Police Scandals in Ireland.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 37, 11 September 1902, Page 1

Police Scandals in Ireland.

The story of the doings of the infamous Sheridan — of which all the particulars at present available were given in last week's issue of the N.Z. Tablet— throws a lurid light on the way in which crime, and crime of the most odious character, is 'manufactured 'in Ireland. This miserable scoundrel was not content with merely provoking and inducing crime but actually committed it in order to blacken the good name of the Irish people in the political interests of his employers and of the landlords. When the crime was committed an entirely innocent man was arrested, the case was brought before a packed jury of political opponents of the accused, and in due course, on the false evidence of this brazen perjurer, the innocent man in the dock was sent to gaol while the real criminal was marked down for promotion in the force. In this way one innocent man was sentenced to three ye.-rs 1 imprisonment on a charge of setting fire to a hay-rick, another received six months on a charge of killing a donkey, while a third got three years' penal servitude for conviction on a charge of cutting off the tails of several cows, the crime in all three cases having been committed by the ruffian Sheridan himself. It is by means of convictions such as these that the records of agrarian ' crime ' in Ireland are built up and it is on the strength of convictions obtained in this way that coercion legislation is being revived and a policy of brutal tyranny enforced. In the meantime the perpetrator of this dastardly and outrageous conduct is allowed to escape scot-free, openly boasting that the authorities dare not prosecute him because if they did he ' would show them all up. 3

There is the best of reason for believing that this is no mere empty threat on Sheridan's part. Both Mr Dillon and Mr T. P. O'Connor, in the course of the House of Commons debate on the subject, expressed the conviction that Sheridan's villainy so far from being an isolated instance was an absolutely typical case, and that the whole of the Constabulary force in Ireland was honeycombed with this abominable system of manufacturing and encouraging crime. ' I know something myself,' said Mr Dillon, ' from the outside of the organisation of the Irish Police, and I say there is not a single police barracks that does not. contain a spy , and how was it that Sheridan was able to carry on so long without being suspected? I believe, and I am oonvnu ed— though I admit the great gravity of the charge— that Sheridan's operations were known (cheers) to many officers and men in the Constabulary , besides it was impossible, in view of the organisation of the police force, for such transactions to go on for five years without their coming to the knowledge of the detectives in the Force I have been assured, in fact, by constables and exconstables that there is no barracks where there is not a spy of nolice We believe that such a policy is winked at by the Government, and that many of the most startling and disgusting of the crimes in Ireland have been directly or indirectly, paid for and organised by the police (cheers . That is the opinion commonl) held throughout Ireland, and there is

already sufficient evidence of its truth to fully justify the Irish members in the vigorous demand they are making for a public inquiry into the matter.

Even apart from the special disclosures in the Sheridan case the whole constitution of the police force in Ireland calls loudly for reform. The Royal Irish Constabulary instead of being an organisation for the detection of crime and the administration of justice is, as Mr Dillon, in the debate already referred to, declared, ' a mililary force of occupation in Ireland ' whose chief work is to suppress public meetings, interfere with public rights of various kinds, and bolster up the hated system of landlordism. This force is, as Mr Dillon showed, the most expensive per head of the population of any force of a similar character in any country in the world, and instead of decreasing with the decrease in population the cost of maintaining this force has actually increased as the population diminished. In 1859-60, the cost of the Irish Constabulary was £700,000; the population of Ireland was about six millions. To-day, after the lapse of 40 years, the population is 4,400,000, and the cost of the Constabulary is over £1,300,000. In other words, the population has decreased by more than a million and a half, while the cost of the Constabulary has more than doubled. Mr Dillon also showed that the number of police in proportion to the population in Ireland is, under existing circumstances outrageous. In Great Britain, eliminating the metropolis, the police are in the proportion of one to every 1200 of the inhabitants. In Ireland, eliminating the city of Dublin, the police are, roughly, in the proportion of one to every 250 of the population. That is to say there are five times as many policemen in proportion to the population in Ireland as in Great Britain, and this notwithstanding that in the former country, in spite of the manufactured ' crimes ' of the Sheridan type, the proportion of crime is much smaller than in the latter. Under these circumstances it is indeed likely, as the Daily News remarks, that the public will agree with the Irish members that the time has arrived when the whole system of administering justice in Ireland needs the fullest revision.