The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, JULY 17, 1928. SCOTLAND YARD ENQUIRY.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 July 1928, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, JULY 17, 1928. SCOTLAND YARD ENQUIRY.

Tins inquiry into the conduct of the police in the Savidge case has had an inconclusive and unfortunate result. Two members of the Commission “accept without qualification” the statements of the police as to the way in which M'ss Savidge was treated and questioned at Scotland Yard. Tho third commissioner, however, who is a 'Labour member of Parliament, rejects the police version of the case, and lays' stress on “the. extent to which the issue of the liberty of the subject is raised by the whole episode.” Apparently, comments an exchange, the majority report exonerates the police from all suspicion of perjury. Rut in any case what the general public are most concerned about is the question of tho rights of the privnte citizen against the police. As the “Spectator” pointed out when this present investigation was set on foot, what is most urgently demanded is an inquiry into “the general conduct of tho police in regard to public offences.” The excitement aroused in Parliament and the country by the Savidge case was due to the growing conviction that inquisitorial methods alien from British procedure are being employed by the police at Home, and that the British tradition in favour of the accused till he is proved guilty is being ignored. As to the “third degree” and similar aberrations, these can, of course, be regulated and controlled by the authorities. But a wider question is involved in the attitude taken up by the police ton ards forms of personal conduct, which in their opinion may be regarded as transgressing the code of social morality. On this issue the “Saturday Review” has recently pronounced an opinion which seems to us to deserve very serious consideration. It maintains that “the police aro not the guardians of public morals.” Their duty is to protect the plain citizen from annoyance in. his walks abroad, not to maintain a moral code.” And the logical inference is that no one should lie convicted on charges of personal misconduct “on tho unsupported evidence of the .police.” Apparently .this is the conclusion to which Scotland Yard has been driven by the agitation over the Savidge case, for the police have simply ceased to arrest in cases in which they cannot secure independent witnesses. There is, of course, an obvious danger to public morality in this, but we agree with the “Saturday Review” that this a less serious matter thf»T} “the

danger of injustice to the innocent individual.” And this view of the question is strengthened by the natural tendency of police headquarters and the Home Office to back up their subordinates in tho performance of their duties. A striking proof of this tendency is the ease of Major Graham Murray, who was arrested last August on a charge of being drunk and disorderly and molesting women. On conviction he appealed and was finally vindicated, and eventually the Homo Office paid him £SOO compensation. But its reluctance to admit the mistake of the police officers, and its efforts to shield them, certainly help to confirm the idespread conviction that the liberties of the average British citizen are seriously threatened by the existing methods of police procedure.