SLEUTH WORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 126, 18 August 1927, Page 18

SLEUTH WORK

POLICE METHODS UNDER CRITICISM MR. POTTER ENTERS PROTEST (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter .) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. The investigation and tracking of criminals by the police was described Mr. V. H. Potter, Roskill, in the House of Representatives, as degrading and foreign to the principles of any decent man. He made a strenuous plea for an improvement in the methods adopted of putting men on this work under conditions which prevail at the present time. “Decent men resent doing this,” he said; “it hurts the decency of any respectable man to be a paid spy in the pay of the State. It is different from the position of the international spy.” Mr. Potter’s grievance was that men who had to prove themselves to be of first-class character, in order to get into the force, were sometimes placed on work that no decent man would willingly undertake. It was lowering them to the level of the criminals they were tracking. MARKED NOTES Mr. Potter quoted a recent betting case in Auckland where a policeman, who had not hitherto worn the uniform of the force, was placed in an hotel for four days prior to a race meeting in order to ingratiate himself with a certain man suspected of bookmaking. He spent money on drinks and other social amenities, all from the public purse, and was supposed to have handed the alleged bookmaker two | marked £1 notes at a given time. Detectives walked in at a certain time and failed to find the notes on the person under suspicion. This gave rise to a dangerous suspicion that the policeman had not given the notes to the man at all. ABOVE SUSPICION Members of the police force should be placed in a position where they would be above suspicion. Mr. Potter did not suggest that this man was not the most honourable man in the force, but the method of his working had led him to invite suspicion upon himself. Mr. Fi'aser: That sounds too terrible. Mr. Potter: Well, I want a proper hearing for our citizens, whether they are bookmakers, sly-grog sellers or church ministers. You might as well give the policeman a jemmy and let him go into a house with the housebreaker and ask if he can assist in the job.