GAMING PROSECUTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 187, 9 August 1922, Page 7

GAMING PROSECUTIONS.

(By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. The police of the Dominion during 1921 had to deal with over 26,000 offences and 1070 serious crimes. The latter showed an increase of 191, but. as an unusually large number of charges against individual offenders occurred during the year the increase is not so serious as the figures indicate. Two or ten murders during the year were not followed by detection of the offenders, these being the Timaru and Grey Lynn cases. The Commissioner of Police states that these crimes are still under investigation. In recording 245 prosecutions and 194 convictions under the Gaming Act the Commissioner declares that until the provision in the Gaming Act giving persons charged with being bookmakers the right of trial by jury is repealed it is almost a waste of time to prosecute. During the year the police succeeded in obtaining clear evidence of bookmaking in several cases, prosecutions were instituted, and accused persons were committed for trial, but in all but one case, in which it is alleged there was some local feeling against bookmakers, the juries either disagreed or acquitted in the face of very plain directions from the presiding judges. Finding that convictions could not be obtained under the 1920 Act the police had to fall back upon the 1908 Act, and prosecute fori keeping common gaming houses. This had been done with considerable success.