THE POLICE COMMISSION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11556, 18 April 1898, Page 3

THE POLICE COMMISSION.

TIMARU.' The Police Comission sat atex* ma ™ on • Saturday, Colonel Hume, Inspect**. bridge and Mr T. E. Taylorbemgf prov™. Second-class Detective Livingstone, f* temporary charge of the sub-district, was first examined. He said the men of the local force were respectable, sober men, and the public were, he believed, thoroughly satisfied with them. Ho advocated a. pension scheme, and said the men would be -willing to give up their long-service pay towards it. He suggested improvements in the mariner of purchase of troop horses, and in the forage regulations. He thought the local authorities should be compelled to provide morgues near police stations. Recently a dead body had to be put in the iock-up at Geraldine. Tho Chairman said that hotel-keepers wprer compelled to receive corpses. Witness preferred practical street instruction to depot training. He was not a prohibitionist, and denied that he had taken a prominent part against the hotelkeepers in the prohibition interest. The licensing laws were as well observed in Timaru as anywhere, so far as he saw. As a detective he did not, and could not, take an active part in enforcing the licensing law. He denied that he had seen a former officer at Timaru frequently the worse for liquor. He had no personal knowledge of “political influence,” but it had until lately been common talk among tho men that it was an effective force. He knew of one case in which a transfer from Timaru was countermanded through it. _ Constables, ha thought, should retire at sixty, and detectives from active duty at fifty-five. The Commission then, inquired into a charge laid against Constable Mullaney, of Fairlie, by Mr Taylor, that bo was on too familiar tenns with tho licensee Of the Gladstone Hotel and his family to permit him to do his duty where that hotel was concerned. At the close of the evidence the Commission said the charge was unsupported, and no answer was called for. The constable called the Rev W. J. Comrie, Messrs P. K. Gillighan and J. A. H. M’Lean, J. P.’s, to speak to his exemplary conduct as a police officer. Sergeant Fraser, who had just returned from a holiday trip to Australia, was examined briefly. Constable Parker, of Waimate, attended to deny an imputation made against-him in the Clutha district, that he had given a sly grog-seller warning of a raid. Constable Weatheerd, gaol-keeper at Timaru, submitted a number of suggestions for the improvement of the force, which were promised consideration, and also asked that an old record against him should be inquired into and expunged as erroneous. He stated that he had beeu ordered to transfer to Methven, and wrote to the member for Timaru against it, but got no reply. He believed the order was cancelled because he showed the Inspector that he was unfit for the work at Metliveu because he could not ride. Mounted Constable Crawford complained of having been passed over and bad not received the promotion to which his long service, his activity, attested by his record, and his clean defaulter’s list entitled him.

The Rev W. Gillies attended, and made a number of charges against the police of neglect to enforce the provisions of the Licensing Act until they were compelled to do so by his action as a member of the Licensing Committee. A diversion was caused in reference to one charge that the Act was being evaded at one hotel by the existence of a second’bar. Inspector Tunbridge stated that this alleged second bar had been closed for the past twelve months. After completing bis evidence Mr Gillies left, and presently returned with a flask of spirits, which he had bought at this bar. Mr Tunbridge stated that he had just learned that tho bar bad been re-opened within a few days. The Commission finished its sittings at 4 p.m. -