Police “Need Help” To Suppress Bookmakers

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28347, 5 August 1957, Page 13

Police “Need Help” To Suppress Bookmakers

It would be idle to suppose that the bookmaker was disappearing from the gambling field, the Con-troller-General of Police (Mr S. T. .Barnett) said in his annual report tabled in the House of Representatives.

But to put him out of business without operations expensive both in time and manpower, the police needed the help of other agencies. “The bookmaker is certainly taking greater pains than ever to conceal his operations and his whereabouts,” he said. In 1955 68 prosecutions for bookmaking and associated offences were taken, and fines imposed totalled £4020. For 1956 the figures were 75 and £5059. Fines were imposed on 59 offenders, 14 were sent to gaol and/two were admitted to probation. There were some who criticised the police for their; failure to eliminate the bookmaker altor gether, said Mr Barnett. Others supposed that the police were not as interested or as active as they should be in mounting a campaign against this class of lawbreaker. “It is not sufficiently under-

stood , that it is one thing to suspect a person of engaging in bookmaking and another to conduct an operation that will convince the Court that he is,” he said. “Moreover, it can be an operation that is expensive of time and manpower.” Mr Barnett contended that the problem of bookmaking could be simply and surely resolved if the Post and Telegraph Department could work out some acceptable formula for a combined operation. If the Inland Revenue Department could be induced to join the team the bookmaker would disappear overnight. 'lt is rather frustrating and irritating to the police to have to expend their energies 'in finding law-breakers and sheeting home their offending, and suffer all the criticism for failure, when two other agencies of government have the information and the means without which the police cannot succeed without an undue use of manpower,” he said. “I do not forget that both these departments have functions which require them to maintain secrecy about the business of their clients.”