impeccable command of the language — made him the perfect man for the job. He was appointed to take charge of the task force, along with a sergeant and a constable who also spoke the language. Colleagues all over the districts breathed a collected sigh of relief when our team was formed. Everybody immediately transferred all of their cases to us. It was a really tough nut for them to crack, considering that they did not speak the language.

Fung was in charge of that “task force” for about three years. At first, the focus was on case investigation. When they had gathered enough evidence, they would go ahead with arrest and prosecution. Even though we could speak Thai, we still faced huge difficulties in the investigations. The cases took place in two countries, and it was hard to collect evidence if the suspects had already left Hong Kong.

Fung understood that it was impossible to successfully prosecute all the parties in these cases, and so later on he switched tactics and emphasised on public education and preventive measures. He publicised the fraudulent means and the criminals’ modus operandi in order to raise awareness in the local community. He also put forward enhanced intelligence gathering policies and made the first move by targeting and deterring the agencies in question. Fung was promoted to Chief Inspector in 1979. His post in the Special Crime Division at the Police Headquarters could

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not be more different from his previous assignment: his main responsibility was investigating armed robbery syndicates. The late seventies was marked by the slew of armed robbers from Mainland China, also known as “Big Circle Boys”. In 1982, three men ran over a patrolling officer in Ho Man Tin with a stolen car and stole his revolver. Fung took charge of that case. He located the suspects in an apartment in North Point. A gunfight ensued between his team and the suspects. Fung shot a suspect — a mainland veteran — in the arm, while a bullet from one of the suspects grazed Fung’s cheek.

9.4.4 British Experience & Hong Kong Wisdom Ever-tightening cooperation between the Hong Kong and British police in the mid-eighties was characterised by the Superintendent Exchange Plan. Every year, three Superintendents were seconded to the other end of the planet period of two years. Fung was sent to the Sussex Police in the southeast of England in 1988 as SubDivisional Commander. The Hongkonger landed on the coastal plains and rolling chalk hills to an utterly alien working environment and culture. Fung noted that he became more confident, more adaptability, and more resourceful when it comes to solving problem. It was not easy for the seconded superintendents to gain acceptance and trust from local colleagues. But when we finally made it, the encouragement made it all worthwhile!

Fung remembered two things from Sussex, 24 years hence, vividly. The first one was a racial discrimination complaint against his officers in Sussex. There were pockets of ethnic minorities

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Fig 9.10 Fung in full dress uniform, was the Guard of Honour in a passing out parade of Police Tactical Unit in 2007.

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living in Britain, and some of them worked in the catering business. There was an Indian restaurant that had a problem about diners making off without paying, and so the owner ordered his staff to give chase. One evening, just as expected, two white men dined there and tried to leave without paying. The staff stopped them, and a scuffle took place. One of them was beaten up by a staff member. When the police arrived, the two men and the staff member were arrested. The restaurant owner was angry about the arrest of his staff and considered it racial discrimination. The local Indian Chamber of Commerce acted on his behalf to make a formal complaint. When Fung learned about the case, he decided to meet the representatives of the Chamber in person. The representatives did not expect a Chinese Commander and was rather bewildered. Fung explained to them that he had never felt discriminated, in a personal capacity, as the only ethnic minority in his own station. Then he said that as Commander, he would not tolerate any acts of racial discrimination from his subordinates. He also emphasised that while it was unlawful to make off without payment, so was beating someone up. His officers had to act in accordance to the laws. Fung leveraged his unique position to resolve a very sensitive case in good will. The other story was about crowd control in a football stadium. The Police were very concerned about football hooliganism, particularly during the important matches. Fans were being searched before admission in order to ensure that no sharp objects or otherwise offensive weapons were brought into the stadium. But fans tended to rush into the gates once they were opened, making the searches impossible. Capitalising on his experience of public order control in Hong Kong, Fung ordered his subordinates to place rows of mills barriers in front of the gates, allowing the fans to form orderly queues so as to be searched properly.

