Coincidentally, on his return from Scotland, the management put CIP Ho in charge of the Happy Valley Division, thus providing him with an opportunity to apply what he has learnt during his attachment to the Strathclyde Police Department when major sports events take place in the 40,000-capacity Hong Kong Stadium in his Division, such as the Lunar New Year Soccer Match and the Hong Kong Rugby Invitation Sevens.

The one-week attachment was arranged for CIP Ho after he had completed a five-week "Senior Leadership Development Programme" at the Scottish Police College.

During an interview with OffBeat, CIP Ho spoke of his "intensive" training programme and valuable attachment to the Strathclyde Police Department.

CIP Ho's classmates of the training programme were mainly Superintendents and Chief Inspectors from eight police forces in Scotland. He was surprised that there are eight separate forces in Scotland, but they have in total only 17,000 police officers, much less than the Force.

Close to the end of their training programme, CIP Ho and his classmates visited the Ibrox Stadium, the "home" of the Glasgow Rangers Football Club. The stadium has a capacity of 50,411 and is regularly used for local and European soccer matches. The Divisional Commander of Glasgow South and East Renfrewshire Division, Chief Superintendent Robin Howe, introduced the history and background of the stadium, as well as the deployment and tactics for policing soccer matches there.

Police attachment

After his training programme, the Strathclyde Police Department was chosen for CIP Ho's post-course attachment because it is the largest police department in Scotland, with around 10,000 police officers. During the attachment, he visited various frontline units.

Being a frontline UB officer regularly required to handle crowd management and public order events, CIP Ho asked the Strathclyde Police let him join one of their operations in order to gain some practical experience. After the request was approved, he joined the crowd management operation for the soccer match at Celtic Park between Scotland and Denmark on September 9 as an observer.

"I attended a briefing given by the Divisional Commander of Glasgow East Division, Chief Superintendent Kenny Scott, on the deployment of officers. I also toured the stadium to study police deployment and talked to police officers deployed on the ground. Celtic Park, also known as 'Paradise', is the home of the Celtic Football Club with a capacity of 60,832.

"I stayed in the stadium throughout the whole event. There were about 58,000 Scottish fans and only 1,400 Danish fans. Though the Danish team lost the match on the day, the Danish fans were all well behaved. I watched the crowds disperse and later attended a debriefing session to review the whole operation. I'm extremely lucky to have the chance to involve myself in a crowd management event in Scotland. It's definitely a very unique experience, which will benefit me when I have to handle an event of a similar scale in the future," CIP Ho concluded.

CIP Ho in Celtic Park in Scotland