Revamp involving railway police aims to boost policing

Police said they are integrating some 300 police officers in the Railway District into five land regions from the middle of this month, in a bid to improve operation efficiency and anti-terrorism efforts. After a one-month trial period, officers from the land regions will take over the duties of railway police, including daily patrols and response to railway incidents, in June. Established in 1985, the Railway District is responsible for maintaining law and order in the railway system. Stephen Yu, a district commander of the Railway District, said their work was affected by problems such as MTR service disruptions in the past. "We see the challenge and we encounter challenges in that by relying solely on the MTR trains as our only means of transportation to respond to rail incidents is difficult and that would hinder our professional response. The public definitely would like to see their reports to be dealt with promptly and timely," he said. "For example, if there's an incident happening in one of the MTR stations, our officers will encounter problems and difficulty to get to the scene of the incident because of the suspension of the train service. Now, what we think is it would be much easier and it would be much more timely for the officers from the service side to respond. Now, that includes the emergency unit, police tactical unit, and the patrol unit of the service formation." Under the revamp, the railway police will be overseen by the police headquarters, instead of the Kowloon East regional headquarters. The operations wing’s chief superintendent, Pierre Wong, said it does not mean that the long-standing Railway District is being “dissolved”. "I won't use the word of dissolving the rail district. What I will use is the enhancement of the policing project because the railway district will subsequently come under the command of the operations wing of the police headquarters. So you can't say it's not existing. It will continue to exist. "Our focus is to, through the operation deployment arrangement, enhance the overall capability of our officers. That is our objective." Officers said they will also combine the railway response unit and the counter-terrorism response unit to beef up counter-terrorism efforts.