SATURDAY NIGHT'S RIOT.

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume V, Issue 1319, 6 May 1905, Page 2

SATURDAY NIGHT'S RIOT.

TO'IBB EDITOR.'' Sin,—Anyone who knows Waihi will admit thitit ia a town of weli-coaduoted, sober, indnetrious, and law-abiding inhabitants, I havo known the place for nearly fifteen years, and have always found it so. This being the case, we have to look under tho surface, to discover the cauy of last Saturday's outbreak, I think } I onn put my finger on the sore place at once, and that is the appointment of Sergeant Bheohan to the omeo lie holds as offioer in charge of tho police in this district. I! we look back only five years, when Constable jWhelan was the only policeman in the place, we never bad any trouble with our criminal or qaasi-oriminal classes, and if one of them caused the constable any annoyance the populace would render the man in blue auy assistbiiob he might want to lodge his prisoner in the look-up, and that was " all right." When Sergoant Brcnpan was placed in cbarge the same happy state of affairs existed,' There has buen a sad change since Sergeant Sheehan cnme here. He and the con«tab'es under bin; have been nng, nagging, at everyone. If you look into a shop-window yon are told to move qd ; if you stop to light your pipo or cigarette you aro requested "o go np the hill and smoke; if you stand 011 tho kerb ' speaking to a frieud you are ordered to go home. All three petty annoyances tend to ruffle the feelings of men who have hitherto enjoyed a certain araobnt of liberty. The majority of the men on the streets on a Saturday night are engaged'eight hours a day underground, and as Saturday is tho only night in the woek in which they have a chance of having a yarn with others who are engaged on a different shift from, themselves, they naturally resent this autocratic treatment. This feeling has been growing ever since the advent of Sergeant Meohap into our midst, and it culminated oil Saturday night, when a man who is usually a quiet and inoffensive person was arrested, and showed a disinclination to be lod to the booby-hutch. Under different circumstances there would have been no demonstration whatover, but the feeling of exasperation has been growing far some timo, and it found vent in the scene of Saturday night. Personally, Sergeant She'ehan may be an (stimablo man, and ft? a policoman he may have been a good officer, but as a sergoant in charge of this town ho has beon a failure. The tbreo constables under him are, I have no doubt, exccllont officers, bnt they have to oboy o r deri>, no matter how disagreoablo these orders may be to themselves, If these few observations of mine are taken in the spirit in which they are written, there will be no recurrence of the scene of Saturday night.—l aoi, etc., The Mix in the Street,