POLICE METHODS AND MORALITY. Lying and Deceit Permissible.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 128, 13 December 1902, Page 8

POLICE METHODS AND MORALITY. Lying and Deceit Permissible.

IF the police force of this city is to sink beneath the contempt of respectable people, it will be through conduct such as was brought out last week in the Muritai sly-grog gelling case. A storekeeper at Muritai was suspected of selling liquor without a license. Two callow police probationers from the Mount Cook barracks were selected to go cross the harbour, in plain, clothes, and work up a case against the suspect. Presumably, they received full instructions from their superior officers what line of conduct to adopt, and what measures are found most effective in such cases by the Force. • • • At any rate, the evidence brought out in Court proves conclusively that these two acolytes in the police line went in for a policy of wholesale deception and subterfuge in order to entrap their victim, and get him to sell them liquor. They told lies with brazen effrontery. And, under cross-examination in Court, they did not exhibit the slightest sihamefacedness over their conduct. They made a clean breast of their game of deception, and, apparently, thought there was nothing to cavil at in it. They told the storekeeper tall stories of pure fiction, lulled his suspicions, and took up his time by posing as intending purchasers' of land, and so forth, and by that means got him at last to sell them drink. • • • Such paltry expedients, and such disreputable means of building up a case against a suspected sly-grog seller, are surely opposed to all right notions of what is fair amd honourable. They shock one's sense of propriety. Instead of vindicating the law, they only drag it through the mire, and engender sympathy for the persons who are trepanned by the police in so despicable a way. More than that, the necessity to r sort to such mean, underhand, and disgraceful methods 1 is tantamount to a confession on the part of the police authorities that they are not smart enough to enfoiee the law, and bring the law-breakei to book without descending to his own level. • • . We are surprised beyond measure at the manner in which Stipendiary Magistrate McArthur condoned the conduct of these policemen. He seemed actu-

ally to go out of his way to justify them, and depreoate the cross-examina-tion through which they had been put. Counsel, he said, had submitted them to a pretty severe keel-hauling, and they had been placed in. a very unpleasant position. No wonder. Than, His Honor made the extraordinary remark that "we might have our own. ideas as to the ethics of the methods adopted, but we had to look at the matter from a practical standpoint." This is curious logic. • • • What credence deserves to be attached to the evidence of men who make no concealment of the fact that they deliberately worked up a case against the defendant by systematic lying and deception ? In the case of an ordinary witness, such an. admission, m ould render hi& evidence worthless. On the part of a policeman, it calls for the severest condemnation. Yet, Dr. McArthur, S.M., says blandly, "the tale told by the probationers — at any rate, bv on© of them — at Muritai might have been a LITTLE BIT OVERDRAWN (save the maork !) , at the same time, it was quite permissible." He also admitted there was a limit to this sort of thing, and "in this case he thought the probationers had not gone beyond it." We should very much like to know where Dr. McArthur, in his liberality of opinion upon police ethics, fixes this limit. • • • From his opinion, we appeal to the reported evidence, and invite the general public to say -whether these probationers did not far trangress the limits of fair play and upright, manly conduct. Far better that the licensing law should be broken than that it should be enforced by the agency of mendacity, mean deception, and dishonourable trickery. It is to* be hoped the attention of tihe Minister of Justice will be drawn to this case. Surely, such methods on the part of the police cannot meet witlh his approbation? At any rate, they outrage the canons which hold good in everyday life, and are utterly opposed to British fair-play. Let the sly-grog seller be severely dealt with, by all means, but let us bowl him out and bring him to book by clean and straightforward action.