by Ray Whitrod
I still entertained some illusions about the world. My much earlier reading of those absorbing novels by Edgar Wallace of the Nigerian adventures of “Sanders of the River” and of the doings of his young Assistant District Officer Bones, with their enforcement team of Askaris, had left behind a rosy image of the life of a colonial law enforcer. But Edgar Wallace, despite his expertise in solving criminal mysteries, had overlooked the underlying difficulties of such an arrangement, even in the then-stable Nigeria. I was largely ignorant about the situation in TPNG, but I quickly learned that the Territory was already undergoing major social change. A constitutional reappraisal was imminent. This was a political reorganisation being pushed by Canberra but resisted in some TPNG quarters as premature.
From the policing aspect, these changes were being made against the backdrop of a criminal justice system that was an amalgamation of western legal philosophies applied by force to a tribal society composed of over 700 linguistic groups. Its enforcement employed the continental principles of policing: the suppression of lawbreaking by regulations imposed from above. This form of policing had been used by the British colonial administrations in what could be termed “occupied territories” such as India, Ireland and Africa. Police in these regions were actually armed gendarmerie who made arrests on orders from superiors. I regarded this model as unacceptable except as a temporary measure. For me, a police job is a vocation — one which helps provide an essential feature of democracy: the maintenance of law and order by common assent to a process in which individual constables make their own decisions.
I had much to learn. In the short time before my departure, I had tried to read some of the material available in the libraries of the ANU, which meant that I arrived in Port Moresby with that dangerous commodity, a little knowledge. I had been unable to track down any account of a police force making the transition from the role of the gendarme to that of the London bobby. That apparent absence of literature should have rung alarm bells signalling the futility of my solution for the future policing of PNG. Some years later I did come across fragmentary references to the pioneering work of Sir Herbert Dowbiggin in what was then called Ceylon. He had very successfully moved its police from a Royal Irish Constabulary model to that of the English civil police system. But it had taken him from 1913-37 to achieve this. Dowbiggen had turned the Ceylonese police into an almost unarmed body in which the truncheon was the main weapon. He had created a detective branch, installed a photographic section, put a greater emphasis on education, and involved his policemen in maintaining peace in their communities. All of this was well before their independence, when Ceylon became Sri Lanka. At that time, there was a theory that policing naturally passed through three stages of development: local, armed gendarmerie, London bobby.
If I had known of Dowbiggin’s work when I went to New Guinea, and known how long it had taken him to achieve his results, I am not sure that his time-frame would have deterred me. Middle-aged coppers about to receive their Master’s degree in Sociology tend to be a little arrogant, stubbornly clinging to their own judgments, and making little of their ignorance. And I knew very little of local customs. Take my interest in dogs as an example.
Not long after we arrived in Port Moresby, another small family moved there from Australia. They had young daughter who was feeling the loss of her usual playmates. Her father came to me one day and sought my help in recovering the family pet, a daschund dog which had gone missing. His daughter, alreatly unsettled, was gready upset by its disappearance. He had advertised, offering a reward, without result. I spoke to one of my inspectors. “No chance,” he told me. He explained that fresh meat was a delicacy in TPNG and that daschunds fitted nicely on a cooking spit. He said: “That dog would have been cooked and eaten before it was missed.” I don’t know how the father explained that to his young daughter.
On a Saturday afternoon not long afterwards, Manassa, who had been weeding the front garden, brought in a young native whom he had found crying on the roadway. Mavis immediately set about treating the very nasty wound on the lad’s leg. He objected and talked in pidgin to Manassa. Manassa explained that the native did not want the wound dressed until it had been seen at the police station. I drove him down in our little family car and the duty inspector told me he would attend to the matter. Later I rang him. He said that everybody was happy. He had telephoned my neighbour whose large dog had bitten the lad. The neighbour had come to the station and paid the lad the equivalent of one of our dollars, and the lad had then gone off to get the wound treated. The inspector said that this was the usual custom. I learned that some ex-pats encouraged their large dogs to attack “wandering” locals (our lad claimed he had been on the road in front of the house). Mavis and I thought this custom was unfair and wondered what could be done about it. Of course, these days, with marauding gangs of rascals in Moresby and other towns, fierce dogs are regarded as legitimate protection.
I have already mentioned the dearth of published material about countries that had changed their policing philosophies. I searched for accounts of any former colonial region that had gained its independence. I noted that Jamaica was not far from Mexico City, where the next Interpol Annual General Meeting was to be held in October 1969. As it was my turn, in company with another commissioner, to represent Australia, I decided that a side trip to Jamaica was in order. The Territory’s administrator was kind enough to approve three days in Jamaica in addition to my attending the AGM even though I had only been at my post in Port Moresby a short time.
