Police claims ‘not faked’

Press, 4 February 1982, Page 8

Police claims ‘not faked’

PA Wellington More than one in five police Red Squad members were taken to hospital during the Springbok tour, according to correspondence in the latest Police Association newsletter. A squad member, Sergeant Paul Lacey, said that virtually every other member was treated at various times for injury or for • being physically ‘‘run down.” Sergeant Lacey’s letter, and two others, disputed assertions made in December by an Auckland policeman that excessive and per-

haps even false overtime claims were being made by police officers because of the tour. . Sergeant Lacey said he could not let Sergeant D. A. P. Geraghty’s allegations go unchallenged after suffering in silence “the attacks by the media, the public, defendants in courtrooms across the country, and frenzied attempts by senior officers to charge a member of this squad with unprofessional or criminal conduct.” Sergeant Lacey said he was astounded by the accusation of overtime being falsified. “We worked (not just

on standby) from 0500 hours (5 a.m.) one day non-stop through to 0100 hours (1 a.m.) the next on several occasions. “• • . It mav be of interest that throughout most of the operation nobody had knowledge of the intention to make this payment therefore there was no reason to falsify a single hour.” Squads were not on a “Cook’s tour,” either, he said, with “14 days without respite in one case and 26 with only one day’s rest in another.” Policemen should not have to put up with “this sort-of

pettiness and name-calling," Sergeant Lacey said. They were people who had “lived nights on end with demonstrators howling outside hotel windows, who for weeks on end faced extraordinary and totally unprecedented stress and physical danger, whose home lives came to an effective end to the extent that some' members faced toll bills in excess of $220 accrued while trying to convince wives and families that they were still whole, who had no days off, and who genuinely worked the hours claimed for,”