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Back in those days, the British police forces had already introduced performance pledges, accountability, and community policing as part of their policing strategies. Fung thought that he and his fellow secondees from Hong Kong had learnt a lot from these experience and exposure. It came in quite handy when the Hong Kong Police Force embarked on a sea change of service quality in the mid-nighties. Table 9.4 Fung Siu-yuen’s Career in the Police Force 1972

Probationary Inspector of Police

1975

Inspector of Police

1977

Senior Inspector of Police

1979

Chief Inspector of Police

1984

Superintendent of Police

1990

Senior Superintendent of Police

1994

Chief Superintendent of Police

1997

Assistant Commissioner

2001

Senior Assistant Commissioner

2002

Deputy Commissioner

2008

Retirement

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9.5 Interview with Former Commissioner of Police, Mr. Dick LEE Ming-kwai Magnanimity in management — that’s what I believe in. It fosters an ever-growing bond in the team and fuels the engine of efficiency.

It proved to be the first slam dunk of his lifelong profession when Lee Ming-kwai signed up for the varsity basketball team in his third year at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The history undergraduate was as fond of the sport then as the 62-yearold former Police Commissioner is now, and at 1.92m his frame and talent did not go unnoticed by the coach. As it happens, this coach was also charged with training the police basketball team, and under his instructions Lee tagged along for the ride of his life. Over time, Lee bonded with his new teammates, welcoming as they were to civilians ranging from civil servants to teachers and students, and it was in this capacity — as teammate, no less — he came to make his first friends in the police force. The tantalising uncertainty familiar to every fresh graduate nudged Lee towards the teaching profession, a path shared by many of his fellow historian students. He was no doubt interested, but the basketball team had other plans for him. A few words of encouragement led to an application for the post of Probationary Inspector from the graduate — a rarity back in 1972, since the class had a grand total of three university graduates that year. Many more would follow in his footsteps throughout the seventies, Lee recalls. He was duly accepted in December, and training began in earnest at the Police Training School in Wong Chuk Hang, in a complex overseeing the gentle expanses of Brick Hill that would not become Ocean Park until five years later.

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9.5.1 The Swiss Knife of Policing Upon graduation in June of the following year, Lee found himself in a whole different camp: Sai Ying Pun, the bustling district of dried seafood fame and former military camp west of Victoria. In the capacity of patrol sub-unit commander, he had more than 40 subordinates under his wing. This was a time before pagers and two-way radios, so the storefront landlines came in handy. “Police boxes”, essentially custom callboxes for the service, were also widespread. You would unlock an iron box affixed on poles with a private key, and make a direct call to the station on a rotary dialphone. Toward the end of the year, Lee was transferred to the Police Tactical Unit (PTU). He would return to Hong Kong Island after three months’ training in the Fanling garrison. Demonstrations and protests were few and far between in those days. Public order was the overriding concern. We would be on duty in large public affairs: football matches in the Hong Kong Stadium, the Happy Valley horseraces, and the flower fair in Victoria Park during the Lunar New Year festivities were the order of the day.

There was the appointment at Mid-Levels Police Station as Deputy Divisional Commander in June 1974, then a quick stroll downhill to Central Police Station serving as Detective Inspector (Crime) some five months later. Lee would stay in the latter post for a year before being parallel transferred across the harbour to Tsuen Wan Police Station in 1976. In the new town which had just begun to see real development, Lee joined criminal investigation in the outpost for all of New Territories. But new beginnings are afoot. The Police Force had set up a Criminal Intelligence System, and Lee was appointed as the head

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Fig 9.11 Lee received training in Police Tactical Unit in Fanling in 1974.

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of the team. 1977 saw him lead the nascent unit until he boarded a London-bound plane for the Metropolitan Police, for five months of training. The first three post-graduation years saw Lee in a variety of positions, across divisions and regions. A run-of-the-mill uniformed patrol followed by public event management in blue beret; criminal intelligence mingling with investigative procedures; and from the metropolitan coasts of Hong Kong Island to the outback that was New Territories. There were ample opportunities for learning and more than a fair share of challenges, which was a fitting education for high-calibre staff transitioning into managerial positions. Lee contemplates the probationary years: It was a new post every six months or so. Adopting roles and adapting to environments weren’t the easiest of jobs in the limited timeframe, but I had a taste of different front-line positions throughout it, which gave me a real chance to grow in a personal capacity. This cascade of courses and exposure was the building block of my career in the force. This level of on-thejob training, for a probationary inspector of all people, is rarely found in local businesses or other government departments.

