LONDON CITY POLICE DISPUTE.

New Zealand Mail, 29 January 1902, Page 17

LONDON CITY POLICE DISPUTE.

The trouble between the Chief Commissioner of the City Police, Sir Henry Smith, K.C.8., and the City Corporation is at an end. Sir Henry has sent in his resignation, and the Court of Common Council has accepted it.

Moreover, it is announced that he was to give up office so soon as the end of the year, and will retire on a pension of £750 a year. The salary attached to the post is £ISOO, and already Major-General Mackinnon is being mentioned as a candidate for it.

Though Sir Henry has had sixteen years’ service with the City Police, his relations with the Corporation have not latterly been of the most pleasant description. The City Police had many severe critics in regard to the breakdown on C.I.V. day, and Sir Henry took occasion shortly afterwards to make a sharp reply. “Were I placed in similar circumstances to-morrow,” he said, “I should issue precisely similar orders to those I issued on October 25.” Tho matter in dispute not being a pleasant one, the Corporation had taken to discussing it with closed doors, and on December 2 all but aldermen and councillors who sought admission t® 'the

chamber at the Guildhall were turned back. However, the deliberation was not very protracted. Sir Henry, who is sixty-six years of age, retired from the Army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and from 1885 to 1890 ho was chief superintendent of tho City Police, in the latter year assuming the office from which he now retires. For his services he was decorated K.C.B. in the Diamond Jubilee year. The new Chief Commissioner of the City Police will have some gigantic tasks set him next year in regard to the Coronation. •