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that it was prudent and even beneficial to allow the men to blow off steam in this way. The demonstrations outside Police Headquarters on 28 October gave the
first inkling of what was to come. Though the representatives who saw the Commissioner were correct, and the content of what they had to say was still procedural and without threats, there was some shouting by those outside and some calls for the resignation of the Commissioner.
4.
men.
The subsequent attack on ICAC Headquarters seriously reinforced misassessment of the temper of the
All Police Associations immediately condemned the incident and disassociated themselves from it. Senior police officers believed that the Force's disgust at the attack would help to keep the protest within peaceful and constitutional limits in future. We therefore thought that the Commissioner's plan to calm the situation and bridge the obvious communications gap by visits to Police Stations by teams from Headquarters might succeed in the chastened mood alleged to exist in the aftermath of the attack. The Force continued to perform normal duty in an exemplary way.
5. For most of the following week, the men's demands were apparently confined to the formation of a Police Association and procedural matters connected with ICAC. But this outward appearance of everything being under control began to wear thin in the second half of the week when it became apparent that the teams were having no success and that the men would not even give them a hearing.
6. Up to the time that the Police rejected the partial amnesty on Sunday, November 6, the attitude of the public had been ambivalent. Not unnaturally their main feeling was fear of a breakdown of law and order. Though they admired ICAC and what it stood for, there was also some sympathy for the Police, a feeling that they should be given a chance to turn over a new leaf, and that perhaps ICAC was sometimes high-handed. These understandably mixed feelings were explained by the Director of Home Affairs in a Governor's Committee Meeting on November 4. Clearly the public hoped that the Government would avoid confrontation and a breakdown of law and order by some compromise.
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