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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
The Colony's importance as an international cross-roads accen- tuates the need for close liaison between the Hong Kong Police and the Police Forces of other countries throughout the world. As part of this close international police relationship, the Hong Kong Police frequently entertain police officers from other countries who come to study methods employed here.
The New Territories, with its widely dispersed rural population and its land frontier with China, imposes special considerations not found in the urban and more densely populated areas of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. The police in the New Territories have to be much more intimately associated with local community life and problems. In this respect a great deal has been achieved through the use of village penetration patrols which, working on foot, cover areas inaccessible by road. These patrols spend several days in each area living in the villages, giving advice and assist- ance where they can. They also help in escorting mobile-teams providing medical and other social services to outlying districts. Good relations are further fostered by the giving of cinema shows and in sporting activities between police and village teams. Close liaison is maintained with the New Territories Administration and the_Rural Committees in all matters affecting the life and well- being of the community, thereby ensuring the fullest co-operation and understanding of the many problems involving the residents of the New Territories. Urban-type police work is_now necessary in the rapidly developing townships.
Illegal immigration into the Colony has remained a major problem and the long sparsely populated coastline, with its numerous small coves and beaches, affords points of ingress difficult to control. Some degree of success has been achieved, but there are still those who slip through the net to add further congestion to the already over-populated urban areas. Much of the success achieved has been due to the vigilance of the Marine Police Division on which devolves the responsibility of policing the territorial waters of the Colony and its numerous islands, as well as the enforcement of shipping regulations in the waters of the Port of Victoria, one of the world's busiest harbours.
Chain of Command. The Force is organized under a Colony Headquarters at which there is an Assistant Commissioner respon- sible for general administrative matters concerning the Force. He