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Jason Wordie
Jason Wordie

Then & Now | How Hong Kong police, once considered ‘Asia’s finest’, fell from grace

  • The force faces a serious crisis of confidence as public trust plummets. But who is really to blame?

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Why you can trust SCMP
Kevin Sinclair, veteran South China Morning Post journalist and ardent supporter of the Hong Kong police. Photo: SCMP
Jason Wordie
For almost four decades, until recent events dramatically dented public confidence in their impar­tial­ity, the Hong Kong police have been unthinkingly proclaimed “Asia’s finest”. But how did this label, which became a virtual article of faith through constant repetition, come about? Like almost everything else in Hong Kong, this term is ripped off from somewhere else. “New York’s finest” – a reference to the New York Police Department – first appeared in the 1870s, and was in common usage by the early 20th century.

Hong Kong’s imitative variant was coined by veteran South China Morning Post journalist Kevin Sinclair, and incorporated by him in a series of glossy, historically themed books on the local police force. Asia’s Finest: An Illustrated Account of the Royal Hong Kong Police (1983), Royal Hong Kong Police 150th Anniversary (1994) and Asia’s Finest Marches On: Policing Hong Kong from 1841 into the 21st Century (1997) provide a broad understanding of the local force’s origins and operations, secreted amongobvious items of corporate propaganda.

Successes and achieve­ments got far more coverage than shortcomings; rampant corrup­tion, triad collusion and other inadequacies, while acknowledged, were regarded as an unfortunate, sensation­alised relic of the past, and largely eliminated by the Independent Commission Against Corruption by the late 1970s.
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The esteem in which Sinclair held the force gained him access to both senior officers and rank and file. A perennial attendee at police messes across Hong Kong, a well-timed word in his ear might help achieve any desired publicity.

Since the 1997 handover, political reli­ability has been demonstrably preferred – right across the senior levels of govern­ment – by those in ultimate power over Hong Kong affairs. Genuine leadership ability, professional competence and personal integrity are secondary consider­ations, and the police are no exception. When ethical flexibility and attack-dog levels of blind obedience are explicitly prioritised, what we now plainly see across Hong Kong is the inevitable outcome.

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