9.5.2 Shatin Exploits The promotion to Chief Inspector upon his return to the colony sent Lee to the Personnel Wing in the Police Headquarters for more than a year, and cumulated in his appointment as the Station Head in Shatin at a tender age just shy of thirty. The small market town, wedged in the valley in which Shing Mun River runs through, was sitting at the cusp of change.

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The shallow bay of Tide Cove was drained and reclaimed to make room for a humongous new town in a city was bursting at the seams. The tempestuous decade also saw the government requisitioning farmland. Relocation was compulsory and nonnegotiable, and settlements were forcibly razed by the Squatter Control Team. Predictably, tensions were palpable and emotions ran high. When Lee assumed office in 1979, he often received requests for uniformed escorts for the Squatter Control Team. The evictions were bringing about quite a few disputes when I took the job. I didn’t think it was a good idea to push the matter and tried my best to smooth things over, procedure-wise, so as to keep confrontations to a minimum. The government came to realise that these forcible measures weren’t really effective, and so the commands gradually turned into negotiations. We were haggling with the residents over the requisitions. It was still far from an easy job as far as the demolition team was concerned, but the change in tactics ironed out a lot of differences.

Another issue that came to mind was the horde of illegal immigrant in the Shatin Police Station. The government adopted the Touch Base Policy in 1980, which drew a curious line of demarcation between New Territories and Kowloon. If an illegal immigrant managed to pass through the former undetected, on pain of repatriation to Mainland China, and meet their local relatives in the latter, the right of abode is granted. Shatin, which is located in New Territories, is stuck between a rock and a hard place — specifically, Lion Rock hill, beyond which lies the promises of naturalisation in the shape of urban Kowloon, and the vast expanses of Lek Yuen which forms the better part of Shatin. The Lion Rock Tunnel and Tai Po

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Road were the two main crossings, and both fell under Lee’s jurisdiction. Road blocks were routinely set along both routes in an attempt to stem the tide of human traffic. The tide was unfazed. Touch Base was rescinded on 23 October 1980, and all illegal immigrants captured after that date would be sent back to the Mainland regardless of locale. Countless mainlanders gave it a last shot in the run-up to the deadline. Lee recalls vividly, At that time we arrested a lot of illegal immigrants every day. We couldn’t deport every one of them all at once, so there were usually a hundred or so taken into custody in the station. Young and old, male and female, even entire families were there. We didn’t have the facilities to serve everyone. Even segregating the detainees by gender and feeding them three meals a day were pushing our resources to the hilt. These weren’t crafty criminals, and it’s hard to draw the line between justice and compassion. Separated family members, especially those with children, need to meet up, and so we shut the front gate of the station and gave them the use of the car park during the day.

Che Kung proved to be the Temple of Doom during Lee’s tenure. Tens of thousands of worshippers prostrated themselves in front of the Song Dynasty commander during the Chinese New Year, which did not bode well with the fact that there was only one alley leading to the miniscule complex. The crowd control nightmare was only exacerbated by the construction of housing estates in nearby Tai Wai, which reduced the area to a slum infested with robbers, beggars, and hawkers. On the third day of the New Year, it was pouring down and the roads weren’t so much flooded as swamped with mud. It was rough enough for worshippers, but the queue ran all the way to Lion

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Rock Tunnel Road. We hadn’t got a clue about what to do with the situation, but someone found these wood planks at the construction site. So we paved a walkway with them and took a bit of pressure of the teeming masses. But when the holidays were over, we ran into trouble with the construction workers who were clamouring about the missing planks that they had kept for a fence around their site. We had to mediate with quite a few parties to settle the score.

All this, Lee observes, was played out against a backdrop of a sleepy town that stood witness to its own metamorphosis into a self-sustaining metropolis. Shatin was only a small police division in the New Territories at that time. But those two years meant a lot to me. As the Station Head I learnt how to deal with the birth pangs and growing pains of a new town, and I came to understand the community’s importance in the greater scheme of policing. I often took to talking with the Shatin Rural Committee, the Kai-Fong (Neighbourhood) Welfare Association, indigenous residents and immigrants alike so that my finger is constantly on the pulse when it comes to their needs and concerns. Over time, many residents began to trust us and became more co-operative when public order hangs on the balance.

