LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 67, 17 September 1917, Page 3

LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT

10 TBB EDITOR. Sir, —While not; wishing to argue the merits or demerits^of licensing legislation, in.force or prospective, being,one of that large moderate party which finds it necessary to vote at different elections on different sides—according to the behaviour oi either party in the interim—there i« one important matter in connection with these legislative, freaks which require* attention, and thajfc is the cost of enforcement At present we have an antishouting law on. the Statute Book which is no more practically enforceable than the breeding of fowls from.house-flies, and we propose to add another legislative measure, that will be equally unenforceable, in earlier closing of hotels. This writer doesn't care tuppence whether this last measure is .carried or not; but there is a question in connection with the enforcement of these statutes to which the ardent advocates thereof are entitled to give a straight answer.' to the moderate who esteems the general good order in a community as of more importance than the settlement of these snmptuary disputes, and that is: Who is going to pay 'for it, and who is going to incur the ignominy in their enforcement.? Every person who reads the papers must have noticed of late a, growing . hostility of crowds, towards the police. Within I;he last six; months we have'read in your own columns of several serious riots in the streets, where it . was .shown that the crowd was almost unanimously hostile towards those charged with the preservation of law and order.' No respectable citizen approves of such conduct, but there must be some reason for the change in public attitude towards the police, and this' Writer ascribes it solely'to this branch of the Public Service being charged with the enforcement «f the freak legislation of recent years. , To this correspondent it appears more Important that .the policg should devote their, best energies towards the repression of crime that is recognised by all fair-minded citizens as snch than that an undue proportion of their labours be devoted to the enforcement of sumptuary will-o'-the-wisps which are often repugnant to them, land sometimes bring ignominy on the Force.' ' We have had. illustration* of the futility of our anti-betting laws. With hundreds, of bookmaker? operating in New Zealand, and returning less . than the ■ totalisa'tor dividends to their' clients, to repress speculation 'on horse*racing we increased taxation on money invested per medium of the totalisator, with the'result that we further increased the margin of profit of the 1, bookmaker, who pay£ no" percentage at all of the money passing through his hands to the Treasury. ■!. .Your correspondent quite realises it is no use destructively criticising an evil without pointing out a remedy; And 1 here it is : To protect the police from the reisults naturally, arising from the 'tactics neces- v sary to enforce all these sumptuary legislative freaks the advocates of each measure who was instrumental in giving, it 1 place on the Statute Book should be enrolled as special constables without pay, arid for the solo enforcement of their pet reform*. This should relieve one or two hundred 1 physically fit and trained men for the front, and show to the country tljat there i« .something more patriotic and practical, morally, in these i constant agitators on sumptuary laws than neurotic spasmodic.—l am, efc., . '

TAXPAYER. , Wellington, 15th September.