Police ‘poor sailors’

Press, 25 January 1979, Page 1

Police ‘poor sailors’

PA Auckland The Peace Squadron has alleged that the police escorting the U.S.S. Haddo into port last Friday manhandled protesters and displayed consistently poor seasmanship. In a report released yesterday it was asserted that one protester was punched and pinned to the deck of a police craft by a policeman who sat on the man’s head.

A police “crash” course in seamanship had produced a number of collisions between police craft, the report said.

It also criticised the submarine’s commander for “cutting unswervingly through boats and bodies.” The squadron would continue to look for legal means to block a further visit by a nuclear vessel, the report said. The Haddo, still streaked with yellow paint from a paint-bomb attack, slipped quietly out of the Waitemata Habour early yesterday morning escorted by four protest vessels.

The police will investigate any individual complaint of mistreatment or grievance by the protesters, the head of the Auckland Police District (Assistant Commissioner E. J. Trappit) said. "The seamanship exhibited by the escorting craft was far, far superior to that of the protesters,” said Mr Trappit.

A spokesman aboard the submarine said of the paint that after a week under water, nobody would know the paint had been there.