Frustrating, painful, saddening: police commander describes seven months of dealing with Hong Kong protests
- In a wide-ranging interview with the Post, Rupert Dover explains his thoughts and feelings during many of the most pivotal moments of the demonstrations
- Officers were ready to respond to the storming of the legislature, he says, but the order from higher up never came
In an interview with the Post, Dover, who has been in Hong Kong for more than three decades and was promoted to assistant commissioner in February, spoke about his experiences last year and the police response to significant events during the protests.
In the early stages of the protests in June last year, the police headquarters were surrounded and vandalised by protesters. What was that like for you?
We very much adopted a hands-off style. Protesters had been allowed on several occasions to surround the police headquarters, to vandalise, to spray-paint CCTV cameras, spray on the walls, throw rocks, and we didn’t go out and clear them.
It’s frustrating because we have the capability to deal with it. But the decision was made, presumably at a very senior level, not to engage in order not to worsen the situation, and not feed the protester narrative of police officers using violence. In the latter part of the operation, we became more proactive.