POLICE AND PRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22608, 27 June 1935, Page 2

POLICE AND PRESS

LEADING EXPERT'S VIEW CLOSE RELATIONS URGED NEW ZEALAND RETICENCE. Significance to a question which vitally affects the community in matters of public safety is given by ex-Superin-tendent Percy Savage, of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department, discussing the relations of the police and the public in his recently-published autobiography, " Savage of Scotland Yard." The writer emphasises the grave neglect of the services available in the press. The subject is of considerable importance in New Zealand. There is as great a need in the Dominion for the police to secure the co-operation of the public to the full as there is in England or any other country. The absence of any adequate system of supplying proper information on crime to the public, inevitably through the press, has been a striking and unsatisfactory aspect of New Zealand conditions for many years, and it parallels the comparative backwardness of police methods _in the Dominion, when advanced practice overseas is taken into consideration. GAINING PUBLIC CONFIDENCE.

"In spite of the advantages which the progress of science and thought has delivered into the hands of the police authorities, there is one important and valuable arm of defence and offence that is sadly neglected," writes ex-Superin-tendent Savage. "I refer to the lack of efficient co-operation between the police and the public. It is a strange and regrettable fact that there is—and always has been—a strong disinclination in certain police circles to take the public fully and frankly into their confidence.

" When a murder or other grave crime is committed, why should not the public be informed of the essential facts, consistent, of course, with the interests of justice? And yet what happens? Information is frequently withheld from the press—the sole medium of communication with the public —and the consequence is that details which ought to be known are not divulged, false rumours are started, and the investigating officers grope about in an. atmosphere of chaos and doubt. The police want information. The public have it. Why not effect a working partnership? FIDELITY OF NEWSPAPERS.

"It is urged by those who favour the policy of silence that the press is more concerned with getting a 'good story' than with the interests of justice, and that they would magnify or distort any facts which were officially supplied. Personally, I think that anybody who is afraid of the press is afraid of himself. Newspapers are quite capable of taking care of themselves, and they know full well the limits to which they can go in any given case. In my capacity as a senior officer, I always used my discretion and gave the press all the information I possibly could. On not a single occasion have I known newspapers to go beyond these facts or to give publicity to facts which I asked them not to mention. I could quote case 3in which murderers and other criminals have not been caught because the public have not been told the points on which their assistance was wanted by the police. CRIME PREVENTION. "It is not only in the detection of crime that the public could be such a valuable ally of the police. The work of preventing crime—the policeman's primary duty—would be rendered far more effective if the police enlisted the prompt aid of the press in warning the public against the wily tricks and devices of criminals and adopting other methods to stifle any particular form of crime before it became epidemic. In my opinion more criminals would be caught and crime would materially decrease if re-, sponsible police officers were empowered to see accredited newspaper representatives and explain the various stages in the progress of an investigation." The public should be aware of the attitude of the police in many parts of New Zealand. A frequent experience in Auckland for some years past has been for officers investigating burglaries and other cases to warn citizens not to supply information to the press, a procedure the police, incidentally, are not entitled to adopt.