Chuen Lai-sze was a respected police inspector when she marched into Wing Lok House, in Tsuen Wan’s newly repainted Fuk Loi estate, at 6 p.m. on 3 March last year.

Although she did not yet know it, when Chuen, 36, walked out four hours later, her 15-year career was in tatters.

The public exposure of what Chuen and three subordinates - woman Sergeant Choi Wing-yee, 32; Constable Cheuk Lam-kan, 24; and Constable Ho Fat-ming, 27 - did in Wing Lok House that evening is now the talk of police stations across Hong Kong.

When the four were found guilty in a Tsuen Wan court in mid April of assault causing actual bodily harm for the torture of a 23-year-old drug suspect in a refuse room, magistrate Alison Thompson gave Chuen and Choi six months in prison, Cheuk and Ho four months.

For Chuen, of the Kwai Tsing Special Duty Squad, the journey from outstanding police officer to prisoner was swift. Although investigations into her conduct were under way in April last year, she was awarded a Commanding Officer’s Commendation for her work. The citation read, "for leadership, professional ability and devotion to duty of a very high standard...."

Chuen’s record of service noted 22 compliments received from her superior officers for her work in the squad. In one operation, it said, she arrested 14 suspected street-level drug traffickers. On 1 May, Chuen was transferred to a Tsim Sha Tsui division crime investigating team. She was suspended from duty July last year.

Superintendent Leung Fui, Tsim Sha Tsui divisional commander, in a written statement made on 3 April, and submitted to the Tsuen Wan court, noted: "[Chuen] is a loyal, dedicated and career-minded officer with a bright future ahead of her." After the guilty verdict, most likely no longer.

The officers’ hopes are pinned on their appeal, which their barrister, John McLanachan, said would focus on apparent inconsistencies in victim Yiu So-man’s testimony about telephone calls following the assault. The defence will argue Yiu lied in court on these points, thus throwing doubt on the rest of his testimony.

If all appeals fail, the team will not only serve out their terms, but also face dismissal and lose their pensions.

But beatings of suspects by Hong Kong police officers, say human rights activists, lawyers, and even, in private, some police officers, are commonplace.

The question is: does a culture of violence permeate "Asia’s Finest," with the force stuck in an old-fashioned colonial mind-set of controlling the population rather than serving it?

One prominent criminal barrister says one in three suspects complain to him that they have suffered some form of physical assault by local police, while half encounter criminal intimidation or verbal threats.

A bond between police officers may prevent some reporting incidents of brutality to their superiors.

"It comes back to the question of loyalties," said one senior officer, off the record. "When you have a team-based organisation, your loyalty is to that team because you work so closely together."

In one of the worst examples of alleged brutality, a 37-year-old man died a day after allegedly being beaten for 20 minutes by three Police Tactical Unit officers at a busy Tai Po market three years ago. The Complaints Against Police Office (CAPO) has investigated the case, but its findings have not yet been released. No criminal case was brought.

Jailings of Hong Kong police for assault are unusual. Since 1993, only one other case has resulted in prison terms. In 1995, five officers were incarcerated after appeals failed - for between three and seven months, and a sixth received a suspended sentence, for a 1993 brawl with off-duty customs officers.

And yet, speaking on condition of anonymity, some senior police justify the strong-arm tactics.

"It’s to achieve success in their objective," said one senior officer. "You may know this guy’s committed the crime. It’s the frustration, and if you’ve got the wrong mentality then I think you’re tempted to assault. The degree of assaults can go from being fairly minor shouting and perhaps slapping around, which I would say is fairly common, to killing someone."

"It’s so frustrating sometimes," echoed another, with two decades’ experience. "You’ve got the evidence here, and the guy you know did it there, but you just can’t put them together."

Even so, the officer, said: "[This case] shocked everyone, possibly because it was a woman officer involved."

The court heard the Kwai Tsing team, under Chuen’s command, stuffed a sports shoe into Yiu’s mouth, in a bid to persuade him to admit possessing 56 grams of heroin Choi claimed was found with his methadone card. Chuen poured water from an old soft drink can into Yiu’s nose and ears until he fainted. At one point the four carried him to the balcony with Chuen threatening to throw him 60 metres to the pavement.

Yiu, who admitted in court to being a heroin addict for six years, has not been charged in relation to the alleged drug found. In the early hours of the next morning, Yiu filed a formal complaint at Tsuen Wan police station.

Forensic evidence counted against the four, including Choi’s fingerprint on a soft drink can found in the room and an enzyme suggesting the presence of saliva on two sports shoes left there.

Chuen joined the force as a constable in 1982, a month after her 21st birthday. She was promoted to sergeant in 1991, inspector in 1994 and took over command of her eight-strong team on Kwai Tsing Special Duty Squad in August 1996, on a salary of more than HK,000 (US,750) a month.

From the district headquarters, a 17-storey fortress next to Kwai Fong Metro Transit Railway station, Chuen and her subordinates would scour the district for vice, illegal gambling and drug dealing.

Fuk Loi estate is in Tsuen Wan district, outside Kwai Tsing’s patch, but the district Special Duty Squad has a mandate to follow leads anywhere, according to Kwai Tsing District Operations Officer Chief Inspector Tony Yau Yan-wing. Chief Inspector Yau is in overall command of the squad, which consists of two inspectors, two sergeants and 12 constables, normally divided into two teams.

In his post since January 1997 just under two months before the torture incident, he had little to say about the case. Once appeals are completed, and regardless of their outcome, the CAPO will launch an "accountability study," according to its acting head Superintendent Bill Coalter. Chief Inspector Yau and other officers could conceivably face internal disciplinary action, ranging from a bureaucratic slap on the wrist to sacking.

