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Lau Nai-keung

My hat off to our Police Commissioner Andy Tsang Wai-hung. Among our top government officials he quickly stands out in his very short tenure as one who knows exactly what he is doing and executes his clearly defined objectives with professionalism, guts and determination. He  deserves public support, as our safety and law and order  depend on him.
I know a young man who has aspired to  be a policeman since he was a child.  Now an auxiliary policeman, he  became thoroughly demoralised after walking his beat for only a few months.  
He found that law enforcement is no longer a respectable job and he was regularly insulted during his work by people obviously on the wrong side of the law. 
His only instructions from his superior were to stay calm and walk away.  
This is not an isolated incident. We all know of  a young woman who hit the police  a third time and almost got away with  a slap on the wrist. 
And, if you go to  YouTube, you can find  videos showing how police officers were being publicly humiliated. Mind you, many of these videos were taken by people who broke the law, and they knew that by intimidating the constables with a video camera they could do almost whatever they liked. Judging from the responses to these videos, our citizens have had enough of this nonsense.
Our last police chief was nicknamed 'Sorry Sir', and he set the objective of police work as that of a service provider. That means if you want to organise a protest, the police are there to  serve and facilitate you. And if you violate traffic regulations, they are supposed to assist you. If certain police officers do not serve you well, citizens are entitled to express their anger and dissatisfaction through complaints and protests. 
The police chief was more than happy to publicly apologise, just to show the world that Hong Kong police were the good guys.
I was told that Hong Kong's police are unique in the world in this aspect. For police elsewhere, the overriding objective is to maintain public law and order and, if the need arises, to use necessary violence to achieve this goal. 
This is the kind of service we expect from a law enforcement agency, not just playing the good guy with a smiling face.  
 Tsang,  who took the helm in January,  has the professional and moral courage to  set the record straight despite loud cries from dissidents. Facing their demand for an apology for clearing an illegal assembly, he retorted that apologising for doing his rightful job of maintaining law and order was incredulous. 
After the skirmishes  during the July 1 rally, he was accused of dispersing a peaceful gathering and arresting people who claimed to be NGO observers and journalists. 
The police chief came back with the assertion that blocking traffic was not an act of peaceful gathering, and that people were arrested for their actions, not their claimed status.  Those were good points, and why hadn't anybody thought of them before?
My young auxiliary policeman young is now happily walking his beat with newfound dignity and pride, and fewer belligerent gangsters. 
Like many other of his peers, he is deprived of decent housing and disgusted at the prevailing gross social injustices, but he shares the  view that protests are not the way out. He sympathises with some of the protesters' anger and demands, but insists that maintaining law and order is crucial to finding the solution. He supports his new boss and vows to hold the line.
I think this represents the majority view of our young people, and for that matter the  public at large. Especially during the coming 12 months, with several elections leading to the new administration, maintaining law and order is of utmost importance, if only for our own security and welfare. 
 Commissioner Tsang, you have my full support.  
Lau Nai-keung is a member of the Basic Law Committee of the NPC Standing Committee, and also a member of the Commission on Strategic Development



Hong Kong police need not apologise for doing their job