TAXI GANG BROKEN UP.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 287, 2 December 1911, Page 17

TAXI GANG BROKEN UP.

ANOTHER THIEF OF DESPERATE GROUP SENTENCED AT SESSIONS. A group of thieves, who employ taxi-cabs —and occasionally drive into shop windows —is being broken up by the Loudou police. One of them, Harry Gardener, twentyone, a porter, of Albany-road, Old Kent road, was, at the Loudon Sessions on Thursday, sentenced to twelve months' hard labour for unlawfully possessing housebreaking implements by night. Divisional Detectice-Inspector Eustace said that the accused, in 11107, was sent to prison for theft, aud this year convicted of Lobbing a gas-meter. Recently. Gardener and two others of the gang, knowing the police were close on their heels, jumped into the taxi-cab they had engaged, assumed charge of it in place of the proper driver, and dashed round a corner, knocking down , and injuring a pedestrian. The taxi ran Into a shop window, and the men then , walked away. The operations of the gang first came to , the notice of the police when a post-office in South London was robbed a little while ago, the thieves escaping in a taxi-cab. Their method was as follows:— man . undertakes to commit a robbery or to snatch :1 a purse, and bis companions wind up the , front of the taxi-cab. As soop as a coup is ! effected one throws open the cab door, an- ■ \ other obstructs any person who tries to stop . the thief, nnd then nil jump Into the vehicle and drive away at top speed.