POLICE AT SCHOOL

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 200, 21 May 1936, Page 16

POLICE AT SCHOOL

Protest by Board Wanganui, May 20. As a protest against .police interviews with schoolchildren taking place in schools, the Wanganui Education Board to-day passed the following resolution to be forwarded to the Deputy-Commissioner of Police, Mr. R. Madden: “That interviews should take place at the homes of children in the presence of their parents, not at schools.” The resolution was the outcome of a case at Halcombe which was reported to the board. The board to-day received a letter from the deputy-commissioner, who stated that the police found it was of great assistance to them to be permitted to interview children at schools, as it was the only place where it was possible to get a number of children together. “There may be cases where home surroundings are such that the police would be obstructed if they tried to obtain the truth from a child there,” he wrote. Mr. J. K. Hornblow said the school was not the place for the police to interview a child, but if it was concerning an offence committed at the school then the procedure was all right. A child was likelv to be persecuted by others. With this view Mr. Dukeson agreed. "Interviewing pupils at school should be prohibited," he said.