POLICE MISLED

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 144, 14 December 1935, Page 13

POLICE MISLED

A WILD-GOOSE CHASE

SEQUEL IN COURT

(By Telegraph-^Press Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. For the first time in' New Zealand a man was convicted in the Magistrate's Court today on a charge of making ,a verbal statement to a police officer in-which-he alleged, contrary to' fact and without genuine. "Belief, that an offence, had been..committed and that a man was carrying,.a fully-loaded revolver. The accused, • George Crosley Lidgett,- was fined £2, in default thirty days' imprisonment. ■ , Chief-Detective Dunlop' said that the police' received an anonymous telephone message that a man with- a loaded revolver intended to go to Marshland and rob an : old mm ' of £900. "We couldn't neglect statements like these," said Mr. -Dunlop. : Two men were sent in a car to Marshland on a wild goose chase. The. supposed robber was actually about to go to bed." Mr. Dunlop added that this was not the first complaint against ■ .Lidgett. Complaints had been. r made over a number; of years and-"the police had had to take, notice^ of his* messages. Liquor appeared to be his trouble. "This must stop or, I will-, impose the maximum .. penalty," said the Magistrate, Mr. E. C. Lewey, in fin-; ing Lidgett.