LAUGHS IN TIGHT CORNERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 11 (Supplement)

LAUGHS IN TIGHT CORNERS.

WHEN CIVILIANS Arn THE LAW (By AN EX-POLICE INSPECTOR.) Here is the rule governing civilian aid for the police:— "When there is reasonable necessity, and a person is called upon to assist the police, and there is no physical impossibility or lawful cause for refusal, he ie bound to render assistance, and is guilty of a misdemeanour if he refuses." That sounds all right, but after a few cases of "assistance" I preferred to carry on alone, or wait until a colleague came along.

Hindered by a little woman who kept hanging on to me and shrieking, it looked as though a hefty scoundrel who had brutally knocked down a widow and tried to get the rings from her finger would get away. So I called on a man in the crowd to assist me. "Get this woman off and keep her off," I gasped. A Friendly Face. Promptly he seized her, stepped back, and pitched her on to a shop-blind! She might have been a ball. The crowd gasped as she bounced and nearly went over the side, but luckily she rolled to the bottom. There she lay, unhurt, but shrieking, and I took my man to the station. I heard afterwards that my helper was a noted trapeze performer. On another occasion—this was when public-houses kept open until midnight on Saturday—l had to arrest a "drunk and disorderly," and found him too much to handle after he had given me a savage kick in the groin. My whistle had been

snatched, go I called on a mun in crowd to assist me. His face seemed the only friendly one. "Want me to make him quiet?" he asked, and I nodded, thinking he had some influence with the man. Forthwith he pulled him out of my grasp, jerked him upright, steadied him, and then hit him—just once. It was nearly 4 a.m. before he recovered consciousness, and the police-surgeon's face was a study.

"A very near thing," was his verdict. "Who hit him ? as good as Carpentier, I should say!" It was, I think, three years before I asked any more civilian assistance. Then came an evening when, in agony with a sprained wrist and a foot I could hardly put to the ground, I called on a man in the crowd to help me. My prisoner was a little man, but wiry and vicious. "Right-o," said the man. 'Til take him to the station. You come along when you can." He pulled the man up and went off with him, while the crowd, to my surprise, gave way. That was the last I saw of either! Yes—friends. On another occasion, as my whistling brought no response, I called on a young man to assist me in taking a violent man to the station.

"I'm not a policeman!" he protested. I told him that didn't matter, and unless he had a lawful cause for refusal he must render assistance. "Well, I have," he replied. "He's my future father-in-law." I let him off. Please don't deduct from these examples that "assistance" is always on such queer lines. Now and again it is valuable. That is, when the person called upon doesn't clear off at the double.