ENG-1960 — Page 242

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LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS

tactical reserve ready at all times for special operations or to deal speedily with any local disorder or disaster. The Police Training Contingent is the Force Training Centre for intensive training of inspectors, non-commissioned officers and constables in internal security. It also provides an emergency formation which can be called upon to deal with internal disorders. The present establish- ment of the Police Training Contingent is the equivalent of two military infantry companies.

The Commissioner of Police is responsible for the internal security of the Colony. The Police Force is therefore trained in two distinct roles as a civil force and also, should the necessity arise, as a para-military body. In its civil capacity the Force polices the territory with beat officers and radio car patrols in the urban areas, launch patrols in the territorial waters and village penetra- tion patrols in those parts of the New Territories which are in- accessible by road. Under emergency organization each territorial district forms from its own strength a District Emergency Force which consists of a number of Police Riot Companies each roughly equivalent in strength to an infantry company. In addition to the District Emergency Forces, the Districts also give administrative support to the District Emergency Force, escort units to protect essential services, and mobile and foot patrols to maintain watch and ward on the streets. In general, therefore, it will be seen that the Force works as a metropolitan force in the cities of Victoria and Kowloon, as a rural constabulary in the land areas of the New Territories, as a maritime police in the waters of the Colony, and that it can change its organization at short notice to one particularly suited for dealing with civil disorders.

Crime. The trend towards reduction in serious crimes known to the Police continued during 1960. Reasons can be suggested for decreases in specific types of crime, but no single cause or com- bination of causes would adequately explain the general decrease. It is, perhaps, partly that the Chinese are naturally law-abiding and that the large number of immigrants which have entered the Colony since 1949 have now become more closely integrated with the local community. There has also been fuller employment. Preventive action by the Police has been successful and voluntary associations, notably the Discharged Prisoners Aid Society, have done much to help to rehabilitate discharged prisoners. The general