XN000022-1996-07-03 — Page 4

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IPCC Bill

The government today (Wednesday) announced the introduction of a Bill to provide the statutory power for the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) to monitor and review investigations of complaints against the police. The Bill will be introduced into the Legislative Council on July 10.

A government spokesman said the Independent Police Complaints Council Bill would empower the Council to require CAPO to reinvestigate any complaint. The Bill provides that the IPCC may interview witnesses, complainants and complainees. Council members can also conduct scheduled or surprise visit to observe investigations by the Complaint Against Police Office (CAPO) directly.

"According to the Bill, the Council shall in each year make a report to the Governor concerning the exercise of its functions and the Governor shall lay the report before the Legislative Council," he added.

The Bill also extends the same protection and privileges to members of the Council as are given to magistrates.

The spokesman pointed out that a number of measures had been introduced in recent years to improve the police complaints system, such as the installation of closed circuit television, video or tape-recording facilities in CAPO.

In addition, the government will implement the recommendations arising from an independent review of CAPO procedures conducted under the IPCC's aegis, and a tripartite comparative study of police complaints systems elsewhere.

The independent review was conducted by Mr Allan Chow, a directorate Administrative Officer seconded to IPCC in January this year, while the tripartite study was carried out by a group comprising representatives of the IPCC, Security Branch and the Police who had visited ten police jurisdictions in North America, Australia, Japan and Singapore since October last year.

Improvement measures to be taken are summarised as follows:

To address the concern that some complaints may have taken considerable time to complete, CAPO will set time limits on handling complaints. These include contacting a complainant within two working days, providing progress report to the complainant every two months, aiming to complete investigation of complaint cases within four months - it will be shorter in practice if the case is less complicated.