AN IMPUDENT CHARGE.

NZ Truth, Issue 70, 20 October 1906, Page 8

AN IMPUDENT CHARGE.

Shameful Police Prosecution.

It is a piece of damnable effrontery for copperdom to charge a man with being a low down vagrant,- having no lawful visible means of support, when he doesn't belong to that class of noclass person at all. Due care should always be exercised by puffing peelers when making allegations against, the unfortunates they cell that there is substantial evidence to back them up. But there is a happy-go-lucky system extant of entering up a charge of any old sort, leaving the accused to refute it if he is able (and if he's a stranger he often isn't), or to alter it to something else when the hearing, comes m. There was a glaring instance of this at Christchurch lately when one Peter Mackin was hauled up under the vag, and the case was adjourned for him to procure witnesses. It then appeared that he had been working at the Bays, and on arrival m town had given his oof to a local hottelkeeper to mind for him. He got this by instalments, and dallied round town paying court to the seductive glass containing matter of an ;,mber complexion, until the police •began to "take notice." Too much mooning around the block even without cash always' attracts notice, and m Mackin 's case a copper was drawn to him as though he were a magnet, the upshot being that he was incontinently shot m and housed at the Government expense. The hotelkeeper and the captain of a vessel would have testified m his favor, but the police, after making enquiries, found that the man didn't belong to the criminal class, that he wasn't a loafer, and that his only known idiosyncracy was frothy liquid. Under the circumstances .no charge would lie, and . the case was withdrawn, but it was intimated that the defendant was wishful for the issue of an order for prohibition. That desire was roon complied with, and m addition a magisterial homily on the healthiness of work was thrown m by way of a bonus. There are any number of individuals kicking about the city who toil not but who always swig gin— when they can cadge it— who might have more right of occupancy of the police cells on the vagrancy charge, than many who haven't. They are inscrutable, and there isn't a detective' in private clobber floating round who has prescience enough to discover how they obtain food and [ get drunk sometimes into the bargain without soiling their mauleys. If a beak were called 'upon to ask some of these living mysteries a few pertinent questions now and again the resultant information would be of supreme interest to people who graft like blazes every day and can then only just make ends meet.