9.5.3 Community Voices: Mediating Media The year 1981 saw Lee, newly minted Superintendent, step into the foray of police public relations. The duties of the branch were split into media and community, and Lee was mainly charged with the latter. As the sole ethnic Chinese superintendent in that division, he had to deal with local press on a regular basis. Lee admitted that he was not terribly sensitive to media matters at first.

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We held a press conference to promote Junior Police Call, which was an anti-crime campaign targeted at youths. On the day before, the police had just broken up a pyramid-selling group and there were minor skirmishes between the police and some reporters. My mind was dead set on the campaign itself, so I didn’t really take note of the other issue. Imagine my surprise when I had finished my speech on youth crime: the reporters did not ask a single question about the campaign as I had expected, and instead dedicated the whole session trying to drag a comment from me with regards to the incident.

Lee pondered afterwards. He realised that an awareness of social trends and current affairs are instrumental to policing, and not merely ancillary to their core services. He also understood the media’s role as the fourth estate, the watchdog which monitors and critically assesses the force even as it is trying to deliver its own crucial messages to the general public. With mutual agreement on this arrangement comes symbiosis. Junior Police Call soldiered on, as did Lee. The team had to impart to citizens the message that the police exist to serve and not control the public. This view is essential to community relations endeavours, and as Lee concluded after his two-year stint, Media and community relations go hand in hand, like two horses drawing a carriage. If policing is to make any progress, they cannot go at their own pace. A good working relationship with the media is a must, but at the same time we have to bear in mind that the media has its own stances, which means we cannot afford to become utterly reliant on it. So we will do our best to build rapport with the community. If people understand better what we do, we could work more effectively and efficiently.

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The road to commissionership is paved with more than a few surprises. In 1983 Lee landed on a completely different environment in the Complaints Against Police Office (CAPO). The job could not be more different, but Lee held fast to the principle that might be boiled down to two words, “Let’s talk”. The CAPO assignment required him to talk with a whole different beast, however, namely the front-line subordinate. My post in the CAPO saw more than 4,000 cases every year. The majority of it, as I found out later on, was avoidable confrontations and misunderstandings. I believe that it did not have to come to this if frontline policemen had handled the cases more adeptly.

To make his point, Lee and his colleagues embarked upon a new career in film production, penning scripts that addressed the most common complaints and making short films. He distributed them to Investigation Team Inspectors and asked to visit police districts regularly, who gave front-line staff important pointers on how to handle cases. Conflict avoidance became the star of the show. Lee’s career shifted gears in 1985 when he received an assignment to Oxford of all places. Along with officers in other bureaux, Lee read public administration in the prestigious university. The year concluded with his return to another new town in Tai Po. The second-generation development blueprint has learnt its lessons from the pioneers, and Lee, for the first time, had it easy. Armed with his experience as Divisional Commander and his pursuit in community relations, Tai Po, then still peppered with villages and markets, brought a whisper of a smile to his face. I often patrolled before the break of dawn in my neat uniform. It brought on the elderly joggers whom you’d greet, and then there’s the small talk with shopkeepers just so you’d know more about the district. At first 256

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they were gobsmacked by the sight of a uniformed policemen was out on patrol in the small hours, let alone the fact that he was the Divisional Commander. Who’d buy that? When they realised that I was sincere in trying to keep the public safe and sound, they became unyieldingly co-operative.

Tai Po has a large Hakka population, and so Lee encouraged his front-line officers to learn the dialect so that they can understand one another better. And so it came to pass that the Superintendent was promoted to Senior Superintendent; and when the Division was upgraded to the District, the Deputy Commander scaled the heights along with his team. In 1989, the Police Headquarters Inspection Bureau seconded him to the Urban Council, in which the General Duties Team put him in charge of hawkers. This was closely followed by a much more dramatic transfer, as teaching staff in the British National Police Staff College through the Superintendent Secondment Plan. Lee notes that the plan made him and his fellow local officer a new take on the world. In the old days, our colleagues had a low regard for the local service, thinking that it wasn’t up to scratch compared to Western counterparts. Two years in Britain laid those biases to rest. We found out that the Royal Hong Kong Police Force is just as solid as theirs. It gave us the confidence to execute localisation plans and reorient our police work as a service.

