Unfair To Say Police Force Was Excessive: Arculli

Former Exco convenor Ronald Arculli said on Friday that he doesn't think police used excessive force to quell the protests in Admiralty on Wednesday.

His comments follow widespread criticism of the way police handled the situation.

Many rights organisations, the Bar Association and journalists associations on Thursday had issued statements condemning the police over use of their use of what they called “wholly unnecessary force”.

The statements followed pictures and video footage shared online, depicting images that include officers apparently aiming shots at protesters and using pepper spray on unarmed people at close range.

Some media workers also suspected they were deliberately targeted by police, with an RTHK driver among those injured.

However, Arculli defended the way the police handled the situation.

He also said he thought the government's decision to introduce changes to extradition laws was correct but poorly executed, given the "widespread misunderstanding" of the bill in society.

He said the police were outnumbered, and the demonstrators included a group of violent protesters.

"When you are dealing with a crowd of 10,000 to 50,000, and you are 2,000 or 5,000 police officers, with very tight control regarding how you handle crowds, part of the crowd – a very small portion relative to the size of the crowd occasionally got pretty violent and were chasing the police," Arculli said.

He said the police were on the defensive and "occasionally on the offensive when the crowd got near the Legislative Council building particularly and wanted to break in".

"So it’s probably not quite fair to say they used excessive force," Arculli said.