Once revered, HK police is now a force of distrust

David Pierson, Tribune News Service

On Oct. 1, as the People’s Republic of China celebrated its birthday, Canaan Wong and his friends were dodging tear gas. Adherents of the pro-democracy movement that has convulsed Hong Kong for months, they approached a pedestrian bridge in the central district of Wan Chai, part of a throng of marchers. Suddenly, a police officer heaved a garbage can the size of a beer keg over the side of the span, sending it crashing down about 15 feet onto the head of one of Wong’s friends.

“The police don’t seem to have any rules anymore,” said Wong, a 29-year-old teacher’s aide, who escaped arrest that afternoon by finding refuge in a nearby apartment building, where residents waved protesters over to hide. “They don’t train you to throw a rubbish bin at people.”

Criticism of the Hong Kong Police Force — historically one of the most respected in East Asia, esteemed for its professionalism and restraint — has been mounting. In Wong’s case, though, the criticism comes from an unusual source: He is a former beat cop, and not long ago donned the same olive-green uniform worn by police officers he is now evading. As a police trainee, he spent months learning about the appropriate use of force. Now, as a protester, he has joined the ranks of those who have accused the police of brutality, unprofessionalism and acting with impunity.

As Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong intensifies, more and more city residents will not speak to journalists, fearing that doing so might hurt them in their workplaces or schools. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Wong said he had decided to voice his experiences as a former policeman because of his deep misgivings about his former employer’s response to the protests.

Wong finds himself in a face-off with former colleagues most weekends. Each time he wonders how the millions of Hong Kongers like him who have taken to the streets will ever trust the police again. “I don’t know if we can,” he said in a series of interviews.

Wong’s remaining friends on the police force have stopped returning his text messages. One of them used to tip him off to leave a protest site before riot officers arrived. Wong said he thought that growing public mistrust of the police had pushed these officers to wall themselves off.

“They’re isolating themselves,” he said. “They don’t want to hear anything that’s different from their position.”

If Hong Kong is to ever recover from its current turmoil, which is about to enter its seventh month, it will need to repair the relationship between the police and the people they have sworn to serve.

Perceptions of the police force have hit new lows, according to a recent public opinion poll by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, which found that even the Chinese People’s Liberation Army garrison in Hong Kong is viewed more favorably.

In another recent survey by the South China Morning Post, nearly three-quarters of respondents said their trust in officers had eroded because of their handling of the protests. Each side has accused the other of aggressive and disorderly behaviour. In this city historically known for prosperity and order, protesters say that acts of vandalism and resistance are now justified because the police have become an unaccountable occupying force.

Amnesty International, the human rights group, released findings of an investigation in September that detailed instances of police brutality and torture in detention facilities. The press office of the Police Force did not respond to requests for interviews for this article. In a recent statement, the Hong Kong government called reports of abuse “biased and misleading” and blamed protesters for the escalation of violence.

One Hong Kong University student told The Times he was beaten in the back of a police van in October after he refused to unlock his cellphone for officers. The 21-year-old, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said police repeatedly slammed his head against the van’s window and later detained him for nearly two days.

Another Hong Kong man, Lucas Lam, told The Times he was standing outside a shopping mall when he was pushed face first onto the ground by an officer. The impact left him with five fractures in his left shoulder and his face soaked in blood. Lam, 44, was briefly sent to a jail near the border with the mainland province of Guangdong. He eventually received medical attention, six hours after his arrest.

Kristy Chan, a 25-year-old pastry chef, was the protester hit on the head by the trash can Oct. 1. She said she escaped a serious head injury only because she had put on a helmet she picked up off the ground moments earlier. The force of the container caused her to stumble into some bushes.

All three said that they had attended protests but that they had not threatened the police or done anything illegal. Their accounts could not be independently corroborated. It wasn’t so long ago that the police were seen as a benign — or even cool, thanks to the canon of popular movies and TV series that lionized the 30,000-member department, its crime fighters portrayed by stars like Andy Lau, Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung. But in the two decades since Britain returned Hong Kong to China, in 1997, the police have gradually been drawn into a political conflict that has undermined the territory’s “one country, two systems” arrangement with Beijing.

Under governing arrangements known as the Basic Law, Hong Kong was assured a “high degree of autonomy” from the mainland, and the continuity of its capitalist market economy, for 50 years after the handover. But Beijing has increasingly sought to tighten its grip on the city, reneging on promises to allow Hong Kongers to choose their local leaders through direct voting.

Allan Jiao, an expert on the Hong Kong police and a criminal justice professor at Rowan University in New Jersey, said the force has been remarkably restrained compared with what would happen elsewhere in the world.

“I have all the sympathy for protesters yearning for democracy, but they would never allow protesters to shut down air traffic or subways in the US,” Jiao said. “It’s unthinkable.

“The police are stuck in the middle just like anywhere else where there’s a progressive movement challenging the status quo. It’s just more intense in Hong Kong because you have the big backdrop of Communist China.”