Hong Kong Police: Inside the Lines by Chris Emmett

Author:Chris Emmett [Emmett, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Earnshaw Books
Published: 2019-06-15T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Drumbeat

During the first half of the twelfth century, in the reign of China’s Southern Soong emperors, a soldier born of tenant farmers rose to prominence. He became renowned not only for his military prowess but also for his righteous treatment of his soldiers and of the ordinary people. His name was Yue Fei and even today, his name is a byword for courage and loyalty. It seems only right that a hard-hitting columnist for the Chinese language newspaper Ming Pao should use the nom de plume, Yue Fei. In his daily life, the columnist’s name was Jim Elms. He was Eurasian, a man grounded in Hong Kong’s multi-cultural community. Born and educated in Hong Kong, Elms was fluent in spoken and written Chinese. He knew the city and her people; knew how they worked, how they played and what drove them. This was a big asset to Elms’ main employer. When not writing his column for the Ming Pao, Jim Elms was a police officer and he worked in East Kowloon’s Regional Police Headquarters.

The Hong Kong Police management structure looks much like that of any major corporation. There is a head office, known as Police Headquarters. Below that are the regional offices, or the Regional Headquarters. Under the Regional Headquarters are the local outlets, called districts and divisions. From there, the police deliver day-to-day services, like beat patrols and criminal investigation.

The Regional Headquarters are pretty much mirror images of each other. There is an Administration Wing, taking care of logistics and human resources. There is a Crime Wing, made up of experienced detectives. Traffic Wing does its best to bring antisocial drivers to book and keep the traffic moving. Finally, there is the Operations Wing, known to everyone as Regional Ops. Regional Ops is a great place to work. It has the first response cars of the Emergency Unit, it has the Regional Missing Persons Unit and the region’s paramilitary, Police Tactical Unit, better known as the ‘Blue Berets.’ The trickiest part of Ops Wing’s job is contingency planning. If there is a major problem, it is no good the Ops Wing Commander giving a shrug and saying, ‘Gee, we didn’t see that one coming.’ The Ops Wing Commander is supposed to see problems coming and have plans ready to deal with them. As a result, Ops Wing holds and updates contingency plans for major problems like typhoons, fires, floods and public disorder, not to mention crowd management at festivals like Chinese New Year, Ching Ming and all the other special celebrations. The Ops Wing Commander needs the skills, experience and foresight to handle any curve ball that Hong Kong’s supercharged way of life can pitch. It takes someone special to run a Regional Ops Wing and in the early 1990s, the man in charge of East Kowloon’s Ops Wing was Senior Superintendent Jim Elms.

To say the Regional Headquarters are mirror images of each other is true only in part. The management structure looks the same but each region has a distinct character that calls for a bit of flexibility.

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