Lee returned to Wanchai in 1992 as its District Commander. The Chief Superintendent stared gargantuan challenges in the face which had stressed his team to the edge. The modern leader had become thoroughly convinced of the value in “two-way communications” despite the hierarchy inherent in a disciplined service which mandates obedience. Superiors, Lee contends, cannot make the right calls unless they 257

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Fig 9.12 Lee visited the Police Post in a Shatin village in 1980.

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completely understand the environments front-line staff operate in, as well as the challenges that they face. Magnanimity in management fosters an ever-growing bond in the team and fuels the engine of efficiency. All this in the face of cross-boundary armed robberies. Lee recalls, I sometimes popped by the stations around midnight when I was District Commander in Wanchai. I wasn’t there to snoop on the staff to see if anyone’s slacking off, but I wanted to get a feel of the late shift as my subordinates would see it, and share my experiences when it comes to handling cases. At first some of they didn’t take to my unannounced visits warmly. But after a while, when they saw that I was there to find out what they were thinking, we became a lot closer.

Fast forward two years, and Lee is back in New Territories North as its Deputy Regional Commander, and in 1995 he was appointed Assistant Commissioner, Operations. Border control, smuggling, and the thorny question of the Vietnamese boat people loomed large. Taking over British Army’s operation, liaison with relevant Mainland units, and security management during the 1997 handover were high on the agenda. The results might be summarised in his promotion to Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police in 1998, taking command as Director of Management Services and Director of Operations. He remained in these two fields two years later, as Deputy Commissioner. The rank did little to sway him from his experiential approach to policy-making. Rampant street prostitution in Sham Shui Po brought him furious tongue-lashing from legislators and the media alike in 2003, as the blame seemed to have rested squarely with the police. Lee, as usual, visited at night without so much as a press release in order to observe the “annoyance to 259

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the residents” in person. He notes that the management makes the decisions and formulates the directives for front-line staff to follow, and any misunderstandings on the former’s part will only make matters worse. He simply preferred to see it from the frontline perspective before he made the call, whatever position he happened to be holding.

9.5.4 Growing Along Thirty-one years after he submitted the application for the post of probationary officer, Lee succeeded Tsang Yam Pui as Commissioner of Police in 2003 until his retirement in 2007. In almost four decades the Hong Kong Police Force witnessed momentous change, and Lee looks back on the seventies as the trigger of reform. The war on corruption found staggering belligerents in the Police Force and the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1977. The incident was a wake-up call for the government and the police. They realised that a wind of change is in order if we want a moral, law-abiding, and efficient team. This pursuit goes well beyond wage hikes and restructuring; the most important changes must come from within the incumbents’ quality and working culture.

Trigger led to exploration in the eighties. Lee recalls a special working group coming over from Britain which had made revolutionary suggestions in the aftermath of the 1977 protests against the perceived persecution from the ICAC. Some British senior police officers took on management roles in the local force, and some Chinese officers with good potential were in turn sent to developed countries for training. Overseas experience aligned with the Force’s own reform directions even as it considered the local circumstances, and one of the critical strategies was the abundant provision of resources for community relations projects. 260

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Fig 9.13 Lee in full dress uniform with Au Ting, the Chairperson of Hong Kong Police Old Comrades’ Association, in Police Headquarters in 2007.

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These strategies represented a change in policing. It was no longer strictly positioned as an enforcer of law and order. It exists to serve citizens and it gets this point cross proactively.

And the reforms cropped in the nineties. Midway through, “Quality Service Orientation; Strive for Excellence” became the motto of a force which now strives to make Hong Kong one of the safest cities in the world with every fibre of its being. Says Lee, The old way was “do as you’re told and get it done and over with”. Nowadays even if you’ve done a superb job, people still ask you about your motivations and wonder out loud whether you could’ve done it in another way. So, you can’t just pat yourself on the back unless you articulate your beliefs and rationales of law enforcement. We rely on the Police College to drive our colleagues further in both theory and practice, so that they will do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

Lee firmly believes that the Police College, founded in 2006, will prove to be a lasting milestone in Hong Kong’s history of policing. The man who served in the force at its very helm resolved to make service the core of his enterprise, and “Quality Service Orientation”, a global trend in policing, ploughs on. The handover, according to Lee, would not have made a difference anyway, and now various police units from Mainland China have visited Hong Kong after 1997 in order to learn the ropes and spread the wind of change. Lee says that the Hong Kong Police Force should not be complacent in a future where unceasing selfeducation will become the norm. There are always new lessons to be learnt — from other governmental departments, other countries, and Mainland China — as the force marches on.

