OUR POLICE OUR POLICE

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21729, 11 March 1936, Page 17

OUR POLICE OUR POLICE

TO THB EDITOR OF THE PBESS. Sir,—Social workers will have been more than pleased to peruse your recent leading article on the police Point is lent to your demand lor better detective training, especially by the recent conviction of a lad of 17 for no fewer than 40 offences> why had he not been caught before? These 40 cases, too, will all be counted as "successes" in the official reports, I fear, whereas, of course, the truth is that in the first 39 of them the police failed, and the public was not protected through poor detective work! As regards probation, too, the whole outlook and training of the country policeman are against his likely sue-

cess in this delicate and difficult work. A friend in the north lately had occasion to complain of a probationer being rung up, on a party line, in th« country, at his new job; and taken to task, policeman fashion, for something that he, as a matter of fact, had not done. Country listeners on party lines often "listen-in," and in this case the employer (who knew all) wa» justly annoyed. Was it, in any case, fair to the lad? "The best of these (socalled) probation officers among the police," concluded my friend, an experienced man, "seem to be clumsy chumps!" The truth is that the system which employs them on such work is to blame—not the police, who are in no way trained for etc., A SOCIAL WORKER. March 5, 1936.