A Hongkong SWAT Team

[Hard Ball]

In my post on Chinese police weapons
I said that the police in seven of the eight different cities I visted I observed the on the street police officer swere orgnized and equipped in the same way, but that Hongkong was very different.
In Hongkong almost all unifomhed police officers (both men and women) were armed with K frame Smith & Wesson revolvers, either Model 10s or Model 11s in open top holstars.
By Chance while walking down a major street, I also saw a Hongkong SWAT team going into actio, This consosted of a group of five men. They were dressed in dark blue uniforms and wore body armor and military style helmets. All five carried S&W M&P revolvers in open top holsters. Three carried 12 gauge semiautomatic shotguns (Make uncertain) which had stainless steel or nickel plated barrels. A fourth carried a wooden stocked carbine (make uncertan) and the fifth man carried a tactical radio. THey moved rapidly down the sidewalk and turned into a shopping center ready fo action.
It is interesting that Hongkong which was under British rule until 1997 eems to have more heavily armed police than the rest of China.

 

[4V50 Gary]

They use to have Remington 870s in their inventory, but recently converted over to the semis (I'll have to write my contact who is the Superintendent of Training). Also stashed away are AR-15s in their inventory. Their training officers are quite good and have, despite having stopped becoming a British Colony, continue receiving their training, for the most part, at their own expense, here in the U.S. These guys have been dedicated to training and improving themselves for years and that the Colony reverted to the hands of the mainland has not discouraged their dedication a bit. Not surprisingly, some prefer the old "Royal Hong Kong Police" emblem better.

One good thing about their training is that back in the old days when I first met them (1995), the average officer was only qualifying and practicing with 50 rounds a year! Shocking! Now they're up to 150 rounds (better but not good enough).

The police on the mainland have access to Chicom weapons and I've seen them with SMGs. Now, when I was just out of college I decided to visit China. Back then in the early '80s, it was a rare sight to see a police officer in China carrying a gun and by far the majority weren't. When I returned a couple years ago, clothing style had changed and guns were more present.

 

[marsh]

What is a tactical radio?

 

[George Hill]

A black one...

 

[taco]

When I was at Hong Kong Airport in 1996 I saw a group of 6 Airport security team walking/patrolling the waiting area and they were armed quite differently. 3 men were armed with H&K MP5, 1 man (officer?) armed with BHP, 1 radio operator with BHP and 1 fellow with MP5 and BHP. They were in blue jumpsuit and black barets with webgear. They seem to know what they were doing and looked very professional.

 

[Jffal]

Hong Kong movies like the box office smash The Final Option (starring Vanishing Son/Romeo Must Die actor Russell Wong's brother Michael) popularized the SDU teams. In The Final Option and its sequel/prequel, First Option, the squads rely on 9mm sidearms, MP-5s, cutdown repeating shotguns, sniper rifles (I suspect HK semiautos), etc.
Jeff

 

[Erik]

In a nation known to run over peaceful student demonstrators in tanks I imagine the police don't need to many heavy guns. The military is on hand, and there is nothing quite as heavy amoung the general population as one of those tanks.

I'd post a smiley face, except it isn't really all that funny in light of the deceased.

 

[LASur5r]

On my visit to Hong Kong a couple of years back, the police were being heavily armed because the hardcore criminals from China were coming down and conducting some real armed robberies in Hong Kong...in some cases they weren't too worried about getting in firefights with HK Royal Police...the BG's were organized, armed with China military weapons (AK's and Chinese version of Tokarev's.

Once they got their "stuff" from the robberies, all they had to do is make it back across the "border" before Hong Kong became communist. Sort of like Texas and Mexico, but make a really quick getaway and you're across the border.

ChiCom guards openly took bribes...my actual experience. So shouldn't be much of a problem getting across the border.

Now that Hong Kong is officially communist, I think they are still having problems tracking the BG's because they escape into other provinces that aren't cooperative with HK...some of the outer provinces might even have government officials as part of the BG's.

A lot of the outer provinces look at Hong Kong like the rich step child...that they can take advantage of. In the 80's the provinces around Hong Kong were declared special economic zones because they were experimenting with capitalism and they were prospering. Chinese government didn't want a great rush so they actually had to have passes and guards (fully loaded machine guns...got to see it when we crossed the border)to keep the populace away from seeing capitalism in action.

God Bless the U.S....glad we can visit other countries on our borders with no special visas or anything.