SEVERAL thousand people have turned out in Hong Kong in an unusual display of support for the police force.

It came as riot officers clashed elsewhere with protesters, pepper-spraying a crowd of pro-democracy demonstrators.

Truncheon-wielding riot officers fanned out at a shopping centre where demonstrators spray-painted protest slogans on the polished stone floor and smashed glass panels. Watched by shoppers, officers pepper-sprayed bystanders and made several arrests, pinning detainees to the floor and marching them away.

Roaming groups of youths in black also appeared at other shopping centres shouting slogans.

At one, a small group adapted a Christmas carol into a protest song and a woman played “Glory to Hong Kong”, a protest anthem, on a harmonica.

The scene was completely different at a waterfront park on Hong Kong Island, where a large crowd showered love on the 30,000-strong police force, broadly criticised as heavy-handed by the protest movement. The rally echoed the Hong Kong government’s view that protesters have become unacceptably violent.

Pro-police demonstrators described protesters as rioters and terrorists, and officers as gallant heroes.

At a separate anti-government rally held simultaneously on Sunday just a few hundred yards away, demonstrators yelled the protest movement would not let up as long as Hong Kong’s government continues to resist calls for full elections and other demands.

Called by social workers, the protest drew several hundred people, a markedly smaller event than the pro-police demonstration that drew tens of thousands.