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Table 9.5 Lee Ming-kwai’s Career in the Police Force 1972

Probationary Inspector of Police

1975

Inspector of Police

1977

Senior Inspector of Police

1978

Chief Inspector of Police

1981

Superintendent of Police

1987

Senior Superintendent of Police

1992

Chief Superintendent of Police

1995

Assistant Commissioner

1998

Senior Assistant Commissioner

2001

Deputy Commissioner

2003

Commissioner of Police

2007

Retirement

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Chapter 10 Conclusion

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The Hong Kong Police Force is one of the world’s oldest police forces. It was established almost 170 years ago, in 1844. Throughout history, varying police organisations have been developed by the state to protect their subjects and their property. For example, the Praetorian Guard — formed in the Roman Empire, two thousand years ago — whose principal tasks were to protect governors, arrest offenders and execute sentences. In 1356, France had already established a cavalry (mounted force) with full autonomy granted in tackling all crimes. Similar developments on policing also took place in ancient China. The state of Qin in the Warring States Period established a “Collective Responsibility System” for mutual monitoring among citizens. When a person was found guilty, he would be penalised, along with the four other persons who were supposed to monitor his conduct. This system evolved into the Baojia system under the Song Dynasty. In this system, the household was the basic unit: ten households were labelled a Jia, and ten Jia became a Bao. There were captains of each Jia and Bao, assigned to maintain the order of their corresponding units. In term of organisational structure, the palace guards were closer to the modern police force, with well-structured organisation, ranks and division of functions. The Jin Yi Wei (Brocade-clad Guard) in the Ming Dynasty were responsible for both imperial palace security and investigation work, but they can be regarded mainly as the Emperors’ personal police force. The history of the modern police is relatively short. In Britain, the London Metropolitan Police — widely recognised as the first modern police force — was set up in 1829. In the late eighteenth century, a district watch system was established in the cities, whereby residents were required to serve on night-watch duty by roster. Later, “constables” were employed to perform night patrols instead. During the Industrial Revolution, cities developed rapidly. Law and order could no longer be maintained effectively under 266

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the watch system, and it became necessary to establish a body of disciplined and professional law enforcement personnel. The British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, formulated the Metropolitan Police Act. In 1829, the Act was passed and an organised “modern police” was officially formed in London. Known as a “police constable” (or, less formally, a PC) they patrolled the London streets by day in blue uniforms, becoming the paid law enforcers of the government. Since the police headquarters had been located at Scotland Yard in London from an early time, “Scotland Yard” is often used as a metonym for the Metropolitan Police as a whole. In fact, the London Metropolitan Police was the first statutorily established civil police force, and occupied a thenpeculiar legal niche: different from a military force, it was both empowered by but also bound by laws. It is not a private armed force but the law enforcement agency of the state, responsible for the preservation of public security and order. With the success of the modern police organisation in London, other parts of Britain and other European countries soon formed their own civil police under similar statutes. In 1878, the Metropolitan Police first set up a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in London. It set the model for a modern police with two main branches; uniformed police and plain clothes police. Britain introduced the concept of modern police into its colonies. Formed just 15 years after the birth of the London Metropolitan Police, the Hong Kong Police Force has the longest history of almost any of the modern police forces in the world. When the Hong Kong Police Force was formally established in 1844, it was only a small-scale police force with policemen from different ethnicities including European, Indian and Chinese. The police force began with the most primitive form. It was unable to deal with serious law and order problems such as piracy. Starting from the twentieth century, different departments 267

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were set up to perform specific police functions. A modern police force with detailed division of labour by functional specialisation had been gradually developed. Unfortunately the police force was disbanded when Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army from 1941 to 1945. With its post-war reconstruction basically completed in 1955, the police force was confronted by two serious riots: the 1956 Double Ten Riots and 1967 Riots. In the 1970s another major challenge to the Hong Kong Police Force came from within. Public confidence lost as a result of increased exposure of syndicated corruption in the police force. Although the Hong Kong Police Force encountered difficulties in different stages, it learnt from mistakes and kept making improvements. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the police force commenced a series of reforms to improve its organisation and practice. In 1990s the Hong Kong Police Force has progressively become a highly professional law enforcement agency. The transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997 has not affected its further development as a police force mainly serving the community. Today Hong Kong is a world city which plays an important role in the global economic system. In terms of city-based policing, the Hong Kong Police Force is one of the best forces in the world.

