The Sun MONDAY, JULY 16, 1928. FAIR PLAY FOR THE POLICE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 407, 16 July 1928, Page 8

The Sun MONDAY, JULY 16, 1928. FAIR PLAY FOR THE POLICE

THE average policeman usually is well able to look after himself in a tussle with the kind of people who are all the better for his attention, but when the test of his merits and methods is taken into the political field he is clearly at a disadvantage. Evolutionary progress of nations has not yet, unfortunately, provided a law empowering the police to clout a talkative politician on the head with a truncheon as the quickest way to an end of argument. Hence, it may not be unreasonable to ask for fair play for the police. This need has been demonstrated in the fierce discussions in the British House of Commons about the methods of the London police generally, but particularly those dealing with the interrogation of witnesses. New Scotland Yard, with its great staff of 20,000 men, indisputably the finest army of police in the world, has been brought under - the lash of political and public criticism for the manner in which several of its officers badgered a young woman concerned in a charge of philandering with a famous economist in Hyde Park, which, though many policemen might refuse to believe it, is as good a place as any to talk about economics. Both she and the man in the case were acquitted in circumstances that suggested perjury on the part of the police. Here, it is right to mention that even policemen have been proved to be notorious liars.

In this ease, however, Scotland Yard resented the suggestion as to perjury, and set out to secure evidence in support of the police. Its administrators hauled the young woman to headquarters and subjected her to a gruelling interrogation. The zeal of the authorities is more easily understandable than pardonable, for their action was undeniably outside the law. There is not a word in the Common Law which justifies the police in compelling a witness to go to Scotland Yard and he examined. As has been emphasised in England, a witness can be compelled to attend at a law court and nowhere else.

It is to be noted with regret that the report of the tribunal which investigated the Hyde Park case does not censure the police for ignoring the law that protects witnesses. Two members of the commission of inquiry accepted the evidence of the police, and gave Scotland Yard officials an honourable discharge, holding that the police officers <jid not treat the young woman with a lack of propriety. The other member of the tribunal, in a minority report, saw more truth in the woman’s evidence than in that of the police, and considered that the inspector and officers concerned were deserving of censure. It looks as though the minority was right and the majority wrong. While there may have been ample cause for protest against the use of American “third degree” tactics with the object of reducing an exhausted witness to hysterical statements which might be merely 1 incriminating falsehoods instead of confession, there has been no apparent valid reason for the insinuation in the political arena that Scotland Yard has lost its traditional sense of British justice, its firm courtesy which, occasionally, of course, like the Scotsman’s change, may often be only just right, and is not above suspicion as to corruption. Fortunately, the inquiry into police methods is to be extended over a wide field of investigation and pressed with a ruthless thoroughness. The police, as well as the public, should welcome a comprehensive inquiry.

No policemen in the world enjoy anything like the splendid reputation of London’s force for leaving citizens alone so long as they do not trespass over the line which divides the illegal conduct from the legal. It is essential to restore public confidence, but in the keen movement toward that desirable end, it is right that the public should be prepared to give the police fair play. Scotland Yard is not the home of bone-headed policemen that the writer of cheap detective stories and the author of thrilling stage dramas has set before the nation. It is still the centre and source of honest justice.