Series on New Era for Complaint Handling (3)
Sustaining synergy for complaints prevention
The Force adopts the philosophy that the complaint management mechanism would effectively provide feedback and emphases on improvement to work process and service quality as well as on enhancement of the professional standard of police officers.
In order to achieve the goals of service improvement and professional standard enhancement, the Force, besides handling complaints, has been working hard in preventing complaints. The figures of complaints in the past three years (4 231 cases in 2009, 3 320 cases in 2010 and 2 550 cases as in November 2011) show efforts to prevent complaints have paid off.
It was as early as in 1990 that the Complaints Prevention Committee was set up, chaired by a superintendent. It was replaced by the Force Committee on Complaints Prevention (FCCP) in 2010. The new committee, which coordinates complaints prevention strategies and initiatives, is chaired by Assistant Commissioner (Service Quality) (ACP SQ), reflecting that the Force attaches more and more importance to complaints prevention and its commitment to meet this challenge. FCCP members are Chief Superintendent (Complaints and Internal Investigations Branch), Senior Superintendent (Complaints Against Police Office) (CAPO), chairpersons of Regional Complaints Prevention Committees, Senior Superintendent (Administration) Marine and Senior Superintendent (Headquarters) Crime Wing.
The terms of reference of FCCP are to:
* monitor complaint trends;
* identify areas of police work and procedures likely to attract complaints;
* review tactics and procedures with a view to preventing and reducing complaints, and making recommendation; and
* formulate action plans on complaints prevention and reduction through education, publicity and community relations.
FCCP's strategies
For education and publicity, FCCP's strategies are divided into, internally, delivering relevant knowledge to officers, and, externally, achieving the goal that the public would have reasonable and practical expectations of police services.
Internally, FCCP publishes a bulletin regularly to remind officers of complaints prevention messages in an interesting and simple way. "Tips for Smart Cops" were uploaded to Force Noticeboard from time to time to provide guidelines on situations that would easily attract complaints.
ACP SQ and CAPO officers also pay regular visits to frontline officers to conduct direct dialogues with them and analyse complaints trends in a bid to motivate them to act positively to prevent complaints. CAPO officers also bring this important topic to the attention of participants of various Force training courses on a regularly basis.
To deliver complaints prevention messages Force-wide, FCCP has organised large-scale events, such as "Police's Got Talent" in 2010. To make officers more aware of complaints prevention, FCCP launched the "Smart Cops Challenge" Online Quiz in December last year, which has drawn a good response. A Live Quiz, a highlight of the event, will be held on March 9 in the Auditorium at Police Headquarters.
Externally, FCCP disseminates relevant messages from time to time through Police Magazine in order to reduce public misunderstanding of police work and to prevent complaints as well. An FCCP Working Group is working closely with graduates of the Media and Communication Department of the City University of Hong Kong on a project, whereby the latter will produce a series of video clips on complaints prevention. The video clips will be released on various channels to further heighten public awareness of police procedures so that the public would have reasonable and practical expectations of police services. FCCP has also organised a complaints prevention leaflet design competition in respect of complaints arising from traffic enforcement. Many entries have been received for the competition and results will be announced later.
RCPC's contributions
The efforts and dedication of Regional Complaints Prevention Committees (RCPC) are indispensable in conveying complaints prevention messages to officers. Examples of their efforts are numerous, and the followings are just a few of them:
* Video clips on real cases for Training Day;
* "Conflicts Management Workshop"; and
* Lyric-writing, slogan and poster design competition (some winning designs are displayed in the Force computer monitors in the form of screen savers).
FCCP is convinced that using different channels and media to give the public a better idea of police work and procedures would make complaints prevention more effective.
Those wishing to know more about the new initiatives of CAPO may browse the hexagon "CAPO New Era" on the home page of POINT.