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Appendices

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Appendix 1 Major Events for the Hong Kong Police Force 1844–1997 1844

Formal establishment of The Hong Kong Police Force. William Caine was the Chief of Police Captain.

1860

Kowloon Peninsula was ceded to the British Crown by the Imperial Qing Government. Police Stations were established at Hung Hom, Yau Ma Tei and Tsim Sha Tsui

1866

A District Watchman Force composed of Chinese was allowed by the government to take charge of the policing in rural and village areas

1893

Establishment of the Police Training School

1898

New Territories was loaned to the British Crown for 99 years by the Imperial Qing government

1914

Hong Kong Police Reserve created, and disbanded in 1918 after WWI

1922

First recruitment of Police Constables at Weihaiwei, Shandong

1923

Establishment of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)

1927

Reformation of the Police Reserve; establishment of the Emergency Unit at Hong Kong Island

1930

Recruitment of Indian, Shandong and Russian Police Constables to tackle pirates along the China coast

1931

Establishment of the Emergency Unit at Kowloon

1936

First appointment of Chinese as Sub-inspectors

1939

Japanese invasion of China; Government promulgated ordinance requiring all British Nationals to take part in defence services

1941

Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Some Chinese policemen were recruited as Kempeitai to take charge of local law and order. All European policemen were sent to concentration camps.

1945

Restoration of British rule. Chinese become the main target of police recruitment

1948

Opening of Police Training School at Aberdeen

1949

Kimmy Koh appointed as the first female Sub-Inspector

1950

Establishment of Police Band

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Appendices

1951

Recruitment of the first batch of 10 women Police Constables Establishment of the Anti-Corruption Branch in the Police Force

1952

Police ceased to employ Sikh Indian Constables and recruited the first batch of Muslim Pakistani Constables

1956

Riots in Shek Kip Mei, Kowloon and Tsuen Wan, New Territories

1957

Foundation of Police Training Contingent (PTC)

1959

Amalgamation of Police Reserve and Special Police Constabulary into Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Driving tests taken over by the Transport Department

1961

Police ceased to take charge of all immigration affairs and Auxiliary Police becomes a voluntary service for citizens

1966

Star Ferry Riots

1967

Leftist inspired Riots, lasting for seven months, causing 10 police casualties and 200 more injured Police Education and Welfare Trust established with citizens’ donation and government injection

1968

Police Training Contingent renamed Police Tactical Unit (PTU) Establishment of Police Public Relations Bureau

1969

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II bestowed the “Royal” title to the Hong Kong Police Force and Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force

1970

Establishment of Detective Training School

1972

Criminal Investigation Department (CID) restructured, under the commanding line of the Department of Operations under the new organisation, and the rank of Corporal cancelled; Staff Sergeant I and II both replaced by a new rank called Station Sergeant

1974

Foundation of the Junior Police Call

1989

Li Kwan-ha appointed as first Chinese Commissioner of Police

1994

Royal Hong Kong Police Force recruited the last batch of expatriate Probationary Inspectors

1995

Compulsory firearms training for the newly recruited female officers

1997

Hong Kong returned to China, the Royal Hong Kong Police Force renamed the Hong Kong Police Force

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Appendix 2 The Rank System of the Hong Kong Police Force Commissioner of Police

1841–1844: Chief of Police Captain 1844–1928: Captain Superintendent of Police 1929–1938: Inspector General of Police Since 1938: Commissioner of Police

Deputy Commissioner of Police

Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police

Assistant Commissioner of Police

Chief Superintendent of Police

Senior Superintendent of Police

Superintendent of Police

Before 1972, there was a rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police.

