POLICE AND PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 53, 6 March 1929, Page 15

POLICE AND PEOPLE

POWERS OF SEARCH

ENFORCEMENT OF MORALS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 18th January. ■ 'J.he police are not at war with the rest of the community. They are themselves of the people and for the people, and they are carefully selected as being by character and temperament, as well as by physique, the most suitable members of the community for their job.

■'■ "The primary duties of the police are duties which women are neither physically nor temperamentally adapted to perform.' . . . The less temperamental vagaries and stabilities, the less emotional disturbances and physical delicacies and weaknesses you get, the better and more efficient police work you secure." . These statements \yere made on behalf of the Police Federation, of ."England and Wales at the resumed sittings of the Police. Commission on 14th January. Police-Constable J. M. Branthwaite (Metropolitan Police, chairman of the. general central committee), giving evidence for the federation, said that the police well understood their powers and duties with regard to search. ' . '

.! The chairman (Viscount Lee of Fareham): "Is it not the case-that in practice the police have to exceed their fixed legal powers of search and that that is tacitly accepted in Courts of law?" —"Yes. It would be a great advantage if that could bo regularised."

"You get complaints from the public sometimes, I suppose?''—"Yes; we get. it both ways. Someone writes in asking us to pay particular attention; to a certain street, and then when we do that somebody, else complains that he cannot live in the street because of police interference." .■:■■■■

, There was no feeling that the infiltration of women into the Force Was an inJvasion of the rights of tlie men. They were not afraid of men being displaced. : "Is thero any positive line' taken by your federation one way or another?"— ;"Simply that up_ to the present we have not experienced anything- which lias shown ftliem to be necessary. All the experience we have had of women police on ordinary iwork; patrol is that they are not fitted ;for it at all." ' . . ■ . . 'I "ENFORCING MORALS." i Miv P. A. R. Sempkins, seore'tary of the ■National .Vigilance. Association, said he ■would on no use a woman, just because she was a woman,, on. any case. /(Her suitability for any particular work ■must-' be based on training and personal lability. He did not agree with the idea /that because there were men police therelore there should be women police. Women would be of greater assistance if ;there:; were more of thenr and they were '.clothed differently. ■■• . r-. ; 1-He entirely disagreed with the view that -.the police should not be used as a means $ what is called "enforcing morals." Anything which tended to reduce recruits ■ to ■tjie ranks of professionals in vice.tended ;to reduce the recruits to professionals in crime. It was,'therefore, a police matter 'even in its early Btages. arguments of those critics," Mr.. ; S,empkins added, "who object to the police j.being; used. to -suppress offences against public mprality. are,generally based on the jassumption ""that public .opinion ought .'to be: the deciding factor in such matters. sWe have no such faith in the effect of 'public opinion, even though it.may admittedly affect the actions of many individuals jf6r good. Licenst, begets license, and a /joiinority which .obstinately refuses to rei'Bpond tp the restraint of public opinion quickly, gathers around' it : the less re-, sponsible members of any new generation. The unprecedented changes in modern life are already sufficiently, disturbing to the jjtpung without the added complication of • in ;our. executive, or judicial : tti£thods." :.. : ..-:'■■ -.-. j ' , ■. ;•..=