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.
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.
Obvious top-level inadequacies, first apparent during the 2014 Occupy unrest, have seen confidence in the police decline to dangerous levels. Essential within any disciplined service is for the top man or woman to carry the can when things go wrong and not drop their subordinates in the ordure to save their own skins.
But honest leadership requires genuine personal agency on the part of key actors; back in the real world, marionettes don’t pull their own strings. Blaming key personalities such as Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, and the regrettable coterie that surrounds her, no longer convinces anyone; ultimately, fault lies with those who installed and then maintained these manifestly inadequate individuals. Can anyone expect better?
Protesters and police clash in Sha Tin after a peaceful march to demand the withdrawal of the extradition bill, on July 14. Photo: Felix Wong
Recent violent events in Yuen Longmake this point plain. Token arrests of a few disposable, low-level thugs, who will be well paid by their handlers for any eventual jail time, while their family members are looked after, does nothing to dispel widespread accusations of top-level collusion. Hong Kong’s governance crisis is the net result when people can no longer believe a word they are told by those in authority.
Sinclair died in 2007, aged 65, after a long, courageous battle with cancer. Accusations of top-level collusion between police and gangsters, combined with flaccid leadership by senior members of the force in recent years – many of whom he personally knew and professionally encouraged – would no doubt have profoundly saddened their long-time champion.
