The Police College issued two tenders a year ago for seven Intermediate and Senior Command Courses to help brush up their officers’ media skills. The program has failed conspicuously to produce the desired results as senior members of the force continue to slip into public relations blunders.

New Territories North (Crime) Senior Superintendent Chan Tin-chu is the latest case in point. On August 26, Chan stepped into the limelight. His task at hand was to outline to the press two operations earlier that morning in which 16 men were arrested. The half-hour presser quickly triggered a public outcry in the social media even before it was concluded. Public response was so negative that Commissioner of Police Chris Tang Ping-keung had to intervene the next day for damage control.

Chan has left an impression that he was seeking to rewrite the factual accounts of the brutal attack at the Yuen Long MTR station on July 21 last year at the height of the anti-government protests. He claimed that the assaults involved two evenly-matched rival parties. He blamed a live-stream coverage by the Stand News for having misled the public into believing the assaults were non-discriminatory. He also accused an arrested legislator who rushed to the scene for squeezing “political dividends” out of the incident.

He was supposed to give a factual recap of the operations. His version, however, did not tally with the blow-by-blow account in the thematic report released by the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) last June. What is worse, Chan ended up giving a personal commentary on those dark lawlessly hours in Yuen Long. Given his emotional outburst, there is, to say the least, a prima facie case to remove him as commanding officer of the on-going investigation lest the subsequent prosecution process be jeopardized.

His opinions aside, Chan was visibly hostile against the press. A Commercial Radio reporter asked politely why the police had failed to ascertain the ID numbers of two suspected assailants in white T-shirts before allowing them to leave free. Chan became agitated and accused him of being oblivious to the incidents about a week before the Yuen Long case. When the reporter reminded him that those were irrelevant, Chan went on with his tirade.

“There were thousands of rioters on Hong Kong Island earlier that day. They were armed with iron pipes. Why don’t you ask question about that?” he exploded. “I ask you why you have not raised these questions. Are some people biased and harbouring them?” Another reporter then budged in to ask Chan to focus on the question at hand. He rebutted in a rather disdainful voice: “I am answering the question!”

He fidgeted, sweated and gasped. At one point, he also threw a fit and complained that a reporter had not been listening. Chan’s pugnacity is in fact commonplace among senior police officers who have to defend police action, or inaction, in politically sensitive operations. There is an institutional arrogance and contempt on the part of the police department’s upper echelon.

The Government’s Civil Service Training and Development Institute started offering media handling crash courses as early as three decades ago. Veteran broadcasters were brought in to coach officials on how to face press cameras. Spokespersons are supposed to stay on message and stay composed at all time. Over the past year, the police’s public faces have breached this golden rule time and again.

Last April, the Chinese University of Hong Kong asked 847 citizens aged 15 or above how much they trusted the police. As many as 45.6% of them gave the force zero mark on a scale of ten. The verdict is a far cry from its heyday when the Hong Kong Police was hailed as Asia’s Finest.

In its report, the ICPP noted: “It will be important for the Police Force to restore and rebuild public trust.” Exposure in the media by officers like Chan has achieved exactly the opposite. They have only served to fortify public distrust.

Media-savviness may help, but it is the police’s attitude that really counts. Policemen are required to be attested by making a declaration under the Police Force Ordinance. The oath, to be taken before a magistrate or gazetted police officer, prescribes in part: “I will execute the powers and duties of my office honestly, faithfully and diligently without fear of or favour to any person and with malice or ill-will toward none …”

Until and unless officers can act truly without malice and ill-will, there is very little spin doctors can do to salvage the public image of the police.

(Andy Ho is a public affairs consultant. A former political editor of the South China Morning Post, he served as Information Coordinator at the Chief Executive’s Office of the HKSAR Government from 2006 to 2012.)

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