Debt a trap for police

IT should not come as a surprise, to the Commissioner of Police or to any senior civil servant, that it is when their staff are in financial trouble that they are most under pressure to succumb to the temptations of corruption. That is a fact of life that no responsible manager can afford to ignore.

It is another fact of life that civil servants have powers which are all too easily abused and make them particularly vulnerable to temptation. And policemen, by the nature of their work, are more at risk than other civil servants. Even at the most junior levels, they are in positions of power over the public and come into daily contact with criminals and corruptive influence.

The Director of Audit's report highlighting the lax attitude to staff indebtedness prevalent in the police force is therefore of particular concern. As the civil service's own regulations put it, ''serious pecuniary embarrassment from whatever cause is regarded as a circumstance which impairs the efficiency of an officer''. If the force's management is not doing enough to prevent its own staff from falling into such ''serious pecuniary embarrassment'', it is impairing the reputation and integrity of the territory's crime-fighting operation.

The Director, Brian Jenney, shows that during the three years to March 1993 the number of police officers reported to Civil Service Branch as being in serious financial straits was out of proportion to the numbers from the rest of the civil service. Before that, a series of annual reviews had shown disturbing rises in the total amount of debt owed by police officers to various government and non-government sources. Yet because, since 1990, there has been no review of consolidated police debt, Mr Jenney says the Commissioner of Police Li Kwan-ha cannot tell whether the position has improved or worsened.

That is not specifically a police problem - the Civil Service Branch said annual reviews should be discontinued. But police officers are particularly vulnerable because the mechanisms in place are inadequate to prevent them borrowing - from a range of different legitimate sources - more than they can reasonably be expected to pay back.

Mr Jenney accuses senior officers of failing to check properly, for instance, whether policemen asking for loans from the Police Welfare Fund had not also made applications for a salary advance.