Senior Superintendent Yip Wan-lung and 16 other participants of the International Pearl Fishers Action Learning Group (IALG) 2016/17 gathered at Brussels, Belgium, between October 23 and 29 to discuss strategies for building the resilience of police organisations.

IALG 2016/17, which was jointly organised by the Netherlands Police and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the Belgian Federal Police, the Toronto Police Service as well as the Hong Kong Police Force, aimed to bring top-level executives of law enforcement agencies together to explore solutions for emerging policing issues and challenges. Police College Deputy Director 1 Cho Ming-lung joined the Programme Management Team to oversee the running of IALG for the second consecutive year, with the assistance of Superintendent Paul Hobson from the Police College.

The 17 participants from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom, INTERPOL and EUROPOL met for the first time in Brussels to work out strategies to empower police organisations to be "shock resistant", in particular against cyber crime. Heavyweight guest speakers, including senior government officials, heads of law enforcement agencies and judicial organisations as well as renowned academics and senior executives from private corporations, shared their insights on various topics.

The participants will meet again in the second seminar to be held by the Force in Hong Kong next March. The last seminar of IALG 2016/17 will be held in Toronto, Canada, in June 2017, during which the participants will present their research findings in the annual Pearls in Policing Conference to top law enforcement executives from around the world.