REFLEX OF PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 132, 5 June 1937, Page 8

REFLEX OF PEOPLE

POLICE FORCE

NEW SOUTH WALES INQUIRY

AN IMPASSIONED APPEAL

(From "The Post's" Representative^)

SYDNEY, May 28.

The police force of New South Wales is very much in the news at the moment. Many allegations concerning police conduct have been made before the Royal Commission on the police and starting-price betting prosecutions, and interest reached its climax this week when the Commissioner of Police (Mr. Mackay) made an impassioned appeal to his Honour Mr. . Justice Markell on behalf of the force.

The appeal was made in dramatic circumstances, for Mr. Mackay had undergone an operation, and after he had made his appeal he returned to hospital for further rest. Speaking with unconcealed emotion' he said that the police had been taught an awful lesson as a result of the Royal Commis"We, in the police force," he went on, "have to make the best of the material that is available. This material is from the people. It represents the people, and has all the faults of the people. Sometimes we get in the police force men who have an aptitude for police work, and sometimes we get men who have virtue. Sometimes we have men who have poor virtues, and sometimes we have men who fall away from all the virtues they possessed when they joined. But I would like to assure your Honour that this is not for want of trying or watching the position clearly and closely all the time, not by my-~lf but by many, many officers who have given their lives to the police force."

SOME LAWS HARD TO ENFORCE. Mr. Mackay went on to say that the police had frequently to deal with laws which were hard to enforce. The gaming and betting and" hotel laws were hard to enforce, and from day to day a police officer was torn between what he should do,.and the tongue of ill-fame "If we do not raid the Hotel Australia or some other place we are condemned," he added, "but if we do raid it, we have to go in there and say to decent people sitting in the lounge, ■Excuse me, have you a key to you bedroom, and are you I™ J«f ejL Th°se people come from the country and from abroad, and they are spending their money in our city. Yet all nltime I have to be on the qm vive. I dare not go into the Hotel Australia (the largest hotel in Sydney). For three years I have not been there in casf I will be condemned for being there. A man who is going to be a police executive must divorce himself from every phase of personal, enjoyment likely ; to bring his name before to police officers who had been dismissed from the force fox framing and false evidence and other S with betting, Mr. Mackay added that some of these men had joined the. force as clean-hvmg and I want to help remove this stigma that is on the State. Let us keep our troubles in this State to «£ not parade them before the whole world and say 'We are rotters. Let i|o try to put our own house m.ordei. The Royal Commission is proceeding.