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Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 826, 17 June 1871, Page 2

The reductions that have recently been made in the police force in this district are as imprudent as the saving effected in departmental expenditure is unimportant, and it is just possible that we shall not awaken to a full sense of the danger to which a community, so circumstanced ns ours, is exposed by the withdrawal of the necessary protection to life and property, until some deed of violence has been accomplished with impunity. We learn from our Wcstland exchanges, that intelligence reached Greymouth on Monday of a

I sticking.up" case at Half-Ounce, the victim being a Mr James Magof. flu. The robbers—two men—entered Magoffin's store shortly after one o'clock on Monday morning and took away cash and gold to the value of £290, besides other articles. "We have heard previously that several notorious and desperate characters including ono who is known to have been intimately connected with Burgess, Kelly, Levy and Sullivan, of infamous memory, had recently passed through Greymouth, on their way up-country, in the direction of the Grey Valley ; and it is inferred that the perpetrators of the outrage at Half-Ounce form a portion of the gang. Another stick-ing-up case is reported as having occurred in the same locality shortly after the above, but the particulars says the " Greymouth Star " are not to hand. We are free to acknowledge that the members of our police force are highly efficient, experienced and active officers, yet they cannot be omnipresent, neither is it possible that the multifarious duties which they are called upon to discharge should not interfere with their active duties as officers of police. This district, which includes Westport, Charleston, Brighton, and, indeed, the whole country north of Eazorback, having a population of about 5000 people scattered over a tract of country comprising several thousand square miles, is supposed to be sufficiently protected by a police force numbering seven officers, five of whom are almost entirely occupied as clerks, bailiffs, or collectors of revenue, leaving, as it were, but two officers whose services are entirely disengaged for active duty.