Newspaper readers in recent years, let alone those who have been following his columns for three decades, will be familiar with the byline of Kevin Sinclair. His pencil arouses strong reactions. His views - on everything from Vietnamese boat people to the legitimacy of Tibet and its Dalai Lama - are anathema to some, who regard him as a rambunctious hardliner. Others applaud his conservative opinions as commonsense in an age of political correctness. Talk to Sinclair, 54, about the Hong Kong Police Service and the strength of his feeling is, typically, unequivocal. 'They're Asia's Finest,' says the New Zealander, who started out by reporting for the Wellington Evening Post. 'Ask me honestly if the title is deserved and I'll say, 'yes, it is'. There's no other force in Asia as good.' Only a fool would try to argue it with him. With Asia's Finest Marches On, a 150-page illustrated account of the chequered history and modern roles of Hong Kong police, Sinclair has put his money where his mouth is. He has funded the venture largely from his pocket. By drawing on his many police contacts, he and Nelson Ng Kwok-cheung have compiled 43 chapters rich with anecdotes, photos, history, characters and, of course, crime. In 1866, a century before Sinclair came ashore, an uproar of complaint against the nascent colonial police was led by the then Governor Sir Richard Macdonnell, who said in his report to London he could not 'remember a body of men so inefficient or corrupt as Hong Kong's Colonial Police Force'. A hundred years later, Sinclair's relationship with the badge was forged on the streets of Kowloon. It was a time when bombings and the whiff of tear gas were still commonplace in the wake of the riots. 'There were daily - sometimes bloody - incidents,' recalls the South China Morning Post veteran, then a junior reporter new to Hong Kong. 'Mostly I did police reporting because during the disturbances it was police, one way or another, who were the focus of all news. They saved the colony. They were the department of last resort.' Police corruption then, as in the 1860s, was deeply entrenched, its tentacles all-pervasive and affecting the everyday lives of law-abiding people. The ICAC-led purge against bent cops in the '70s kept Sinclair busy as a reporter chasing down every new lead. It makes for an interesting chapter in his book. 'Some of my good friends either fled Hong Kong or were arrested and some went to jail,' says Sinclair. 'What they did was wrong. But it had been accepted with a Nelsonian blind eye. Everyone knew there was corruption. You could see lines of people waiting to see the old staff sergeants who to a great extent ran the police force. 'But I don't really think that a lot of people - even within the force - realised the clout corruption carried. The truth is simple - corruption got results. Why did it exist? The pay was shocking. Pcs couldn't afford to educate their children. Of course they were tempted, but even corrupt coppers did a good job of protecting the public from violence and harm.' In 1972 the Post published a series of front page stories on the smashing by the police Special Branch of a Soviet spy ring which had been operating in Hong Kong. Each yarn, an exclusive, carried Sinclair's byline. He rates those as his biggest scoops. The year before, he had cause to be concerned about his safety. 'Ferdinand Marcos had an American starlet girlfriend named Dovie Beams,' he says. 'She tape-recorded him making love to her, then the tape was broadcast in Manila. She fled with some of his money to Hong Kong. He sent a five-man hit squad after her, led by the Philippines' top assassin, a very nasty piece of work named Eduardo Cueto. 'Myself and a pal, Bill Wong, who was chief police reporter of the Standard, managed to get hold of Dovie Beams before the police and Cueto. We hid her out in the old Park Hotel in Kowloon. Cueto and his guys turned up. Police were waiting. The Filipinos all had guns and were going to kill her. They also had diplomatic passports so they couldn't be held. 'As they were led out, handcuffed, Cueto turned to me and held out both fingers, pointing. 'Mr Sinclair', he said. 'Never come back to the Philippines'. That scared me because the guy was a rabid lunatic.' A few weeks later Cueto was killed in a gun battle between rival gangs of Filipino political gunmen in a hotel lobby in Manila. 'Things now seem a lot quieter,' says Sinclair. 'Hong Kong has grown up. So has the press. It's not as ribald and outrageous as it was. We had some very exciting times.' Sinclair readily admits Asia's Finest Marches On, which follows his 1983 book Asia's Finest, is pro-police. 'Of course it's not a fair and unbiased book,' he says. 'It's a factual book that presents most of the police force's side. 'I'm not a fanatical pro-copper - I've had some dreadful arguments with police and been offered a punch in the teeth sometimes - but I am a realist. There are some 32,000 cops. How can you write a chapter about 40 bad ones?' He has no doubt the force will provide 'security, safety, stability and law and order' after the handover. Part of his conviction stems from the calibre of the force's recruits - and in this he has a vested interest. After almost a year of research for the book, his friend and co-author Nelson Ng Kwok-cheung, who holds a university management degree, applied to join the force. He was accepted, as a probationary inspector, four days ago. Asia's Finest Marches On, by Kevin Sinclair and Nelson Ng Kwok-cheung. $500