In Mexico City, an official from the Australian Embassy called at my hotel and told me that our ambassador would appreciate my help in getting the local police to investigate a break-in at his office that resulted in the theft of a number of typewriters. When the embassy reported the offence, some detectives called and demanded a large sum of money to help them begin their investigations. The ambassador refused to pay. I made enquiries among my North American colleagues and was told that this was customary in Mexico, but I could not discover where the money normally finished up. I told the embassy what I had learned and suggested they take it up with the Mexican government, which was under an international obligation to provide protection to foreign embassies. I doubt that this was much help to the ambassador, but I had been preoccupied at the time of the official’s visit to my hotel. I was busy learning the Mexican Two Step. Despite taking the precaution of drinking only bottled Coca-Cola, I had made the error of brushing my teeth with hotel tap water. That was sufficient for me to pick up the dreaded local diarrhoea. Despite medication, I was incapacitated for a week. As soon as the Interpol AGM finished in Mexico City on a Friday afternoon, I flew to Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. By the time I had gone through Customs and Immigration and booked into a hotel, it was too late to contact the local police. Early on Saturday morning, I called at Police Headquarters where I was expected but personally unknown except for my honorary life membership of the International Police Association. My welcome was friendly enough but I had picked the worst weekend to discuss official business. The country was celebrating the results of the previous day’s re-election of its popular president. There were ample parties but little information. I returned to TPNG not much the wiser.
I had originally given myself five years in which to make a useful contribution to the resoution of TPNG’s difficulties. I was fifty-three years of age, in good health and thought I could last until sixty; Mavis had turned sixty herself but had a strong body. I tried to gauge the current situation and, against a five-year allowance, work out the best strategies to adopt. I found my prospects were bleaker than when I had started on the restructuring of the former Commonwealth Investigation Service. In Canberra, it had taken me some years to win over a majority of the Gnomes. In TPNG, the Gnomes were the kiaps — the district officers and their assistants, and whilst the Gnomes numbered only seven, the kiaps were a whole united clan placed strategically throughout the Territory. I learned that my role as commissioner was anomali
stic — that while I was the titular head of a three thousand-member force, only those members stationed in the towns were under the directions of my officers; all the others were kiap-controlled.
I discovered that many of the constables had been recruited from amongst men who had served the standard two years’ corrective detention in a kalabus for grievous assault. These charges generally arose from the traditionally approved custom of settling arguments between males with a slash to the shoulder with a large knife. Afterwards, both victim and offender would call in at the nearest police station and report the offence. The offender would plead guilty and be sent to the kalabus where he would be medically checked, placed on a nutritious diet, taught simple bush carpentry skills or engine maintenance, taught pidgin or English and paid a small wage.
The kiaps were graduates of the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA) in Sydney. They had joined as career officers when young, having been selected from a large number of applicants. After two years’ specialist tertiary education, they were more knowledgeable in TPNG matters than my inspectors. Many of my senior police had been accepted into the RTPNG force having only obtained the rank of constable in Queensland or elsewhere. Some were former British servicemen without any police background. Coming to TPNG had earned them a sudden jump in rank, so the training and experience levels of my senior men fell far short of those of their Australian counterparts. A cadet scheme designed to produce high-ranking indigenous officers was already in place and when Independence finally arrived, one of the first cadets became the new commissioner.
The kiaps as a class impressed me. I thought that they were even an improvement on the British colonial administrators in that they were not as class conscious. They had done much for the Territory. They all spoke pidgin and motu, the two main vernaculars, whereas only the best of my men had taken the trouble to learn any native language. The kiaps appeared not to have feathered their own nests at the expense of the local people although they had ample opportunity to do so, being the main distributors of Australian funding. I gave myself little hope of ever winning the kiaps over to my argument for a more democratic policing service. With evidence on their side, they could argue that TPNG traditions provided for “big heads” to become leaders after much community consultation. It seemed to me that there was a good possibility that Independence would merely result in control moving from the kiaps to the “big heads.”
I discovered that the unsatisfactory state of the TPNG’s criminal justice system had not passed unnoticed by the Commonwealth and that a few years earlier (before the thought of imminent Independence) a high-powered symposium had been held in Canberra. This had been attended by an anthropologist, judges, administrators and law teachers. I noted that no police and no community representative had been invited. As far as I knew, no one was researching the topic of the future policing system. I talked to the vice-chancellor of the university at Waigani, Dr John Gunther, but “policing” had only low priority access to the limited funds available. I did not know of an appropriate specialist such as a forensic anthropologist or a sociologist police officer who could carry out such a study, except myself and I was too busy with day-to-day affairs. I obtained the approval of the administrator, David Hay, whom I had known previously in Canberra when he had been a diplomat, to invite Brigadier McKinna, commissioner of the South Australian Police Force, who had served in New Guinea during the war, to discuss with me some improvements to the TPNG situation. McKinna came to Moresby and we discussed the possibility that there could be local disturbances of some size after Independence, especially in the Highlands which had a history of clan fighting. McKinna recommended, among other things, the early establishment of a mobile, specially trained unit, which could be despatched to trouble spots to augment the local police detachments. This proposal disappeared into the appropriate administrative channels and I am unaware still of its final disposition.
