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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 33, Number 9. 25 June, 1970

The Police

The Police

People who I spoke to after the demonstrations almost invariably had much more to say about the behaviour of the police than that of the demonstrators. This was natural enough from some points of view, but one thing should be made clear: it is grossly hypocritical to oppose police violence and to condone violence on the part of demonstrators. Many students appear to have been guilty of this hypocrisy.

I am inclined to believe that most of the allegations made against the police have some substance. I witnessed one incident myself where a policeman, who has since been identified to me as Detective-Sergeant C.W. Lines, kicked a demonstrator. The same incident was witnessed by a member of the Salient staff (and, no doubt, by a hundred or more people in the crowd). This member of the Salient staff also witnessed, with Margaret Bryson, the President, the same policeman punch another demonstrator.

I have also seen photographs (some of which are published in this issue) of other incidents and I have heard descriptions by reliable witnesses of incidents where members of the police seem clearly to have acted with undue force. In the case of the arrest being made in the back page photograph, it seems reasonable to ask why the person arrested, whose hands seem to be fully occupied with the task of hanging onto his duffle bag, should have his hair pulled. Incidents like this were frequent, it seems. Many of the people who spoke to me about the demonstrations seemed surprised that I was interested in such mundane acts of violence as the hair-pulling, arm-bending, kicking and many other perverse processes by which members of the police restrained demonstrators from committing the acts of violence which they (I suppose one means the demonstrators) were about to embark on.

It is also almost true to say, as NZUSA President Paul Grocott has said, that "on Friday night particularly, any of the 600 demonstrators still present outside the Majestic Theatre could have been arrested for exactly the same reason that 34 people were." The arrests appeared to be almost completely random; the police just began to pick people out from the periphery of the crowd and march them away. The first arrests were made while Grocott was in the middle of making an appeal to the demonstrators to end the sit-in in Willis Street.

Those persons who were arrested were treated very badly by the police and of this there is no doubt whatsoever. They were denied access to counsel in several cases, they were—and I am convinced that this was deliberately done—effectively denied sleep by the police through a series of petty harrassments such as transferments from one cell to another, the withholding of blankets (although these were readily available) and constant interruptions. They were not given an opportunity to wash before the Court Session on Saturday morning and consequently appeared before the Magistrate—unwashed and without sleep for 36 hours—much as the police would have wished them to look.