"3. The police force of this State is exclusively recruited from the burgher element, many of the police being youths fresh from rural districts, without experience or tact, and in many instances without general education or a knowledge of the English language; therefore, as a whole, entirely out of sympathy with the British section of the community, which forms the majority of the population.
"4. The foot police of Johannesburg, in whose appointment and control we have no voice, is not a military force; yet its members not only carry batons, but are also armed with six-chambered military revolvers, invariably carried loaded.
"5. Under these circumstances, given an unarmed community policed by a body of inexperienced rustics carrying weapons of precision and utterly out of sympathy with the community they are supposed to protect, it is not surprising that the power placed in the hands of this police force should be constantly abused.
"6. For years past your subjects have in consequence had constantly to complain of innumerable acts of petty tyranny at the hands of the police.
"7. During the last few months, however, this antagonistic attitude of the police has assumed a much more serious and aggressive aspect. Without warrant they have invaded private houses and taken the occupants into custody on frivolous and unfounded charges never proceeded with; violently arrested British subjects in the streets on unintelligible charges: and generally display towards your Majesty's subjects a temper which undoubtedly tends to endanger the peace of the community. In adopting this demeanour the police are supported, with but a few honourable exceptions, by the higher officials, as instanced by the continual persecution in the Courts of many of your Majesty's coloured subjects at the very time when negotiations are proceeding between your Majesty's Representative and the Transvaal Government with regard to their status. This feeling is also strongly evidenced in the particular case which we now bring to your Majesty's notice.
"8. The lamentable tragedy which has been the immediate cause of this our humble Petition cannot, therefore, be regarded as incidental, but symptomatic.
"9. This case is that of the shooting of Tom Jackson Edgar, a British subject, by Police-Constable Barend Stephanus Jones, a member of the Johannesburg Constabulary.
"10. From the accompanying affidavits, already published and sworn by eye-witnesses of the tragedy, it would appear that the deceased, while in the occupation of his own house, was shot dead by Police-Constable Barend Stephanus Jones as the latter was in the act of unlawfully breaking into the house of deceased without a warrant.
"11. Police-Constable Barend Stephanus Jones, though in the first instance placed in custody on a charge of murder, was almost immediately afterwards let out on bail by the Public Prosecutor, who, without waiting for any Magisterial inquiry, reduced the charge, on his own initiative, to that of culpable homicide.
"12. The bail on which the prisoner was released was the same in amount—namely, £200—as that required a few days previously from an Uitlander charged with a common assault on a Member of the Government Secret Service, and the penalty for which was a fine of £20.