I knew a new Hong Kong police officer who had just come from Canada with his family; he had been a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman. He helped me contact the various divisions of the Royal Hong Kong Police in what was still a British Colony. The police were eager to show students how they operated. HKIS students were likewise eager—my program was overbooked!
Our first trip was to the police academy. Getting off the bus, students and I lined up as if we were recruits. They had us pair up and the officers put us through a series of physical tasks (sit-ups, etc.)–an admissions exam. I had one student who huffed-and-puffed when we had field trips. But when the officer tallied his low score, his brief comment “You failed” had a lot more impact than my field admonitions to him to get more exercise. Nevertheless everyone continued through the day, sampling police training.
At the end of the day, we teamed up in competition with the cadets in a tug-of-war. The men cadets were well prepared. Their British officers coordinated their efforts with measured orders of “Pull…Pull…Pull” that rapidly drug my  boys into the mud. But we regained our reputation as my assertive Western girls, without any training, easily defeated the women police cadets who retained the mild manners of Asian females. But we knew not to underestimate them. We had witnessed a half hour of their extensive training in “aikido,” a form of martial arts where you subdue an opponent by pushing the joints of the body the wrong direction (such as pushing your finger joint backward). But aikido did not help in tug-of-war against aggressive Western girls.
A second day, my students divided up and joined motor inspection units that patrolled checkpoints for cars that failed to meet standards. A third day they again split up on patrol boats and accompanied the marine police on rapid hikes through the outlying islands and experienced some boat inspections.
A fourth morning, we had to deposit our cameras before we entered the underground police control room, a massive underground operations center that received 911 calls and dispatched officers. That day, there was a team of police chiefs visiting from Kentucky to see the state-of-the-art operation. On the walls were massive electronic maps of streets in each district of Hong Kong. Anytime a red light came on the map from a bank or other location, it flashed until the officers arrived on site. That never took more than a minute because police patrolled the streets on foot as well as in cars. They carried walkie-talkies that communicated with this control room, advanced for the 1970’s. They transmitted on one frequency and received on another. And if one was stolen, all would be immediately “re-chipped.” Singapore led in such technology, followed by Hong Kong and then Japan. The West would soon follow. This remains the state of technology adoption today, with Singapore always the world’s leader.
That afternoon, we toured their tall detective building. Students viewed preserved severed hands that had washed ashore. Detectives demonstrated the indoor ballistics range. But most unique to Hong Kong were the triad gangs. Detectives explained the origin of these secret criminal societies. When the Ming Dynasty fell to the Manchu invaders who began the Qing Dynasty in 1636, Ming loyalists formed an underground secret society that eventually drifted from political opposition into a criminal protection racket, kidnapping for ransom, and other organized crime. In order to prevent investigators from capturing a triad member and tracing to others through investigation and torture, the triads were set up so that a triad member only knew the identity of two others, but those two others did not know each other. Thus if one person failed to squeal, the chain of investigation could be broken. —And thus the name “triad.” This criminal network had some legitimacy due to its historical origins. When Sun Yat-sen established the early Republic, he went to the Ming tombs to proclaim that there was no longer any need for this underground society. Nevertheless, it survived in Hong Kong despite police efforts.
There was an assumption that when mainland China took over in 1997, the triads would have to leave or be arrested. However, in 1989 when student leaders fled Tiananmen in Beijing, it was discovered that the triads operated brothels in Canton and other major Chinese cities. The triads had a network throughout China that even the Beijing government could not defeat. “You want the student leaders out?” asked the triads. Sure enough, arrangements were made. Many student leaders who had fled into distant rural China were located and smuggled out through the triad network to Hong Kong, with the understanding that they would immediately fly onward to other countries. But all of that occurred later.
Back to the last day of that week in 1976, I took my students to an area police station where foot patrolmen assembled at the 8-o’clock shift, standing at full attention in dress blues. They patrolled in pairs, both speaking fluent English and Cantonese. Some also indicated another foreign language under their badge. Each officer moved forward to the armory window and checked out a service pistol and a limited set of ammunition that they loaded and holstered. They would return this gun and ammunition at the end of their shift.  The officers then left in pairs to walk their beat, each with two of my students in tow.
The next week, all of those students were back to a regular schedule of classes at HKIS. But many of them came by to express how this had changed the way that they viewed policemen. —And how their feet hurt from that last full day of walking! It has now been over 43 years, and I still remember that week as one of the best educational activities I ever planned. If every one of us had a policeman or policewoman in our family, we would have a different perspective toward law enforcement. But lacking that, I am convinced these types of real world experiences would improve society tomorrow.