At present, the Police Public Relations Bureau is divided into five units, covering:
News and information
Publicity
TV and films
Junior Police Call
'Off Beat' (the Force newspaper)
News and information
The News and Information Unit operates 24 hours a day and is the main source of information for the media. The unit places an emphasis on Chinese news releases and features, though the English media is far from overlooked, and its staff monitors crime trends and patterns, traffic problems and other matters likely to affect the public. This is done with a view to attaching warnings, or advice, to particular news releases. The result of this new approach has been a marked increase in space allotted to police news.
During 1976 the unit dealt with 31,073 queries, re- leased 3,465 news and feature stories, arranged 135 special interviews with police officers and organised 40 press conferences.
In addition, the unit is responsible for:
Publicity
monitoring television and radio programmes of interest to the Force
arranging police presence on a wide range of current affairs and other television and radio programmes manning the telephone 'hotline' - 5-277177 - set up for the new 'Police Report' television pro- grammes (see TV/Radio)
handling missing vehicles lists issued to the media twice daily
maintaining a press cuttings reference system which is available to all formations
providing press control at scenes of major crimes
The Publicity Unit produces, in liaison with police formations and the Information Services Department, all visual material, and organises special events which call for direct public involvement. It develops and publishes a wide variety of fact sheets, leaflets, posters, slide presentations, printed advertisements and advertisements for TV and radio, displays, exhibitions and campaigns.
Highlights of the year included:
a campaign for 1,000 recruits
a careers exhibition which attracted more than 100,000 visitors
the second Young People's Help the Police Com- petition, which involved 200,000 youngsters - the four winners spent a two-week holiday in Australia a road safety campaign
a crime prevention campaign which, for the first time, involved Junior Police Call members in the distribution of 250,000 copies of a leaflet giving advice on how to move money safely
two Good Citizen Award presentations, at Yuen Long and in the Ocean Terminal.
Since the Good Citizen Award scheme - financed by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce - began in 1973 a total of 300 men, women and children have been awarded $400,000. In 1976 there were 120 award recipients who received cheques totalling $150,000.
TV and radio
Altogether, 35 minutes of television and nearly three hours of radio programmes every week are allotted to the Force. In October, the Government agreed to finance a new and expanded weekly 'Police Report' TV programme aimed at enlisting the help of the public in solving specific crimes. The Chinese programme, shown at prime viewing time on all three channels, was expanded to 15 minutes while the English version remained at five minutes. The two pro- grammes, which attract huge viewing audiences, are co-produced by Radio Television Hong Kong.
A special 'hot-line' (5-277177) was set up, and by the end of the year members of the public had made 1,304 calls – 22 of which provided useful information in cases shown on the TV programme, with another 12 giving useful information on cases not shown on TV.
"Police Report", the weekly television programme, co-produced by the Force and RTHK, frequently left the studio and filmed at crime scenes. Although only in its embryonic stage the programme has already proved highly successful.
Junior Police Call
The Junior Police Call scheme celebrated its second birth- day in 1976. By the end of the year its membership had increased to 180,000.
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The JPC concept has proved so successful that, during year, interest in the scheme was shown by police forces in Singapore, Macau, Bermuda, India, the United States and Australia, and also by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
The young JPC members themselves continued to organise a wide range of activities led by their Police Com- munity Relations Officers. These ranged from barbecues, picnics and camping expeditions to classes in flower arrang- ing, cooking, kung fu and photography. Between 60 and 80 different activities were arranged every week. In addition, the youngsters became involved in welfare work with the
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