CROWD HINDERS POLICEMEN

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26409, 1 May 1951, Page 8

CROWD HINDERS POLICEMEN

ATTEMPT TO ARREST TWO MEN “ VERY UGLY ” INCIDENT AT WELLINGTON (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 30. Police in the Magistrate’s Court today described a scene outside a hotel in Wellington on Saturday evening when 500 people surged found two policemen as they tried to arrest two men who had been fighting. "The position looked very ugly indeed, up to 500 people being there, and a large number of them were very hostile to the police for doing their duty,’’ said Sub-Inspector E. Thomas.

One of the men escaped. The other, Johannes Wilhelmus Heyster, a Dutch immigrant, admitted that he fought with an unknown person, resisted a constable, and assaulted him and a police sergeant.

Mr J. Hessell. S.M.. sentenced Heyster to three months 1 imprisonment on one charge of resisting and one of assaulting, the terms to be concurrent.

Sub-Inspector Thomas explained that at 6.5 p.m. two policemen went to a hotel and ordered three men to stop fighting. One did. When the police endeavoured to arrest the other two a large crowd which had formed outside be£an attacking them. Heyster kicked and struck the constable who was detaining him. and broke free. The other policeman, a sergeant, was having the same difficulty with the man he had arrested. That man shook off the sergeant and escaped. The sergeant then assisted the constable in recapturing Heyster. The crowd persisted in interfering, said Sub-Inspec-tor Thomas, and Heyster again broke free after assaulting the sergeant, but was arrested later on the wharf. For Heyster. Mr J. C. White said what the crowd had done could not be put at the door of the accused.