Chief Inspector of Police

Senior Inspector of Police

Senior Inspector was a competitive, promoted rank for Inspector. After April 1971, all Inspectors who served more than five years in the Force were eligible for promotion to Senior Inspector if they could pass the advancement examinations.

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Appendices

Inspector of Police

Those Inspectors who joined the Force before 1958 would be initially appointed as Sub-inspector and undergo two years of probation. The Inspector from 1960 onwards were all appointed as Probationary Inspector.

Probationary Inspector of Police

Lowest rank in the Officer Grade

Station Sergeant

The highest rank in the rank-and-file grades. The Station Sergeant rank was established in 1972.

Sergeant

Before 1972, there were two types of Sergeant; Staff Sergeant I and Staff Sergeant II

Senior Police Constable

There was Police Corporal before 1972, which was a competitive, promotion rank for Police Constable. The Corporal rank was cancelled in 1972 and current Corporals were all promoted to Sergeant. In the late 1970s, the Police established an advanced rank for the Police Constables who had steadily meritous services in the force.

Police Constable

From 1949 to 1971, female and male Police Constables were separately established and the duties arrangement and remuneration package were not uniform between two cohorts. This discriminatory arrangement against policewoman came to the end in 1971.

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Appendix 3 “Firsts” in the Hong Kong Police Force First Inspector of Police

Smithersand MACGREGOR

1844

First Commissioner of Police

Thomas Henry KING

1 January 1938

First Chinese Inspector

YEUNG Cho

1843

First Chinese Senior Inspector

David LAM, Augustine LAM

1 January 1961

First Chinese Chief Superintendent

FONG Yik-fai

1 April 1968

First Chinese Assistant Commissioner of Police

SZETO Chi-yan

25 March 1977

First Chinese Commissioner of Police

LI Kwan-ha

1989

First Police Public Relations Officer

NG Ching-kwok

1973

First Female Sub-Inspector

Kimmy KOH

1 December 1949

First Female Senior Inspector

J. PANTER

21 June 1963

First Female Superintendent

Marjorie Elsie LOVELL

8 December 1963

First Chinese Female Superintendent

LUI Che Ying

1 August 1971

First Female Chief Superintendent

H. CALDERWOOD

14 May 1977

First Female Assistant Commissioner of Police

WONG LEUNG Kam-shan

21 January 1995

Source: Offbeat , Issue No. 70, Issue No. 769 & 770.

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The Historical Episodes

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1930–40s

In the 1930s, the Hong Kong Police Force established the “Anti-Piracy Guard”. It recruited about 30 White Russians to join the Shandong and Indian counterparts.

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Special Police Constabulary in 1941.

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Indigenous residents with expatriate officiers at Shatin Police Station, 1946.

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The booklet published by the Special Police Constabulary in 1949.

279

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1950s

Passing out parade—The first batch of Woman Police Constables recruited in 1951.

280

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Police Corporal Training Class at the Police Training School in Wong Chuk Hang in 1953.

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WPC 5010 Lam Oi-sze equipped with pistol at Sai Kung for the investigation of a murder case in 1953.

282

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Personnel on Police Launch No. 1, 1955.

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1960s

The passing-out parade of the Probationary Inspectors in the 1960s.

284

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Overseas Inspector Course for both Chinese & expatriate inspectors in the UK.

285

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The first grade A Sergeant Lam Kam-chuen (back) and 3 senior expatriate officers in the Tai Po Kau Marine Police Base in 1965.

286

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The Royal Navy was called upon for a raid in North Point, July 1967.

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A floating police reporting centre set up by the marine police in the 1960s.

288

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The marine police took over the security management of the Explosives Depot at Green Island in 1969.

289

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1970s

A suspect of a criminal case was repatriated from Hong Kong to Macau under the escort of Hong Kong Police & Macau Judiciary Police officers.

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Morse Code Training for the marine policewomen in the 1970s.

291

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Senior officers inspected the marine police in Tsim Sha Tsui Marine Police Headquarters in the 1970s.

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Land Rover was widely used by the Hong Kong Police Force in the 1970s.

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The Hong Kong Police Force established the Marksman Unit in 1973; all members of this unit would be called upon for duties when necessary.

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Detective Inspector Fung (second from right) with his expatriate Superintendent supervisor at Sau Mau Ping in 1975.

295

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