Objects and Reasons.
1. The powers of a member of the Royal Naval Establish- ments Police acting under section 2 of the principal Ordinance are restricted to the area within the Establishments, so that although he can arrest an offender within the Establishments he cannot pursue him outside the Establishments nor take him in custody to a police station or to a magistrate's court.
2. Clause 2 of this Bill remedies this defect by sub- stituting a new section for section 2 (which it repeals) of the principal Ordinance.
3. The new section 2 also makes it clear that the Naval Establishments Police have the same powers on water within the Establishments as on land, and extends those powers to the waters of the harbour within 100 yards of the Establish- ments and to the Naval Anchorages.
4. In new section 2 the words "protection and privileges" which appeared in old section 2 have been omitted as unneces sary and possibly misleading. Members of the Naval Establishments Police are not also members of the police force of Hong Kong under Ordinance No. 37 of 1932, and the word "privileges" suggests pay, passages, pensions, allowances, quarters and other privileges which would normally be dealt with in the Commodore's regulations, and which might be very different from the "privileges" of "officers of police of corresponding rank".
5. Clause 3 of this Bill, by adding a new sub-section (1) to section 5 of the principal Ordinance, transfers to that section as more appropriate thereto the power contained in old section 2 of the principal Ordinance to make rules and regulations for the government of the Naval Establishments Police.
C. G. ALABASTER,
Attorney General.
September, 1937.
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END
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