Traffic Inspectors as Policemen.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19666, 9 July 1929, Page 10

Traffic Inspectors as Policemen.

We are sure it will surprise most of our readers this morning when they discover that the City Council last night decided to hare all of its traffic inspectors who have had twelve months' service enrolled as special constables, and that all that now remains to be done to have this decision put into force is to have these men, eleven of them, sworn in by a Magistrate. It will indeed surprise many people to discover that the Chief Traffic Inspector and the Assistant-Chief have already been sworn in as constables, and exercise and enjoy the same powers and immunities, within the City of Christchurch, as other constables have by law. There might, however, be an excuse —we do not know what it is—for conferring those special powers on those two particular officers. There is none whatever for making constables of the remaining eleven. The excuse given by the By-Laws Committee, which means by the inspectors themselves, is that they have been subjected to insolence and obscene language when they have approached persons in the execution of their duty. That would be an excuse if inspectors so treated had not the protection of the regular police and of the Law Courts. But it has not been suggested that the traffic inspectors, or any other officers carrying out the Council's instructions, are in this defenceless position. People who abuse or defy a traffic inspector deserve, and should receive, as sharp a lesson as the law can give them, but if everyone who has to exercise authority over the public had to be converted into a constable, with powers of detention and arrest, for this is what the conversion means, the City would be full of special constables, and full also of people with a chronic resentment against the law. The regular police are trained, from the day they enter the service, how, when, and where to exercise their authority, and in general exercise it wisely. No such training is given to traffic inspectors, nor are they in many cases even physically fitted to be policemen. The inspectors are doing good work as matters stand, and only an infinitesimal section of the public resent their attentions. Everybody will do so if they begin to act as the Council has now authorised them to act.