Psycho Coppers
What’s funny here are the coppers. The police in HK seem to be a nice mixed bag of lightweights and heavy hitters. Some you’d laugh at if you didn’t know they were cops, especially the ones that raid the karaokes and the bars for underaged drinkers, illegal immigrants, and general nasty fun-loving people. And there are some that you’d quite happily just walk across the street to avoid.
The hardnuts are the ones that wear berets and with the now defunct military green uniform, looked more like paramilitaries than the bastions of law and order. They clung onto the tough boy uniforms much longer than their colleagues but eventually, it seems, they’ve finally been forced to don the pansy lightweight blue shirts. I remarked once to a plain clothes cop that was raiding Bling that the new uniform looks too rent-a-coppy and that it looks more in place gracing the shoulders of Thailand’s (sex) tourist police (i.e. nice to smile at, but what’s he really going to do about anything?).
The other psychos cops are the motorbike cops. They must have been fed a steady diet of the 80’s TV show CHIPS (California Highway Interstate Patrol/Police Service) and the Bad Lieutenant or something. They tart themselves up to such a degree that you wonder whether they are auditioning for the Village People or something. But woe to those who would dare to trangress on the roads of HK in front of these pretty boy nutters.
I’ve seen these dudes stop trucks and minibuses for minor offenses. I’ve seen them shout down a poor old couple for making the mistake of thinking they could clear the yellow boxes on a crossing (honest mistake and all they did was cross one line). And just recently I saw one cop ride all the way round in a big loop, just to pull a Merc out of the queue for the parking lot at Pacific Place.
Anyway, I wouldn’t want to mess with them since I reckon they’re just like how I imagine Southern US State troopers to be like. The question is why don’t they go and solve some real crimes? Oh right…because then their older brothers get a little antsy about it.
