a question .
is it a rule that police are not allowed to shoot to the sky ?
what about shoot somewhere towards the ground ?
or intentionally let the gunshot miss the target by some margin (scare instead of hurting /kill the man) ?
a question .
is it a rule that police are not allowed to shoot to the sky ?
what about shoot somewhere towards the ground ?
or intentionally let the gunshot miss the target by some margin (scare instead of hurting /kill the man) ?
The whole idea of training police to fire "warning shots" in a densely populated urban environment strike me as a particularly bad idea.
>> densely populated urban environment strike
agree
but for this case the police is go up into a hill in Ho Man Tin area to hunt a homeless man without weapon except the wooden chair "if" the police is provoking him first.
i had been running around that hill daily when i was young.
I cannot believe that somebody born here and who worked here did not speak Cantonese! Children pick up languages without even trying!
Shooting into the sky = falling .38 slugs. Shooting into concrete = ricocheting .38 slugs. I once fired a .357 Magnum into the ceiling of a shooting range in Nevada by accident. It bounced all over the place (but fortunately, downrange...a couple of inches higher and it might have come back at me).
I was born here and my Cantonese isn't very good--I went to ESF schools and studied French and German when I was younger--I also picked up a fair command of two Indian languages from my parents. Since our lives revolved around school and our English-speaking friends, my siblings and I only started learning Cantonese when we returned to HK after finishing up at university in the US and the UK!
It's far more common than you'd think. I honestly speak way more Cantonese than some of my non-Chinese classmates in secondary school do now, but that's because I spent a good 100+ hours in a classroom trying to learn it. I know quite a few expat kids in HK who do not speak Cantonese very well, but can speak some Mandarin because they have to learn it at school.
The Nepali communities of Jordan and YauMaTei would have been insular in the same way, particularly prior to the handover.
I’ve come across very few children from the colonial expat community who’ve learnt to speak Cantonese.
Their time here is spent in International schools segregated from the local community or, like this unfortunate guy apparently, they’re sent back to their home countries for secondary education.
The language issue is a red herring – a policeman’s uniform is recognised universally and doesn’t require interpretation. The fact of the matter is the guy was mentally/emotionally disturbed and had been for a long time– if any blame is to be apportioned it’s to those who neglected to care for him before any of this happened. Too late to cry ‘Foul’ now – why didn’t they care before?
You're totally right. Most young Nepalis in HK do not speak Cantonese and many who were born here have only returned to HK recently after having lived in Nepal for years. The community didn't help this guy, but he had a list of violent offenses on his record and chose to distance himself from the community, so how was anyone to help him? He didn't want to be helped.
It's sad he had to die since he wasn't all there, but I'm glad the cop is ok. He's probably very upset by this whole incident. Honestly, in an adrenaline-charged situation like this, I can definitely see how things could turn out the way they did. I just wish he'd had the training to go hand-to-hand (the two-odd weeks of Aikido the HK Police do is woefully inadequate) or that his shot had landed somewhere else. Limbu was known for being a big, tough looking guy, but apparently he was suffering from some kind of debilitating physical illness as well.
Last edited by jayinhongkong; 28-03-2009 at 08:32 AM.
>> I cannot believe that somebody born here and who worked here did not speak Cantonese!
No matter the Nepalese can or cannot speak Chinese, on the other way round. It is a shame for that police officer who cannot speak simple English to a non-Chinese.
i think a local born Chinese who can pass the HKCEE English exam should be able to speak some English.
English is an international language for people from different places to communicate.
To be fair, we don't expect the police officer should know Nepali, because it is not an int'l language.
Last edited by Vrindavan; 28-03-2009 at 09:23 AM.
Whether or not the officer spoke English to this fellow seems irrelevant. If that man didn't understand that he should stand down after being hit with a baton and seeing a gun drawn on him, I doubt that a few words would have made a difference.
Seriously, a weapon is pointed at someone and he keeps going. You think that saying stop or I will shoot will make a difference???