Life.Culture.Discovery.

Steve Vickers’ 50 years of battling Hong Kong’s criminal underworld

The cop-turned-security consultant on a life of fighting crime in Hong Kong – from investigating tycoon Teddy Wang’s death to dealing with corporate crime

Reading Time:4 minutes

Liverpudlian Steve Vickers, founder and CEO of Steve Vickers & Associates, has spent his life fighting crime in Hong Kong. Photo: Jocelyn Tam

Published: 3:15pm, 21 Sep 2025Updated: 12:17pm, 22 Sep 2025

I WAS BORN in 1955, in Liverpool’s Sefton General Hospital. I grew up on the Wirral (in northwest England). My dad was in the Royal Air Force and after that he was a chemical engineer with Dunlop. They used to make golf balls and things. I know that because we had golf balls all over the house. I have a sister and a brother.

When I was 13, I went to Wellington School (a private day school) and I spent a lot of time studying all the wrong things. I joined the Army Cadets at a young age. I enjoyed rugby and running around. I did a lot of shooting and shot on a lot of teams. I messed around a bit studying languages and then I was hired in a management-training position by a large retail outfit. As I hate shops very deeply, I decided this was perhaps not for me.

Steve Vickers (marching, on left) in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force’s Police Tactical Unit (PTU) passing-out parade in 1984. Photo: courtesy Steve Vickers

THERE WAS A job advert for the Royal Hong Kong Police in The Sunday Times. It was just at the time the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) had been established (in 1974). They were rejigging the police force and the civil service in general. I was lucky; I was the right age, at the right time, with some vaguely appropriate qualifications. So I decided to go to Hong Kong on a two-year contract. That was 50 years ago.

I was scooped up into police training in February 1975. It was traditional training for the next nine or 10 months, and two months of Cantonese. The study of the law was quite intense. You needed to cram, and there was lots and lots of physical training. I came out of training and was sent off (as a young inspector) to Kowloon City, which in those days included the Kowloon Walled City. All sorts of things went on there.

Steve Vickers on a PTU exercise in 1984. Photo: courtesy Steve Vickers

I GOT INTO trouble quite quickly. A policeman working for me gave me some good information as to a substantial drug location, so I decided, being young and keen, that we would go for it without telling too many other people. We climbed up the side of a building into what we were expecting to be a fourth-floor dive, but it turned out to be a proper drug storage centre run by some unpleasant-looking bods. So, we had a fairly aggressive punch-up. Anyway, we got it done, seized quite a lot of drugs and paraphernalia.

I thought this was good all round and I was waiting to get the commendations and the medals that go with that, only to find that I had upset everybody. The local police, the local vice, the local regional whatever, and the narcotics bureau all came to talk to me individually to tell me how bad it was and that I mustn’t do stuff like that ever again. So that was the end of my Kowloon City career and I was then sent to the airport (at Kai Tak) for a while. I was the inspector in charge of airport security.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x