Hong Kong aims for global police role with new academy to train 1,000 a year

Hong Kong police aim to train 1,000 officers per year and bolster the city’s ties with overseas law enforcement agencies through a new international academy, which opened on Wednesday.

Speaking at the opening ceremony for the Hong Kong International Academy of Policing, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said the institution was an investment in collective security that would bolster the city’s international partnerships.

“By bringing new enforcement leaders together, it would strengthen Hong Kong’s international partnerships,” Lee said.

He said the academy planned to train 1,000 police officers a year, including 200 from overseas law enforcement agencies.

The academy will offer training in areas including strategic command, counterterrorism, crisis management and criminal investigation. It will also host international forums for law enforcement leaders to deepen exchanges on global security issues.

One such forum is scheduled for April, with representatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, belt and road countries and the Middle East expected to attend, Lee said.

Asean groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and East Timor, while more than 150 countries have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to build a China-centred trade and infrastructure network.

Stressing that security threats such as cybercrime, financial fraud and terrorism were highly complex and often borderless, Lee said the academy would become a platform for law enforcement agencies to work together.

Cooperation would encompass infrastructure, rules and procedural standards, as well as direct cooperation between law enforcement personnel to foster trust.

“By the end of next year, it will have organised more than 20 hallmark training programmes and forums,” Lee said.

Commissioner of Police Joe Chow Yat-ming said the force’s training college has transformed from a local training school to a regional hub for professional police training, with the new academy sharing decades of operational experience and knowledge.

“This academy is a two-way street. It is equally a way for you to share your own expertise and experience, so that we can learn from one another, and together we grow stronger,” Chow said.

The police chief said the academy’s inaugural intake would comprise 200 overseas officers as it worked towards its target of training 1,000 officers a year.

Law enforcement representatives from Cambodia and Saudi Arabia had attended the ceremony to sign memorandums of understanding with the new academy.