64
PART IV THE MEASURES TAKEN TO DEAL WITH THE DISTURBANCES
no real viciousness. Individuals as such, even the isolated policeman, were not savagely beaten up; serious violence tended to be done to things rather than to people, though it may well be that the capacity and readiness of the police to defend themselves played a part in this. The suggestion has been made that the presence of large bodies of police tended to provoke the crowds and, in itself, to generate violence. We do not think, on the evidence, that this suggestion is sub- stantiated. The crowds were there anyway and the readiness to resort to violence was manifest before the police appeared in any large numbers. We have little doubt that law-abiding citizens would have spent a night even more uncomfortable and alarming than they actually experienced and probably would have suffered more severely, had it not been for the presence of police in sufficient numbers in the streets of Kowloon on the evening of April 6th.
236. Riot suppression 7/8th April. The precautions taken by the police on April 7th have already been recounted in Part III Chapter 4 and the manpower available in Kowloon District is set out in paragraph 180.
237. On this occasion, rioting broke out in Mong Kok district and the police tactics, as before, were to prevent crowds gathering, to contain disturbances within the smallest possible area and to suppress them as soon as possible. These were generally successful and the disturbances did not spread over as large an area or last for as long as on the previous night. This would seem to be due to a greater degree of preparedness on the part of the police and the benefit of experience on the previous night coupled with the assistance given by military forces and auxiliary services.
Allegations of Police Violence
238. We considered two separate types of allegations against the police which emerged during the course of our Inquiry. The first was the suggestion that police action caused the peaceful demonstrations to degenerate into riots. The only evidence which appeared to lend any support to this theory come from those witnesses who spoke of their anger at arrests made by the police having been the motive for their participation in the disturbances. Whether or not these latter state- ments are true, and we are quite ready to believe that the arrests of demonstrators did anger some people in the crowd, there is no reason to believe that rioting would not have occurred had the police taken no action to stop the processions on April 6th. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite conclusion and the experience of April may lead the authorities to decide that the risks of permitting street demonstrations, and particularly marching, are so serious that earlier action will have to be taken in future to prevent a breach of the peace.
239. The second type of allegation was contained in direct evidence of police violence in the streets. Some witnesses made wide general allegations which, when questioned, they were unable to substantiate with any specific detail, but the following incidents were related to us.
in t
due
pub
law,
to fi
unp
the
arou
recol
2
cider