POLICE METHODS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 614, 19 August 1933, Page 5

POLICE METHODS

(Press Assn.

WAY OF SECURING THEIR EVIDENCE QUESTIONED IN COURT THE PEOPLE'S OWN LAW

— By Telegraph — Copyright).

New Plymouth, Friday. When Dominik Sisarich was before the Supreme Court to-day on a charge of bookmaking at Stratford liis counsel attacked the methods of the police in seeking evidence against bookmakers hy making bets with them. He commented particularly on the part played by Constables Groombridge and Hodge. He pointed out that the former was a probationer constable and suggested that temptation was there to regard this work as a means towards promotion. Counsel said he did not mean that policemen were deliberately dishonest, but the fact remained that many persons did not eonsider that the methods they followed were fair. At least they were not the methods one would trust in everyday business. It was a vicious method of crime detection, and there was temptation for young probationer constables to get results at all costs. It would be idle for him to discuss with the jury whether it approved of the law, said Mr. Justice Ostler, in summing up. The fact was that the law had been in force since 1920. If the public did not like it, its remedy was to elect representatives to Parliament who would change. it, but until that was done it was the duty of all law-abiding citizens to observe it, and he presumed the jurymen were all law-abiding citizens. Constable Groombridge's methods had been criticised, but his evidence was uncontradicted. It had been found that it was practically impossible to detect certain kinds of crime without the use of these methods, and commissions on the police force in England had approved them. In Great Britain and in the Dominions these methods were used for the detection of certain crime.