THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1903. THE POLICING OF AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12303, 22 June 1903, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1903. THE POLICING OF AUCKLAND.

It is the special privilege of a freeborn British subject to grumble at the police, who themselves add zest to that ancient and honourable practice by providing us with frequent and sufficient cause. But no good citizen ever criticises the police from an inimical and antagonistic point of view. On the contrary, we all wish the force to be as perfect as any human organisation can be. The public only exercises its inherent right of criticism when it rightly or wrongly conceives that the police force fails in its duty and does not afford to the community the protection we have a right to expect. In Auckland the force is so greatly undermanned and so seriously overworked that we cannot reasonably expect it to afford us effective protection. It does its best—of that we are thoroughly satisfied what can be clone when every man has to do two men's work and is being perpetually called from that-to perform special duty. Mr. Cullen has emphatically called the attention of the Department to the state of things in his district. We have repeatedly endeavoured to impress upon the Government the necessity for either strengthening the force or reducing its work, or both. Yet nothing is done. Mr. Parr has given notice of his intention to move on the City Council in the matter. We have no hesitation in saying that a stronglyworded resolution would reflect the feeling of the city, and we may at least hope that its influence upon the Government might not be utterly null and void. For no Southern town has such serious police needs as we have, and, indirectly, the whole colony suffers by the inadequate policing of this chiefest of its gates.

The police force of Auckland is practically the same as it'was when the city was much smaller in population and when police duties were not nearly as numerous or as complicated as they are now. Vv'e had never too large a police force, and are exceedingly unlikely ever to have one, for the sedulous watch kept upon police expenditures in this, as in every other British community, contrasts strangely with the indifference that ignores gross extravagance in other directions. But there is reason in all things, and there should be reason in this. We may have our own opinion upon the peculiar policy of secrecy which distinguishes the New Zealand force and appears to have become a principle with the local staff, but what

is more natural than that an ineffective organisation should seek to cover by silence the proofs of its ineffectiveness 1 We may not .regard " fairly ■ well conducted" as indication of that close surveillance of hotels which the police are assumed to carry out, but what can we expect from worn-out officers and exhausted constables 1 If we are reasonable ourselves we must frankly recognise that the position of the police is an intolerable one, unjust to themselves and misleading to the public. It is not possible for them to explain the situation on each and every occasion that their ineffectiveness is shown, and we all know sufficient of the tangleness of red-tape to imagine that the inspector could improve matters by daily appeals to Wellington— daily indeed does the under-manning difficulty make itself felt. The police authorities protect us very much better, than we have any right to expect them to, under existing circumstances. The shortcomings of the force, after making all necessary allowance for individual weaknesses and for doubtful methods, are due to its numbers being totally insufficient for the work it has to do.

Were the police occupied in protective work alone it would need strengthening, for, with the growth of our city, problems more difficult than mere increase in the area to be watched gradually appear. Not only do great stores of valuable goods begin to form non-residential quarters, not only does jewellery become more common, but a professionally criminal class begins to form in our midst and to attack us from abroad. No more serious injustice is done the police than to imagine that they look on idly while these professional freebooters raid our cities. But the laws designed for the protection of honest men also protect known and notorious thieves, particularly as our magistrates are constitutionally reluctant to question "visible means of support" represented by coin of the realm. The police may know the members of a raiding gang from Sydney, as well as the latter know the local detectives, but they must not only suspect them of crime, but must convict them by jury-satisfying evidence. It is a case of the lawbreakers watching the law-keepers, with all the advantages on their side, for the police are too few for their ordinary duties and cannot spare the men who would be required to afford us effective special protection. Then, of course, we blame the police, when the Administration alone is to blame and when the police have been trying with all their might to do the practically impossible. For although our police force is as it was, we have not only an increased and more complicated city, but every Parliament places some fresh duty upon the broad shoulders of the worried constable. . Police courts and supreme courts and district courts all call for police attendance. So do inquests and fires and jury-summonses. Every by-law and every regulation, every Act of Parliament involving penalty and every new excursion of statutory law, add to the work of the police. While from Auckland City, the country stations are usually filled and the country reliefs drawn, to the obvious increase of local difficulties which can thus never be met by a thoroughly trained and permanent corps. The remedy is in the hands of the Government, not in that of the municipality, but the city is so deeply and vitally concerned that the Council will be entirely justified if it decides to petition the Administration for prompt and sufficient increase in the local police force.