Law-enforcement Actions to Conduct Stop-and-searches and Check Identity Cards by Police （2013/10/30）

MR YIU SI-WING: President, with as many as 17 000-odd crimes detected by the authorities through stop and question and stop and search actions in the past two years, it shows that such actions can help maintain law and order in Hong Kong, and I hope the authorities will not reduce the number of such actions. In the main reply, the Secretary mentioned that over the past five years, more than 200 complaint cases were still received each year in respect of stop and question or stop and search actions conducted by police officers. I would like to ask the Secretary the main contents of such complaints.

SECRETARY FOR SECURITY: As we can see from Annex II, the number of complaints in respect of identity card checks or stop and search actions has actually dropped over the past four years, from 561 in 2009 to 418 in 2010, and from 360 in 2011 to 261 last year, which represents a remarkable decrease of around 60%. Compared with the overall number of stop and question and stop and search actions taken, the complaint rate ― as I just mentioned in the main reply ― is only about 1 over 10 000, and of this rate of 1 over 10 000, around 90% of the cases are related to minor allegations such as impoliteness; only a very small number of complaints, or less than 4%, are related to allegations of power abuse by the police officers concerned. According to the final outcome of our investigation, for example, there was no substantiated case in 2012, while the number of not fully substantiated cases was four. It is clear that after investigation by CAPO and the IPCC, most of these complaints are actually not valid.

Nonetheless, the police still attach great importance to this matter and hence, substantial resources have been allocated to provide training to officers of various ranks at different stages. I must stress that training is provided at different stages, that is, apart from induction training, all refresher training courses for both front-line officers and supervisors, or even rank-and-file officers after promotion have especially included this area of training in view of its importance. If do not carry out the relevant work or if the work is not conducted properly, highly undesirable effect will be resulted on the detection and prevention of crimes.

I can assure Members that the police will regularly review their work in this regard and strive to do better, so that the work can be effectively carried out, and the persons who are subject to stop and question or stop and search actions would understand the significance of the work.