LIKE 'Big Spender' Cheung Tze-keung, the police officer who arrested the bandit over Hong Kong's largest cash heist - a $167 million daylight raid at Kai Tak in 1991 - has also experienced a major reversal of career and fortune.
As Big Spender waits on death row in Guangzhou, relying on last-ditch bids by his lawyers to spare his life, Laurie Poots, a former senior superintendent, is now a defence lawyer who awaits briefs to represent suspects such as Cheung.
Were it not for a conflict of interest, Mr Poots - who caught Big Spender and his wife Law Yim-fong after leading the investigation which cracked the case - might even have been asked to help the Hong Kong legal team they have retained. Cheung, whose conviction for the Kai Tak raid was overturned after a retrial in 1995, will not be so lucky this time - he is to be executed by mainland authorities as a result of the kidnappings of tycoons Victor Li Tzar-kuoi and Walter Kwok Ping-sheung.
People change careers every day. From bored professionals to harassed domestic helpers, the motivations may be money, kudos or job satisfaction. But of all the career changes that can be made without breaking the law, it would be difficult to imagine a greater about-face than the one that sees a police officer, after at least four years of study, become a criminal defence lawyer.
Yet there are more lawyers today at the Hong Kong Bar, who have been senior police officers, than ever before. From assistant commissioner level down to inspector, Chinese to expatriate, the ranks of the Bar have been growing with the defections of former police. And the traffic is all one-way, despite mutual distrust between the professions that bubbles beneath the surface.
'The perception among many Hong Kong police is that criminal barristers twist the facts and struggle desperately to get people you know to be guilty off the hook,' says a former senior police officer, now a lawyer with a successful defence practice specialising in criminal work. 'They bring about miscarriages of justice. They are the enemy. I used to hold that view myself.' Said another: 'The general consensus in the force is the lawyers are all bastards out to do anything to get money.' As for the presumption of a suspect's innocence, a senior officer-cum-barrister said: 'They were never innocent when we were chasing them, that was for sure. But if you have to kick a door down at 3am and it's possible you'll be shot at or blown up, it helps to think that the people you're going after are dirt-bags.