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You remember David, that I was appointed Probationary Inspector of Police on my arrival in Hongkong in January 1962. Completing the usual six months training at the Police Training School here, I Passed-Out on July 14th and was awarded the Baton of Honour for being recommended the best all-round recruit inspector of my course,
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Transferred to a Kowloon division I encountered my first experiences of being a policeman. I was just twenty. All I had behind me was a year at university and a few months in the British Army,
so being a policeman and being in Hongkong was all very new to me as it must be to most expatriate officers. For seven months I was a Uniform Branch patrol officer. In my newness I continuously asked for advice from senior officers, but nothing. substantial, nothing which answered my queries satisfactorily, was forthcoming. To have taken some of the advice given would have been to have gone contrary to my Oath of Appointment: sworn that I would serve
I had our Queen, execute my duties without fear of or favout to any person (including senior officers), and obey unquestioningly all lawful orders of those set in authority
over me.
Soon after I arrived in Hongkong I heard much talk of dorruption and maladministration. Disgruntled junior officers advised me to make the best of my first three and a half year tour and then get out. I could not then understand their attitude. There is a lot of rumour in Hongkong about corruption and about honest officers being 'fixed'. Some such rumour generates uninformed and unjustified criticism of the Force. People who have no idea of police procedure, of the problems faced by bhe man on the beat or in the CID office, reach the most startling conclusions about the Force as a Force and not about individual officers in it. But what I am telling you in this letter is fact, It is my personal experience, describing what I saw and heard, and what I have done sinceleaving the Force to try and right the administrative injustice whúch I suffered and to help the Force and protect the name of our country. Whilst I was at the Training School an experienced officer told me that it was no use trying to do one's duty impartially, for if one interfered with irregular practices one would collect 'bad' reports from senior' officers, until at the end of the probationary three years, tif not before, one would be deemed 'temperamentally unsuited for service with the Force' or 'unlikely to make an efficient police officer'. In sayings that are all too common in Hongkong, he told me that I would have to work with one eye closed and one eye open, bend like the bamboo in the wind, or be broken, "ecause I did not believe that in a British controlled force there could possibly be such a system of injustice I dismissed his words as entirely unfounded Then I was, I suppose, as arrogant as the British Member of Parliament who came herethis summer and opined itimpossible that expatriate officers serving in Hongkong could be corrupt.
But in my first Kowloon division there were three happenings which made merecall the words of the officer at the Training School, made me think that there might be truth in what he said. It is eternally grateful I am that he forwarned me and caused me to have doubts when the time came. In late October 1962 (I had been in division three months) I was twice offered unearned and unsolicited sums of money in the name (by rank) of a very senior divisional officer. A man employed in the station, whose employment was decided by a senior
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