Police loud hailer

Press, 17 September 1976, Page 12

Police loud hailer

Sir, — It was interesting to note that the speaker shown on television addressing S.P.U.C.’s recent meeting outside Parliament was using a megaphone with the word police emblazoned on it. This raises a number of possibilities, (a) The speaker was using a “borrowed” megaphone; (2) the police support S.P.U.C.; (3) the police hire their equipment; (4) the police lose their equipment; (5) S.P.U.C. stole the megaphone from the police; or (6) the Government (Mr Muldoon), supports S.P.U.C. and gave the police instructions to lend their gear to S.P.U.C. As a taxpayer I object to indiscriminate use by misguided minorities of equipment funded by my taxes. Would the Police Department please say how S.P.U.C. obtained the megaphone and what steps it will take to ensure it does not mislay its equipment in this careless fashion in future. — Yours, etc., S. P. BETTS.

September 4, 1976. [The Commissioner of Police (Mr K. B. Bumside), replies: “I want to reassure your correspondent, Mr S. P. Betts, that none of the possibilities he raised in his letter apply. Because of a general prohibition on the use of amplifying equipment by such groups, the Police made the ‘loud hailer’ available to the organiser for the sole purpose of controlling the crowd and for that purpose only. Authority for the Police to take this action in this case and in other similar situations is contained in police instructions on crowd control.”]