POLICE – RIGHT TO BET

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14573, 17 January 1948, Page 2

POLICE - RIGHT TO BET

WAY OF OBTAINING

CONVICTION

Criticism By English

Jiulge

Different Position In New

Zealand

With the flaying administered to illegal betting by the report, pitna Gaming Commission, the point ib bound'to arise during arguments on the suppression ot such betting as to whether police officers commit an offence when they bet with a bookmaker in order to secure evidence leading to a prosecution, says the Evening Post. This query is given aaded point by the recent appeal in the case ot Brannan v. Peek wherein the Lord Chief Jutsice of England (Lord Gcddard) made certain references which might at first glance lead New Zealanders to thmk that the police would in fact be committing an offence in such circumstances. In the course of his judgment, Lord Goddard said: "The Court obsprves with concern and disapproval tfte fact that the police authority at Derby thought it right to send a police officer into a public house to commit an offence. "It cannot be too strongly emphasised that, unless an Act of Parliament provides for such a course of conduct—and I do not thmk any Act of Parliament does so provide—it is wholly wrong for a police officer or any other person to be sent to commit an offence in order that an offence by another person may be detected. "It is not right that police authorities should instruct, allow, or permit detective officers or plain clothes constables to commit an offence so that they can prove that another person has committed an offence. "It would have been just as much an offence for the police constable in the present case to make the bet in the public house as it would have been for the bookmaker to take the bet if in doing so he had committed an offence. "I hope the day is far distant when it will become a common practice in this country for police officers to be told to commit an offence themselves for the purpose of getting evidence against someone; if they do commit offences they ought also to be convicted and punished, for the order of their superior officer would afford no defence." Although in many respects New Zealand statutes follow the English ones, this is one respect in which they differ. For section 54 of the Gaming Act in this country specifically states that a police officer so acting, under the orders of his superiors, does not commit an offence himself, in securing firsthand evidence of an offence by others.

This indemnity has applied under the Gaming Act since 1907. After that date a similar indemnity for police officers securing evidence by this means has been granted in legislation.