OPINION SUSTAINED?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 19 October 1942, Page 2

OPINION SUSTAINED?

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY A detective’s lot may be no happier than a policeman’s- Evidence: a scene reported by New York papers to have occurred in a Yorkville court. A detective had been called something else by a man he had arrested for failing to identify himself; the man established his identity and then offered a few unflattering opinions about the detective. The detective “brought him in” again on charges of disorderly conduct The magistrate sang the detective a little song: Sticks and stones May break your bones But names will never hurt you. Charles Lamb would agree with the magistrate. “Don’t make me ridiculous,” he wrote in August, 1800. to Coleridge, “by terming me gentlehearted in print .. . substitute drunken dog, ragged head, self-shav-en, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet.” And the only testimony Lewis Carroll would add is a mild lecture to the defendant, not on what names he should call a detective, but on how to make them most effective. Such epithets, like pepper. Give zest to what you write; And, if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick You spoil the matter quite! Apparently nobody but a little bey ; loves a “copper.” When the detec- j tive later argued the case with an j attorney, he was told that “calling a policeman a name isn’t disorderly conduct provided no crowd collects,” and that courts have so held in the past. It is hoped, says “The Christian Science Monitor” this statement will not prove too great a temptation to too many people, or there will be no protection for policemen except to avoid being seen in groups of less than three. As for detectives, the less they are seen the better, as even members of their own profession ; agree.