A NEEDFUL INQUIRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20174, 7 February 1929, Page 8

A NEEDFUL INQUIRY.

There, is full justification for the action of the Minister of Justice in instituting a public inquiry into the conduct of all or any of the members of the police force in regard to the investigations made and the steps taken by them concerning the death of Elsie Walker. As the inquest proceeded it became increasingly and inescapably evident that such an inquiry ought to be under- ! taken as a sequel. Doubts were ! raised as to whether all requisite | measures had been taken by the | police to discover the cause of death. • Further, it became inevitable to ask ! whether some actions of some members of the force had not tended to make a decisive finding by the coroner more difficult to reach than lit need have been. There was even left room to doubt whether some concerned in the investigations made and steps taken were clearly seized of their duty in such cases: it was apparent, at all events, that the regulations applicable were not understood with precision bv all of them. But of chief import was the growing impression that, at some points, the police investigation was vitiated by culpable delay on the part of this or that member of the force. Broadly put. the position is that the evidence given at the inquest led inevitably to the conclusion, in the public mind, that there had been a lack of tlie thoroughness and promptitude that ought to characterise police action in so grave a case. To this conclusion the coroner himself came, and 'he performed a plain duty in accompanying his verdict, necessarily open in some respects, with a direct and forceful expression of opinion that an inquiry ought to be made into this whole matter. ''The public are entitled to better service from the police than they received in this case" were his emphatic words, at the conclusion of his review of the evidence. It is to be hoped that the inquiry will sift thoroughly this phase of the case, a case so distressing in itself that the associated disquiet concerning the manner of the police investigation is the more poignant and intense.