BROKE WINDOWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 1, 3 January 1939, Page 4

BROKE WINDOWS

TO BE LOCKED UP _

PREVENTIVE ACTION SUGGESTED

The suggestion that men who come to the police and ask to be locked up should at least be followed when they leave to see that they do no damage to property was made by Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., in the Magistrate's Court today when William, Ewbank, aged 45, hotel worker, appeared for sentence on a charge of committing mischief by wilfully damaging two plate glass windows, valued at approximately £50, the property of Lysons, Ltd. Ewbank had pleaded guilty. Constable McKee said that Ewbank had walked into the Taranaki Street Police Station early one morning and asked to be- locked up. He was advised to go home, but later he came back again and took a constable down the street to show him the two windows which he had broken with a stone so that he would be imprisoned. Sub-Inspector J. A. Dempsey said that Ewbank had no previous conyictionsj He had been under' treatment for tuberculosis and his wife had died recently. He had friends who would loobk after him and see that he did not become depressed agairi. Restitution was impossible. ' "It would be quite wrong of me to Impose a term of imprisonment," said the Magistrate. No doubt, he continued, Ewbank nad done this in a state of depression arisirig from his illness. -He would be admitted to probation for two years. The Magistrate said that he knew from his own experience of men who went out and did damage after the police had refused to. lock them up. He thought the police authorities should give 'consideration .to whether such men should be taken into custody. A person who would go into a police station and ask to be locked up was not normal. He doubted whether there was a legal difficulty about taking into custody such people, but if there were a difficulty such people should, at least be subject to observation afterwards tp prevent them doing damage. Sub-Inspector Dempsey said that men occasionally asked to be locked up, but after a talk with a police officer went away quite satisfied. During the depression years and for, a while later men i often came in looking for a night's lodging. Mr. Luxford replied that the Magistrates heard only of the cases iri which men did damage to be locked up. "If.they would only smash a small window," said the Sub-Inspector. "Unless you kept a window on the premises," suggested the Magistrate.