There was a problem in staffing the Force. Many of the young men entering the Force could now read and speak English, unlike their older colleagues. This meant that only the younger members were able to read the instructions and other memoranda from headquarters. Because of this, the older men were losing the respect habitually given to age by their juniors. On the other hand, when a police patrol was sent out on its own into the bush, it was the older members who were experienced in bush craft and who were respected by any villagers they came across.
I was concerned by an earlier statement by the Territory’s crown solicitor who reported that “the present system of administration of justice did not grow from below to satisfy a popular demand, but was imposed from without, and was contrary to popular practice”. This seemed to me to negate the very heart of English style democratic policing but, as far as I knew, the solicitor’s views were based only on anecdotal evidence. If the police were to operate with the consent of the community, then it was clear to me that we ought to find out more about any conflict or confusion this “imposition” of foreign values actually caused. I later picked up a reference by the anthropologist Peter Lawrence, a recognised authority on this region, who said “the New Guinea process of social control rests on principles diametrically opposed to those underlying our own legal system”. Lawrence concluded that attempts to impose Australian law on TPNG societies invited one of two reactions: rejection, or change of social structure.
I noted that in TPNG there were many differences of opinion on the relative seriousness of particular offences. Members of the judiciary were Australian, with only a few assistant magistrates recruited from the local population. In the police force, all the constables were locals, but the senior officers were almost all white Australians. The principal body of law defining criminal offences in Papua at the time was the 1899 Criminal Code of Queensland, but the principal part of the legal system in regular contact with Papuans and New Guineans was the Native Regulations. Some activities, such as adultery and sorcery, were not crimes under the Code, but were crimes under the Regulations. In the allocation of penalties, the judiciary were required to consider the sense of resentment and outrage on the part of those injured and of the public. No one else seemed interested in exploring the way cultural differences affected the perception of crime, so I sought approval from the ANU to undertake a survey of views on the seriousness of common crimes as part of my Master’s thesis. As informants, I selected some three hundred young English-speakers of both sexes in the TPNG — 75 at the Administrative Staff College, 106 new recruits at the Police College, 31 second year students at the university, 46 students at the Teachers College and 98 serving soldiers of the Pacific Island Regiment. For the Australian sample, I selected 30 recruits at the Queensland Police Depot, 101 male cadets at the South Australian Police Academy, 100 RAAF servicemen and 66 psychology students at the University of Queensland. The results were interesting. There was a good deal of agreement on the degrees of seriousness, with some of the groups showing a similarity by occupation as much as by nationality. Those subjects with some tertiary education, for example, viewed civil disorder more tolerantly than others. The Queensland psychology students differed from all other groups in their view of the seriousness of homosexuality. Violent crime was considered less serious by the TPNG participants, while Australians regarded offences by juveniles as less serious. The TPNG replies showed that they viewed stealing more seriously than the Australians, but both university groups were more tolerant than their countrymen.
While these group differences were interesting, I found on probing TPNG individuals that these totals disguised even deeper disagreements. For example, I asked my TPNG informants why they regarded “burning the Australian flag” as nearly as serious as a murder, when the Australians considered it a very minor misbehaviour. The TPNG people explained that the Queen’s spirit resided in the flag and that burning it was akin to killing the Queen. I asked why non-payment of council rates was regarded in TPNG as being as serious as stealing, when Australians considered it a very minor offence. M
y informants explained: “If we don’t pay our rates we can’t pay for a road to our village. We all use the road. Those who don’t pay their rates are stealing from us.” The ANU examiners accepted my thesis. My survey was carried out thirty years ago, and I do not know how the large social changes which have occurred in the TPNG since then have affected local assessments of the relative seriousness of crimes. As far as I know there has been no replication of my study. I recently discovered that Professor Brian Inglis thought highly of it.
During my varied career, I’ve met a number of public figures — some impressive, and some not so impressive. The most impressive person I met in TPNG was the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port Moresby, Dr Virgil Copas. Virgil and I met quite accidentally one afternoon and I was taken by the very pleasant and concerned manner in which he talked to me about the problems of New Guinea. He was an old hand: he had been archbishop for almost ten years, and before that he had been a navy chaplain and then a priest in Darwin. He was a man of about my own age, sparsely built with a very pleasant, unassuming face. When he entered a room, he did so without any ostentation — nobody paid him any particular attention or homage, even the members of his own church. But when Virgil talked to you, he immediately focused on what you were saying and was very soon on your wavelength, picking up all the nuances and feelings behind your statements. He gave me a lot of good advice about the ways of the people, both black and white, in TPNG. On the odd occasion when I felt a bit fed up, Virgil lent a sympathetic ear. We didn’t meet all that frequently; Virgil came to our house for the occasional meal with Mavis and me and a couple of times he asked me down to the archbishop’s “palace” next to the cathedral.