Evening Post TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1929. POLICE AND THE LAW

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 122, 28 May 1929, Page 8

Evening Post TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1929. POLICE AND THE LAW

Though London is now celebrating the centenary of the Metropolitan Police Force, the great reforms of police methods are more than a century old. The "Peelers" were first instituted in Ireland, as the beginning of the regular Irish Constabulary, during Peel's term as Secretary for Ireland from 1812 to 1818. It is fitting, therefore, that the force should ever since have had a strong leavening of Irishmen—so strong as to warrant the expression: "a policeman and another Irishman." Sir Robert Peel's London reforms in 1829 were not, however, the first attempts to maintain peace with a civil force. A "Watch and Ward" Act was passed in the reign of Edward 1., and other statutes followed. But these earlier attempts achieved very little, because the force was inadequate, the watchmen appointed by parishes were untrustworthy, and the organisation imperfect. Highwaymen, footpads, and other thieves were numerous in and about the metropolis, and citizens were compelled to pay blackmail and compound felonies to save themselves from worse. Yet Peel's proposals were strongly opposed at the time. This new police force was suspected as a standing army which would be the instrument of a new despotism to curtail the rights and restrict the privileges of peaceable citizens. Such fears have proved groundless in Great Britain, where the police force has never been an instrument for oppression or for arbitrary restriction of lawful freedom.

The police (wrote Major Arthur | Grifntha some years ago) have become the ministers of a social despotism resolute in its watchful care and control of the whole community, wellmeaning and paternal, although when carried to its extreme length the tendency is to diminish self-reliance and independence in the individual. Other countries have not been so fortunate. More has been demanded ;of the police and greater authority has been given to them. In Tsarist I Russia not so many years ago, for example, the police were the father and mother of the whole community. Their duties included the regulation of religious instruction in secular school^ die censorship of published price-lists and printed notes of invitation and visiting cards, the control of public meetings of all kinds, and the examination of cosmetics and toilet preparations sold by chemists. That British police action has never been carried to such extremes is attributable in part to the British love of freedom and to the wise discretion exercised by Governments and police administrators in not demanding too much of an efficient force. The aim has always been to maintain and strengthen the police force by assuring to its members the support of all law-abiding citizens. Public support can be assured only so long as the police work lias the backing of public opinion. If that is lost—if the police have to war with the many instead of the few—even a great increase in numerical strength cannot make good the loss. This was recognised, in the recent report of the Royal Commission presided over by Lord Lee of Fareham. The root cause of difficulties in dealing with certain offences (the report stated) was

the existence of laws which arc out of harmony with public opinion. The- fact that tho police are called upon to enforce such laws inevitably impairs their good relations with the public, and the sense of antagonism thus aroused tends to hamper tho police in their general duties of suppressing crime. Such corruption as had occurred in the force was mainly associated with such laws. "The Times" in commenting upon the report strongly supported this conclusion as to the ill-effects of legislation which did not command the general and convinced support of public opinion. Among such laws (it was stated) those against street offences, street betting, and lotteries may bo instanced. This is a point which we in New Zealand cannot afford to overlook. We have here a police force of the highest integrity and of a high general standard of intelligence; but we must not place too much upon it. There are moral reforms which have been attempted, and restrictions of general liberty imposed to stop particular abuses. The tendency is to go further, but the pace must be controlled, not alone by the zeal of the reformer but by the possibility of assuring general public acceptance and approval of the restrictions on individual liberty.