SECOND FORCE PUBLIC OPINION SURVEY Integrity, discipline, openness and professionalism remain key to public confidence in police
In its determination for continuous improvement and quality of service, the Hong Kong Police Force's second Public Opinion Survey continues to confirm the public's confidence and unshakeable belief in the integrity, discipline, openness and professionalism of its police-despite being conducted during the same period that the Force dealt swiftly, decisively and transparently with two widely publicised cases involving a handful of officers accused of wrongdoing WITH the public rating the Hong Kong Police Force's overall performance, its overall performance in the prevention and detection of crimes, and their own sense of safety living in Hong Kong as very high, it was an understandably upbeat Deputy Commissioner of Police (Management). Tsang Yam-pui, who presided over a meeting of his senior top-ranking officers and managers to discuss the results of the survey which was conducted by an independent market research company.	Despite the Force's second Public Opinion Survey's new findings that a sizeable minority thought there was room for police performance improvement in such areas of juvenile crime, drug abuse and police liaison with youth and schools, the fact is that teenagers have always been a high priority with Hong Kong Police officers. Here PC Lam Yung-shing explains to youngsters at an amusement arcade in Kwai Tsing district the danger of drugs
"The results of this public opinion survey are very good," said Mr Tsang. "I'm sure you will appreciate that there is much to be proud of with the overall work that the Force is achieving and the positive image we project. You will be very pleased to hear that we scored highly in this survey in respect to integrity and discipline. Such scores are not easily achieved. "However," DCP MAN emphasised, "we cannot be complacent. It is not sufficient for us to say how good we are. It is important to know whether the community shares the same view. We are part of a sophisticated, progressive society which is placing increasingly greater demands on its public servants and expects a lot more from us than they did before. We must recognise the importance of the need to meet their expectations. We must also recognise that there is always a gap between how we think we perform and how the public thinks we perform. It is up to us to narrow that gap as far as possible. Conducting surveys such as this is an important step in the direction." The first Force Public Opinion Survey, conducted in 1995 with the idea of repeating it every two years, established a baseline measurement of opinion for Force management to determine what public perceptions of the police are, and on the service provided to the community. The second survey establishes a new baseline for those issues not covered in the first survey and enables the Force to compare its performance with that of two years ago in areas that are common to both. The first phase of the recent survey was organised through focus group discussions with representative members of the public to identify what issues or concerns they had regarding police services. The second phase entailed designing a telephone survey questionnaire based on those discussions, and where possible using the same language they used. "The objective of the survey (conducted from 31 October to 21 November 1997), was to measure the public's perception of police performance in the provision of various services for which the Force is responsible; to ascertain major areas of public concern about law and order; and to gauge people's sense of safety living in Hong Kong." said Archie Man, Managing Director of the independent marketing and research company that conducted the survey. "Totally, 2,709 valid domestic household telephone numbers were randomly drawn and 2,017 successful interviews were achieved, including, and unlike in the first survey, a sampling of responses from the age group of 15 to 17 years." The survey's main findings were generally encouraging. "Actually, the results of this survey are very good, with the public rating the Hong Kong Police Force's overall performance as very high, "commented poll director Man. "Seventy per cent of those questioned feel absolutely safe and secure in Hong Kong. This is quite an achievement. "Let me also say, "continued Mr Man, "that in my company's long experience in the field of market research, the Hong Kong Police Force has been our only law enforcement customer. In fact, I can think of very few police forces in the world that are open enough to actually conduct this type of a public opinion survey - then openly publish the results."