No short answer to force's dilemma

Is the lowering of entry requirements for police recruits a blessing for the force that has enjoyed a high reputation as Asia's finest?

I cannot say it is a good idea. For one, education is so common these days that constables and inspectors would be expected to be better educated than their predecessors.

Not raising but, rather, making it easier for them to meet the language standards bucks the common expectation.

Police officers carry firearms and should be physically fit to at least protect their handguns and accessories.

Will lowering the fitness requirements, including height and weight, increase the risk of lethal weapons being lost to the wrong hands?

These concerns must be considered thoroughly.

However, in the face of the difficulties in filling a huge gap of 5,000 vacancies, what options do the force have besides lowering the standards for new recruits?

It is clear the force has been working really hard to replenish its establishment with new blood, including relaxing the seven-year residency requirement for certain positions a year ago.

Still, it failed to meet the recruitment target miserably.

From a public relations perspective, it may be positively argued that the force wants candidates of all shapes and sizes to fit a whole range of roles. To continue to exclude people shorter than 1.63 or 1.52 metres may prevent smart men and women from joining the force.

Remember the neighborhood wisdom that short people are usually wiser?

While it is certainly a joke to link someone's intellectual quotient to their height, what can police do now with a greater mix of members?

When entry requirements can also be relaxed, the force may consider taking its unprecedented step even further to conduct a fundamental review of the establishment so that it may divide its duties into two major streams.

Members considered to be more physically capable may be assigned frontline roles such as foot patrol or duties requiring the use of greater force.

Others less physically fit could undertake relatively non-active but equally important police work, such as criminal investigation.

Meanwhile, administrative duties involving no police work can be undertaken by civil servants.

An advantage of this would be to allow candidates to apply for their streams of interest and may help the force meet an annual recruitment target that it has persistently failed to achieve over the past several years.

More radically, would the force also follow the example of care homes and the transport sector to bring in workers from the mainland?

If it does not consider it an option now, it may in the longer term. This is a radical idea but cannot be ruled out as the SAR's borders with the mainland are bound to become blurred over time with the Greater Bay Area development.

Guangdong institutions such as Zhongshan University and Jinan University are full of Cantonese-speaking graduates who would have little or no problem communicating with residents in the SAR.

When entry rules can be eased, there are plenty of options on the table.