TEAR-GAS PISTOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 203, 28 August 1934, Page 3

TEAR-GAS PISTOL.

SYDNEY CRIMINAL.

DISCOVERY AFTER ARREST,

"SMASH AND GRAB" RAID

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, August 21

The jewellers' shops in this city set-in to be responsible for a distinct increase : n the amount of serious crime records.l here. Two months ago the window of Angus and Coote. a large George Stru't establishment, was smashed, and thieves made off with diamond rings woi'h about £3000. Last Friday afternoon another enterprising burglar him*: 1 another brick through Angus and Coote's window, and seized three rings worth in all about £500; but he was not '-o successful as his predecessors. Aa he rushed through the Royal Arcade toward Pitt Street. Mr. Eugene Laimer, who has a shop there, intercepted him. and, pointing a revolver at his head, "bailed him up" till the police arrived Mr. Lamier has been for some years a gold buyer and a stamp dealer, and a beauty specialist. But in his earlier days his life was much more adventurous, and as a member of the detective force in Paris, 30 years ago, he learned all about the use of revolvers — an experience which hae proved valuable to him more than once in Sydney. The man arrested at once handed over two of the rings—the third had been dropped, and was already picked up.

Weapon New to Police. The culprit proved to be one Norman Hardy, a hotel tvoricer, and in hie possession the police found a weapon which was new to them. It looks like a revolver, small enough .to hide in the palm of the hand. But it discharges not bullets, but tear-gas. It was loaded with two email glass cylinders, which, so the C.T.B. men say, contained enough gas to blind, at least temporarily, anyone who might interfere with the owner.

These devices are well known to American gangsters, and they figure largely in the crime magazines which the Federal authorities still admit by the thousand weekly or monthly into this country. But the police regard this innovation as a serious sign that the methods of the American underworld are being rapidly acclimatised here; and no doubt this had something to do with their description of the accused as a very dangerous man. The magistrate refused him bail, and Hardy will receive appropriate treatment when his case comes before the Court later in the month; but quite apart from the teargas and American gang&terdoni, the frequent recurrence of eueh crimes is rapidly becoming a very serious problem to the authorities.