THE TRAFFIC POLICE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 138, 13 June 1931, Page 12

THE TRAFFIC POLICE

A well-merited compliment was paid by a correspondent of "The Post" to the police, who are now, after many years of efficient service, discontinuing point duty in Wellington. Efficiency, courtesy, and helpfulness are what we expect from the police in New Zealand, no matter what duty they may undertake, and perhaps the greatest praise that can be given to the officers is implied in public acceptance of this service as if nothing different could ever be expected. Ppint duty may be a comparatively simple part of police work, but the police themselves, by tact and patience when the system was initiated, have helped to make it so. In this country traffic regulation may be monotonous and unexciting work. It is not so everywhere. A few months ago a young policeman in New Jersey, U.S.A., arrested one of the most desperate of American criminals without a fight by pretending to caution him for a violation, of traffic rules and covering him with a pistol before the criminal could draw a weapon. The man, who had escaped from Sing Sing Prison, had a revolver in each hip pocket, a tear-gas pistol in his waistcoat, a revolver in the pocket of each door of his car, an automatic pistol under the dashboard, and a sawed-off shotgun on the floor of the rumble. Moreover, the man would evidently have been-prepared to use this armoury, judging by the history of the gang of which he was a\member. Two killed,each other, a third committed suicide in prison, a fourth was killed while trying to escape from prison, a fifth was serving a life sentence, and the sixth was reported to be in the French Foreign Legion. Traffic regulation in Wellington has had neither the perils nor the thrills of encounters with such gangs, only the minor annoyances and discomforts of unskilful drivers," unwary walkers, and bleak southerlies. • But the work has been taken as it came, in good weather or bad, and always with good temper and efficiency.