The former colonial policeman-turned-teacher on a mission to revamp Hong Kong education
Briton Toby Newton’s experience in the force inspired him to become an educator, bringing a different style of learning to a remote school in the New Territories
The relationship between Hong Kong’s police officers and the public has in recent months been fraught with tension in a city divided by social and political conflict, but 55-year-old Briton Toby Newton, a former policeman in colonial Hong Kong, says it’s not as bad as it seems.
“To a lot of communities in Britain, police are the enemy,” says Newton, who now runs International College Hong Kong (ICHK), an international secondary school in the New Territories. “I’ve never had that feeling in Hong Kong.”
He says even now, local residents have a less adversarial relationship with police compared with his native country, and this has to do with the affinity between Hongkongers and public officers.
“Everyone knows someone who’s a police officer. Some even have someone in the family who’s in the force.”
Arriving in the city in 1987, and joining the force after a BBC TV show back home sparked his interest, it was police work that led him to fall in love with Hong Kong. Those early years on the beat also gave him an insight into society’s ills and would later lead him to his current calling: education.