Police manual encourages officers to think twice, at least, before action

The police force ensures its officers go through a "thinking process" when assessing the need to make an arrest, in line with a revision of its procedures early this year, a legal observer says.

Amendments to the Force Procedures Manual also gave officers a clearer idea of when to arrest people, Eric Cheung Tat-ming, a legal scholar with the University of Hong Kong, said.

Cheung cited the manual, which the force reviewed following advice from a police watchdog a few years ago, as 62 people who followed three Occupy Central founders to surrender themselves to police yesterday were allowed to leave without being arrested or charged. Students did not seem to be among the group who visited the Central police station in Sheung Wan.

Cheung, who also sits on the watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Council, said the revised manual placed emphasis on the necessity of arrest action at a particular point in time.

"Officers now are required to explain in writing why immediate arrests are necessary," he said. "The idea is to make sure it involves a thinking process."

In anticipation of the mass surrenders yesterday, the force had drafted a custom-made form to save time in processing the cases, a police source said.

The form listed seven charges that those people were likely to admit, ranging from light offences such as taking part in an unauthorised assembly, to criminal damage and assaulting a police officer, the source said.