USE OF TRUNCHEONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 September 1932, Page 7

USE OF TRUNCHEONS

MAGISTRATE’S ADVICE TO POLICE More frequent use of their truncheons in street brawls by police officers was advocated yesterday by Mr Pope, the Clerkenwell magistrate, recently. Frank Francis Jenkins, 31, a dispense hand, and Joseph Smith. 23, a labourer, both of Upper Holloway, were sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment and four weeks’ respectively for assaulting P.-c. Hague. Smith was fined' 40/- and 20/- costs for assaulting a civilian. Police evidence was that when the officer arrived to arrest Smith for the assault on the civilian on Bank Holiday, Smith struck and kicked him, bringing him to the ground three times, and Jenkins kicked him on the head when he was on the ground. f■ . ♦

Other officers arrived, and a crowd assembled. ! Mr Harry Ricketts, for the defence, I suggested that the police account was] much exaggerated. A*fter the affray, he remarked. Smith looked “as if he| had been handled by a nursemaid.’’ The police would have deqlt with hint more roughly if their story had been correct. Detective Sergeant Romans said both men had been previously convicted of assaults, and belonged to gangs who sought to terrorise the I neighbourhood. Smithes real name was Soutl-wood. Mr Pope said it . did strike him as remarkable that during the. affray none of the officers drew his truncheon. “I am far from having it understood' that I take the view that the truncheon should be used as it is sunposed to be used by American police,’’ he added, “but I am of opinion that the sooner a, street brawl is brought to an end the better.”