Chief Inspector Yau said he was "a bit upset and disappointed with the court result." The four were "productive and effective" officers, he added. During a later call, he declined to comment on the case at all, saying it would be unlawful for him to do so while an appeal was pending.

In Special Duty Squads, productive and effective means high arrest figures. "You are required to perform," said one recently retired senior officer.

While there are no official arrest or drug seizure quotas for Special Duty officers, commendations and accolades are heaped on the best performers.

"In Special Duty Squads," said the retired officer, "where your job is to go out and arrest, every time you get a case there’s a possibility of getting a compliment [from a superior officer]."

District Special Duty Squads were known in the force as a fertile ground for impropriety, he said. "Officers selected are normally pretty good, reliable individuals," the retired officer said. "What happens when they get into the ‘pressure post’ is another matter."

Difficulties may be exacerbated because district Special Duty Squads are generally made up of younger, less-experienced officers.

"There was a move some years ago in the force to have officers who had been in CID [Criminal Investigation Department, now officially called Divisional Investigation Teams] for a number of years to rotate back to [district] Special Duty Squad because they were far more experienced in the wily ways of the bad guys," the retired officer said.

The proposition, the retired officer said, was shouted down by the police officer associations.

The reasons?

"Finance," he said. "When you’re in CID you get disciplinary service overtime allowance. And there’s a certain stigma attached to being rotated back to uniform branch having been in CID."

Local Inspectors Association Chairman Chief Inspector Tony Liu Kit-ming, who joined the force as an inspector in 1982, said he could not recall the move but would support it if it were proposed again.

"I would support this idea because Special Duty Squads are very much on their own," he said. "They have to decide many things instantly by themselves and experience is very important." He said that without exception inspectors in regional Special Duty Squads, which handle more important cases than their district counterparts, are CID-trained.

In an official response, a force spokesman said: "It would be unfair to comment on allegations claimed to be made by senior police officers in anonymity." But the spokesman added officers assigned to the district Special Duty Squads must be "well reported on and possess at least one year’s service in their respective rank."

Two other district Special Duty Squads have recently been involved in scandals. A CAPO report detailing complaints against 13 officers from the Mongkok squad, including allegations of assault and framing suspects, was handed to the Justice Department in January.

And in three cases in February last year and September 1996, a total of 17 officers from the Wong Tai Sin squad were acquitted of plotting false vice den raids to secure high conviction rates. Stand-ins for vice den operators and prostitutes would be arrested and fined or jailed for vice offences, the courts heard, and later rewarded by the genuine brothel operators.

The Kwai Tsing officers’ techniques were apparently not unusual. Allegations of slappings, beatings, water torture, even the use of electric prods on suspects’ genitals, litter the 991 assault complaints made by members of the public to the CAPO last year.

Assault allegations made up more than one-third of the 2,938 complaints received in 1997. Coalter and CAPO’s 56 investigating officers spend more than half of their time examining colleagues for allegedly beating up suspects and fabricating evidence, two allegations which regularly go hand-in-hand.

"Most complaint investigations done by the CAPO in the serious category are assault and fabrication of evidence," Coalter said.

In 1996, 1,299 out of 3,315 complaints concerned assault. That year, the CAPO completed investigation of 1,600 assault complaints (some made in previous years). Some 1,469 were withdrawn or not pursuable, 105 were unsubstantiated, 17 were not fully substantiated, five were false, one was judged no fault. Only three, or less than 0.2 per cent, were substantiated.

In the same year, 5,241 serious assaults committed by members of the public were reported. The detection rate, or proportion where a suspect was arrested and charged with the offence, was 67.1 per cent.

"Assault complaints [against police] we do take very seriously," said Coalter. "They get as much attention as a normal crime investigation.

"But there are reasons why people make a complaint of assault. If people are arrested and the only evidence they [the police] subsequently find against them is a written statement, then a very good line of defence is ‘the officers beat me up to produce that statement’."

The CAPO investigation figures for 1997 are not yet available. Its decisions are scrutinised by the Independent Police Complaints Council, made up of legislators and non-police figures.

Human rights activists say criminal impropriety on the part of police is a significant problem. "Human Rights Monitor," said its chairman Paul Harris, "has said that beating up by the police is widespread and torture happens from time-to-time, and we stand by that."

Harris partly blamed the instability during the 1960s when the Cultural Revolution threatened to spill into Hong Kong and the government placed a priority on maintaining police loyalty.

"The police did remain almost 100 per cent loyal to the colonial government," he said. "The pay-off seems to have been that the government was not going to inquire too closely how the police force carried on."

Frank Knight, 68, who retired from the force as a chief inspector in 1978 after almost 30 years’ service, dismissed Harris’s suggestion.

"He’s just dreaming to suggest the government is going to sit back and let people be corrupt," said Knight. "How far are you prepared to go? If you look around Hong Kong now you’ve got many policemen who’ve done their 30 years and are still working every day. Is that because they’ve got a great deal of money?"

As for brutality: "[CAPO] has done quite a good job. Many people expect a bit too much from the [police] man in the street. They’re only normal people and they’re subject to temptation like anybody else. Don’t expect it not to exist whether you’re in Hong Kong or anywhere else in the world."

Knight was himself charged with assault in the 1950s, after a "tumble down a hill" with two robbers he chased for several hours, but was acquitted.

The fate of Chuen and her three subordinates could temporarily dampen enthusiasm in district Special Duty Squads across Hong Kong. "It will definitely affect morale," said a police insider.

"They won’t be willing to step near the line - for a while anyway, then it’ll return to normal. Memories fade in this town, it won’t take long."

(Source: Above is an article by Simon Buerk, which was published in the South China Morning Post, 2 May 1998.)