THE ETHICS OF SLY-GROG DETECTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 275, 17 May 1912, Page 4

THE ETHICS OF SLY-GROG DETECTION.

Mr. Justice Williams, following the example of Mr. Justice Chapman', has been discoursing from the Bench on the ethics of sly-grog selling. Both these prominent members of the judiciary are agreed that the police have a perfect right to use methods for the detection of the slygiog seller which would not be permissible in connection with other offences. There is a very general opinion that it is unconstitutional for the police to enter a sly-groggery in disguise or in plain clothes, with a view to inducing the proprietor to break the law and sell them drink. It is argued that such a procedure is un-British and unfair, and makes the person who uses it equally guilty with the other offender. But the tricks of the average sly-grog seller are as vain and his ways are as dark as those of the proverbial Heathen Chinee, and if convictions are to be secured the police have no option but to adopt their present methods. It takes both a buyer and a seller to complete the offence of sly-grog selling, and the buyer iB protected in a court of law from giving evidence if he so choose, on the ground that by so doing he might commit himself. He generally does suddenly display a solicitude for his welfare that is quite as healthy for the sly-grogger as it is for himself. The illicit sale of liquor, especially in prohibition areas, is one of the curses of the country, and it is necessary that it should be put down with an unsparingly strong hand. The police, for this reason, have no option but to enter suspected premises in dig*guise and run the offenders to earth by frankly participating in the offence. It I is to their credit that this extreme step I is never taken until they have a moral | assurance that the law is being continually broken. There is an old proverb that advises the setting of a thief to catch a thief, and in this case the two wrongs indubitably do make a right. The offence of sly-grog selling lies in the sin of being found out, ao far as the law is concerned, and it is quite impossible for the police to sheet home offences 1 without the employment of some form of secret service. When the informer openly admits that he is ventilating a private spite in "giving away" an offender, his evidence is open to a grave suspicion of bias, as well as being contemptibly mean. But the police have no I personal ends to serve, and in the preservation of law and order it is quite [permissible that they should enter sus- [ pected premises in mufti and attempt to catch the law-breakers in flagrante delicto. There is no other course open to them if this poisonous growth on the body politic is to be effectually scotched.