SOME POLICE METHODS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11567, 16 January 1913, Page 4

SOME POLICE METHODS.

We are glad to note from a paragraph appearing in our lust issue that the question of the propriety of the methods adopted by the police in procuring convictions of offenders under the Gaming Act has been referred by the Minister of Justice to the Commissioner of Police for a detailed report. We hope it will have the effect of putting a stop to a very obnoxious practice which, if permitted to continue, must place in the bauds of the police a power fraught with grave danger to individual liberty and the public safety. We referred to this question some tune ago in connection with a sly-grog prosecution in Masterton. The present action of the Minister of Justice arises out of a prosecution under the Gaming Act in Wellington last week. Jii the Mastertoit case, it will be remembered, a constable in plain clothes, supposed to be here on holiday leave, induced a man to sell liquor to him, and then lakl an information against the offender and got him lined. In the Wellington case, another constable in plain clothes, by representing himself to be a stranger in the city, induced a suspected bookmaker to make a bet with him, and then prosecuted the man and had him lined. Convictions in similar cases have been obtained in the same way elsewhere in New Zealand in recent years, and the modus operandi has more than once formed the subject of adverse comment on the part of judges and magistrates. We may say at once that we have very little sympathy lor sly-grog vendors, bookmakers, fortune-tellers, et hoc genus onine, who are usually idle and disorderly persons who prefer to make a living iy trading upon the weaknesses and credulity of their fel-low-men to doing honest work. We also recognise the very great difficulties with which the police are confronted in their efforts to secure evidence of wilful ami persistent breaches of the law. But in spite of this, we cannot think that it is wise, on general grounds of public policy, to recognise the right of the police, under any circumstances, to directly encourage and provoke a breach of the law for the purpose of securing a conviction against the perpetrator. Such a practice, indeed, presents a series of grave objections. In the first place, it means that a man who at a given moment is doing nothing unlawful can be induced to transgress by the guardian of law and order, and then be punished for doing so. If that is permissible very few people are , safe. Human nature is frail, and under temptation even very honourable people are apt to fall. In the second place, tho work of a spy is not clean work. The constables are not so much to blame as their superior officers from whom they receive their orders. However distasteful the work may be, they have to choose between obedience and dismissal without a good conduct discharge. We know that there are men in the police force who would not carry out such orders simply because spy-work is inconsistent with their notions of personal honour. On the other hand, there are many men so situated that they cannot afford to throw up their employment. The chief danger is that if it becomes generally understood that such work is expected of constables, it will prevent young men of high principle from joining the police force, which consequently will deteriorate in character. If the existing difficulties in the way of enforcing observance of the law are very great that is no doubt a matter for regret and for consideration, but we refuse to believe that any good can comet to tho community as a whole from tho employment of the practice under review, and we hope that the Minister of Justice will give definite instructions for its immediate discontinuance .