POWERS OF POLICE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 68, 21 March 1945, Page 7

POWERS OF POLICE

EXTENSION SOUGHT

It was recommended to the Royal Commission on Licensing yesterday by Senior-Detective P. Doyle, of Wellington, an officer who had many years experience with sly groggers in the King Country and its environs, that the powers of the police should be extended. Any member of the Police Force, he submitted, should have the right to search for liquor going into the 'proclaimed areas.

Another recommendation from Senior-Detective Doyle was that it should be an offence for a Maori to be found in the possession of liquor for consumption off licensed premises. Detailing his experience while at Te Awamutu, he said that hotels in that district did an extensive trade with liquor in the King Country. A man was employed by one hotel almost wholly in preparing orders for consignment to the King Country. Sly-grog selling had been very prevalent during his stay at Te Awamutu, particularly to Maoris. Several of the latter were also sly-grog sellers. Large parties of Maoris paid weekly visits to Te Awamutu for the sole object of consuming liquor, arid they were accompanied by several Europeans of a bad type whom the police believed procured liquor illegally. In that manner, he added, drink found its way to Maori women in the pas. It was the contention of the witness that those Maoris who came in from the proclaimed areas consumed more liquor than the local Maoris; they lost control of themselves, did damage on trains, and generally caused trouble. To Mr. J. D. Willis (counsel assisting the Commission) the witness said he thought that the establishment of licensed hotels in the King Country would be advisable as drinking would then be under control.

Sly groggers bought liquor of an inferior quality, he said, and then, after adulterating it with methylated spirits and petrol, sold it at considerable profit.

In reply to Mr. C. Campbell Spratt (for the New Zealand Alliance) the witness said that if the police had had the powers he advocated many of the abuses might have been removed.