Former IPCC overseas expert: I feel manipulated

A former overseas expert of the local police watchdog said he felt manipulated during his time in the Independent Police Complaints Council when helping the watchdog to investigate police action during the anti-fugitive protests. 
Clifford Stott, a British professor of social psychology who sat on the international expert panel advising the IPCC before all panel members called it quits after criticizing the watchdog for lacking an independent investigative capability. 
In an event organized by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong this evening, Stott recalled his time of working in the IPCC's international experts panel and said he felt manipulated. 
“I would never want to experience again,” he said.
He said they were in an awkward position, but he did not reveal whether he and other overseas experts were under political pressure. 
In another media interview, Stott said he is going to publish a separate report next month on police handling of the anti-fugitive social unrest. 
“There is a fundamental problem in the capacity of the IPCC to act in its role of a police watchdog, in the sense that it hasn't got any investigatory power to validate the information that the police given about what went on and why,” he said in a media interview.  
Last month, the IPCC has released a 999-page report on police actions during the anti-fugitive bill protests since June 9 last year.
Regarding the almost stampede outside the Citic Tower in Admiralty on June 12 last year, the report said the escape route for protesters was “fully unobstructed”. 
But Stott said a large number of peaceful protesters were “effectively trapped” outside Citic Tower because of the police tactic, and there was “no perceptible route of escape” from the tear gas other than breaking into the tower. 
He also said the “very very slow, and was very very weak” respond of police in the Yuen Long attack on July 21 last year has increased public perception of police illegitimacy which caused the protests became radical. 
Despite officials in the SAR questioned his separate report as he has only stayed in Hong Kong for a short period of time, Stott said no matter if he's present in the city, it does not make any difference to the methodology of scientific inquiry. 
“Because they anticipate that would be critical of them and they are using that to try to undermine the contribution of my work to the situation in Hong Kong,” he said, “it's a political maneuver.”