The passing of a sentence of two months' imprisonment on a Chinese! detective of\the Shanghai Municipal} Police for illegal arrest has brought to a conclusion an important case which has been occupying the attention of Magistrate Yui and! Mr. Blackburn (British Assessor) at the Mixed Court for some time past. Accused was alleged to have instigated his four seconds to arrest the complainant without a warrant and without proper authority, and to have compelled him to kneel while he administered a beating.
In the course of his judgement, the Assessor said "It is not the policy of this or any other Court to put such obstacles in the way of the Police} as to render the detection and arrest of guilty persons impossible. Where a crime has been committed and where a police officer in the recourse of his inquiries finds someone he honestly thinks may have been implicated, and.that person evades investigation and seems likely to escape arrest altogether, the police officer, I have no hesitaton in saying, may arrest, but he must do it himself and he' cannot} do it by deputy, and unless h decides at oned to release his prisoner' after investigation on the spot. he must: take him, not to a! tea shop, but to the Station.
"On the subject of detectives' seconds, there is no reason whatever why a detective should not have a dozen seconds if he wants to, providing they are only the eyes and ears of detectives and not his hands and arms. They can bring him information, but they have no authority whatever to lay a finger on a person, except in circumstances where any citizen has that authority, and a detective has no right whatever to sit down in a tea shop and send out his satellites to bring anyone before him. The whole proceedings by western standards are a gross excess of authority. conclusion that Major Holcomb's the unfairness of ithe police in the conduct of this case are en' ively uncalled for. T; am sure Mr. Snyder will admit that nothing could have been fairer than the way in which Det.-Insp. Reeves and Det.-Sgr. Knight gave evidence. Here a Chinese police officer has slipped up and so the whole administration is fair game and; may be shot at, but I wish those who are so loud in their denunciations of the police when they do make a mistake would be equally energetic in the praise of the extremely good work of §he police which they do every day'in the course of their ordinary duties, all of which passes almost without; Yecognition except from those who realize the enormous—difficulties which attach to the Police work in a Settlement like this."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.