The University of Cambridge course has been running for two years but has acquired new significance after widespread anger at Hong Kong police tactics in managing clashes with demonstrators. Three months after the protests began, officers are using water cannon, tear gas, rubber bullets and beanbag rounds against civilians, some of whom have hurled petrol bombs and projectiles. Protesters have also been severely beaten by police, with videos of the conflict going viral on social media.

The university was expecting to send a group of academics and former chief officers to Hong Kong for a week of teaching in December but is now considering whether it is safe to make the trip. There are also questions over whether students will be released from operational duties to attend training if the protests continue.

The course is a branch of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology’s Police Executive Programme, which is open to mid-ranking officers from all over the world. However, under a 2016 agreement with the Hong Kong police training college, the university opened a dedicated programme for its officers, which involves two weeks of training in the Asian city as well as a summer school in the UK. The first cohort from Hong Kong began training more than two years ago.

During the summer school, students attend lectures by high-ranking officers such as Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowley, the former national counterterror chief, and Tom Winsor, her majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, alongside Cambridge university criminologists.

Professor Lawrence Sherman, who runs the programme, said the course was rooted in the British culture of policing by consent. “A core part of what we’re trying to teach is police legitimacy,” Prof Sherman said. “What’s going on now in Hong Kong is a strong demonstration of how police risk being put in a position where they can’t remain neutral.”

“We look at questions like, what will make it more or less likely that the public will grant police the right to use force against them?” he said, adding the course would focus on topics such as international best practice for police and community dialogue, and how abuses by police can be investigated.

Trust in the Hong Kong police force has tumbled in the wake of the protests. A survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong this month found 48 per cent of people gave the force 0 out of 10, or a rating of “no trust at all”, compared with 6.5 per cent before the protests.

About 100 expatriate officers, many of them British, remain in the force having joined in the early 1990s before the handover to Chinese rule in 1997. A handful of them have been singled out for criticism for their roles commanding riot police. Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong has lambasted the British officers for enjoying freedom and democracy “at home” but serving Beijing’s interests in Hong Kong.

But officers also feel let down by the government, with many complaining that they have been targeted in a political crisis that requires a political solution.

The protest movement began in opposition to an extradition bill that would have sent criminal suspects to mainland China for the first time. The bill has been withdrawn but the protesters’ demands have evolved into a wider call for universal suffrage, the release of arrested demonstrators and an independent inquiry into police actions.

Prof Sherman said the “tightly regulated concept for the use of force” in British policing would inform teaching discussions. “The fact that Hong Kong doesn’t have a consensus on universal suffrage is making it uniquely difficult for police there compared to our other students,” he said.

The current Hong Kong cohort comprises less than 20 officers at inspector, chief inspector and superintendent level.