That's the result of our OffBeat reader survey which ran from the 655 to 657 issues.

Readers were invited in May and June to fill in questionnaires on their level of satisfaction with the look and content of OffBeat, while at the same time offering suggestions on proposed changes.

More than 100 questionnaires were returned, retired officers contributing almost half of the 102 responses. Junior police officers also had a high response rate.

Some 82 per cent of respondents said they were happy with the variety of stories covered in OffBeat, with 61 per cent wanting more coverage of Force announcements and advisories, and 38 per cent wanting more general news and features.

Reaction to department suggestions raised by OffBeat was mixed: 45 per cent wanted professional tips on policing, sports and other hobbies; 42 per cent preferred food, car, holiday and entertainment reviews; 41 per cent wanted a department of upbeat stories; while 39 per cent wanted question and answer columns. Most voted for more than one category.

About 79 per cent of respondents said they were happy with the layout and appearance of OffBeat. About 45 per cent wanted to see more photographs.

About 66 per cent said they were satisfied with the equal Chinese and English coverage and 47 per cent suggested the sections be merged into one bilingual paper.

Many responses returned also featured additional suggestions from readers which were many and immensely diverse.

They included: analysis of different types of police work (such as criminal cases) and policy; interesting and educational stories; Force analysis from the staff perspective; covering court cases; analysing law amendments; running more cartoons; firearm and forensics news; Force nostalgia; updates on retired officers (such as a "Where Are They Now?" column); senior staff reshuffles; making the paper bigger; increasing the number of copies available; splitting the paper into complete English and Chinese issues; and increasing the space for letters to the editor.

The suggestions have been studied by us and as you can see some major changes have taken place already with the revamp, such as bigger, colour pics and more of them. We've also converted two more pages into a bilingual format, to bring you more photos and features.

We are offering column space for officers to express their opinions also, such as the lifestyle views suggested by the Training and Staff Relations Officer of New Territories North last issue.

We will continue to report more cases so that officers can share their experience of investigating different crimes with their colleagues.

If possible, we will also allocate more space for letters from readers.

Some good department ideas were offered by readers and we will look into running some of these in future. However, we would like to stress, we need YOUR input.

Offer suggestions and contact numbers for the retired officers to be tracked down and interviewed. Give us your thoughts on which Force facilities have changed the most over the years and deserve a nostalgic "now and then" feature.

Offer us any representative law and crime cases. We would be more than willing to consider them for a run in the paper.

Obviously some suggestions cannot be fully considered at this point due to space and budget limitations, but we will retain the comments for future thought.

We hope you are enjoying the changes so far, and we will continue our efforts to print the paper you want and deserve. Please do not hesitate to come forward with story suggestions and comments. We love to hear from you. Happy reading!





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