A SYDNEY "RACKET."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 286, 2 December 1936, Page 6

A SYDNEY "RACKET."

i The report of the Royal Commission into the betting allegations against the N.S.W. police discloses a condition of affairs comparable with the worst police "rackets" in the great American cities. Seven sergeants and 15 eonstables have been suspended for deliberately "framing" l cases against bookmaker's and betting men, and this implies the existence of an extensive of graft, involving the higher ranks of the force. By just such methods American police officers have accumulated fortunes in a few years, and in doing so have undermined the whole foundations of liberty, law and order in their districts. The evidence discloses that the Sydney system has been very "widespread, and that the cases manufactured against those wrongfully convicted form but a small portion of the whole conspiracy. Many of the bigger breakers of the law have gone on their way for years without prosecution, while smaller men have been arrested time and time again. The obvious inference is that the big men pay heavily for their immunity. Those who were unwilling to pay have been dragooned into bribeiyby threats of prosecution, and when threats failed the evidence has shown that arrests have been made, the arrestees violently assaulted, and convicted on false evidence. The police even went so far in some cases as to abstract evidence from the files of earlier convictions and to tender it anew as evidence of fresh breaches of the law. As the commissioner says, the report will have a disturbing effect on the community, for by its reflection upon the honour of the whole force it will weaken public sympathy for the officers of the law in a city where the law-breaking element is so numerous that the police require every ounce of moral support they can obtain.