THE POLICE FORCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 16, 19 June 1913, Page 17

THE POLICE FORCE.

CONSTABLE SMYTH'S DISMISSAL. > Christchurcb, June 17. Seen by n Press representative to-day' on the subject of ex-Constable Smyth's ■ '.so, the Hon. A. L. Herdman, Minister i.i' Justice, made the following state-j li.ent, dealing with the grounds for l-Jinvth's disnjissal from the force: "The facts in Smyth's case are these," said Mr. Ilenlmaii, "Complaints had been made to the Grcymouth police that timber had been disappearing from the trucks on the wharf, and Constable Smyth was specially instructed to watch these trucks, and to report to the seniorsergeant at his (the senior-Bergeant's) house at 5 o'clock in the morning. Constable Smyth, without any satisfactory explanation, left his beat between 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning, and came to the station, and was found there by the senior-sergeant at about 4 o'clock, when he should have been on his beat. The senior-sergeant inspected the book in which it is the duty of constables on duty to record the time when they coine off duty. Smyth had entered in the book before 4 a.m. that lie had come off duty at 5 a.m. When he was questioned, he put forward the plea that lie did not know the time, and the answer to that statement was that there was a clock in the watch-house a few feet from the table at which Smyth made his record, and he must have known when he got to the station that he had arrived there before 4 a.m. It was ridiculous to suppose that a man when he came off his beat would not look at the clock. Secondly, he could quite well have heard on the wharf the striking of the town clock. I went down to the wharf when the bouts were working, when the railway trucks were being shunted, and when there was a general'clamor, and both the inspector and myself distinctly heard the striking of the town clock. Smyth has been 'in the service only twelve months,, and his conduct at Auckland had nothing whatever to do with his dismissal from the force at Greymouth. It is quite impossible to have a man in the police force who acts as this man has done."