BRITISH POLICE METHODS

Taranaki Daily News, 12 June 1928, Page 9

BRITISH POLICE METHODS

LONDON JUDGE'S CRITICISM » —d t “INTERROGATION IS UNFAIR” CORROBORATION REQUIRED By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Australian Press Association. Received June 11, 7.15 p.m. London, June 11. Mr. Justice L. A. Atherley-Jones, Judge of Mayor’s City of London Court since 1913, speaking in London, attacked the police and condemned their practice of extracting evidence from arrested persons by interrogation. If, he said, accused persons volunteered to make a statement they should be left to write it out themselves. Prosecutions for indecency should not be brought unless corroboration other than by the police was available. The practice of sending police in evening drese to buy champagne at night clubs savoured of the Continental agent-provo-cateur method. The proper procedure in the case of Miss Savage would have been to write and make an appointment and obtain her statement, not to drive up to her employers and carry her off to Scotland Yard. The Press recalls Judge AtherleyJones’. activity in the Cash case in 1887, when a girl named Walker was wrongly charged with being ft street walker. The Ministry refused Judge AtherleyJones’ demand for an inquiry, was defeated, and then granted an inquiry.