Hong Kong protests: police used disproportionate force and made poor decisions, says British expert who resigned from IPCC review

Clifford Stott says police in city operate with a lack of understanding of how crowd dynamics work, and end up creating disorder instead of preventing it

The expert had earlier resigned from a panel advising city’s police watchdog on its review of the force’s handling of anti-government protests

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Police fire tear gas at protesters on June 12, 2019. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 2:36pm, 23 May 2020Updated: 10:56pm, 23 May 2020

Hong Kong police used disproportionate force at “practically every” anti-government protest from mid-June last year and made poor decisions in dealing with them, according to an overseas expert who withdrew from a review of the police’s handling of the demonstrations.

Professor Clifford Stott, who was on the international expert panel advising the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) before all of its members resigned last year over concerns about its limited powers, has doubled down on his criticism of watchdog’s report that was released on May 15.

The 999-page report concluded there was no systemic problem with policing in Hong Kong, and officers’ use of force was only in response to violence during the protests.

I would certainly suggest there is ample evidence that the police used force disproportionately on practically every protest from June 12

Clifford Stott, crowd behaviour and policing expert, Keele University

Stott, a scholar of crowd behaviour and policing at Keele University in Britain, said he would seek to publish his findings on the protests – based on first-hand accounts as well as the IPCC’s data – in a peer-reviewed academic journal.

He said his original plan of publishing a separate report by June 9 would therefore be delayed.

In a Facebook Live discussion with activist Nathan Law Kwun-chung on Friday night, Stott said he had stood down because the police watchdog failed to define a meaningful role for the team of experts, and because he was concerned that their attachment could be used to legitimise the council’s work.