Hong Kong’s head of police on Sunday dismissed the idea of an independent mechanism to deal with complaints against officers, calling such a system potentially “unfair.”

Commissioner of Police Chris Tang said the force will appeal last month’s High Court ruling, which found that the government had violated the city’s bill of rights. The court said at the time that the existing mechanism for dealing with complaints against the police was “inadequate” to uphold the rights of the public.

“We feel that [an independent mechanism] might not be the best, and might cause unfairness,” Tang said during an interview with Television Broadcasts. “Who would run it, and will these people have agendas? Can we ensure this system can achieve efficiency? These are still unknown and will have to be studied.”

Tang also questioned why Hong Kong should abandon what he claimed to be a system that worked for one that was unproven, adding that the Independent Police Complaints Council had offered detailed reports and recommendations to the police.

He lashed out at the media for “inaccurate or false allegations,” saying that the police had expressed its dissatisfaction to certain media outlets. While there were deep-seated reasons for the public’s animosity toward the police, the relationship had been improving, Tang claimed.

The police received around 600 complaints over last year’s pro-democracy protest movement and had resolved around 60% of them and passed them along to the IPCC for review, Tang said. Officers were reprimanded in 24 cases, and 4 cases resulted in “disciplinary consequences” for officers, he said.

Barrister Alan Leong, formerly a vice chairperson of the IPCC, told Apple Daily that the council’s lack of investigative powers had long been an issue.

“The IPCC only knows as much as the police commissioner wants it to know. The police are centralizing power and avoiding oversight by outsiders,” Leong said.

Legal scholar Eric Cheung, also a former IPCC member, said the council had concluded years ago in an internal review that the government should grant it the power to conduct independent investigations.

“If there is a fair, impartial investigation mechanism, the public will respect its conclusion. If the complaint is not substantiated, it will also render a fair judgment to the police,” Cheung told Apple Daily.

There have been 1,895 complaints related to last year’s protest movement between last June and this September, with 609 complaints that fell into the category of “reportable complaints,” according to the IPCC. Around 200 complaints involved serious allegations, such as physical abuse or evidence tampering, it said.

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play