Further Curbs On Police Resisted

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30130, 14 May 1963, Page 12

Further Curbs On Police Resisted

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 13. That the rights of the victim should not be overlooked in considering the rights of the offender was the general police point of view at the recent United Nations seminar in Canberra, according to the Commissioner of Police (Mr C. L. Spencer) who returned to Wellington tonight.

‘■Police participants resisted the suggestion that further restrictions be placed on the already limited area in which they could exercise discretion,” he said. “It was stated that further restrictions would restrict the police in their fight against the rising crime figures and such restrictions would therefore interfere with the rights of the lawabiding coimmunity. ‘lt was evident that legal and academic participants had little real appreciation of the problems facing the police,” he said.

On Friday, the last day of the seminar, Mr Spencer had told delegates: “It seems that once a man dons a police uniform he becomes segregated from his fellows because he represents the authority of the law.

“He also begins ta feel a faint undercurrent of the distrust of the organisation he has joined by the lawabiding persons who have accepted him into the police service. I might state that this faint, niggling undercurrent is present throughout his service and he must learn to live with it. “The police observe people in other organisations infringing the human rights of the individual in a most serious manner. Two examples are members of the British Medical Association

'and the Law Society. When there is a fall from grace by members of either of these professions general distrust of all members of the profession quite rightly does not result, but with the police it takes that organisation years to live down the fall from grace by one of its number. “The net result of this is that policemen feel they are the subject of injustice at the hands of the people who employ them; that they are tolerated merely because they are necessary for the comfort and safety of those same people. “This, I feel, has on occasions been reflected in the conduct and attitude of some of our police over the years.” Mr Spencer said.