POLICE AND PUBLIC Monday Morning With The Break Squad Detectives

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31168, 19 September 1966, Page 12

POLICE AND PUBLIC Monday Morning With The Break Squad Detectives

(By Our Police Reporter)

On Monday mornings reports of week-end burglaries reach the police stations. Recently I accompanied Christchurch detectives assigned to investigate 17 burglaries of business premises which had been entered during the week-end.

The detective I joined for the Mondayround had eight complaints to investigate and he had already paid five visits when I met him. He had made an early start to “make certain of getting a car to do the job in.”

He was a member of the “break squad,” a team of detectives, headed by a detective - sergeant, which specialises in inquiring into and solving burglaries.

The Christchurch C. 1.8. was unusually short-staffed at the

time because several of the detectives had been called on to take part in investigations in a murder and poisoning cases in the North Island. Inquiry cars were scarce for members of the break squad because other detectives were inquiring into a suspected homicide case. Every Monday morning, a spate of burglaries is reported. Each complainant is visited, his premises are examined for clues such as fingerprints, tools, or footprints, and the complaint, in detail, is noted in writing. Many questions must be answered: When did the last person leave the building? .Who was last to leave? What has been stolen? What has been disturbed? Reactions This Monday morning all the complainants, received the detective with courtesy and friendliness. Two managers, cheerfully—albeit ruefully—agreed that their security measures were poor. Both said they would see to it that in future their premises were made harder to enter. One manager was exceedingly impatient because he had telephoned the C. 1.8. at 8.30 a.m. The detective arrived at 10.30 a.m. The manager was slightly mollified, and exceedingly interested, when told that already 17 weekend breaks had been reported and that his premises were the seventh to be visited by the detective. Curious Clue

One of the other detectives had found a promising clue and he had concentrated on following this lead instead of going on to the other burglaries assigned to him. He caught the offender, who was later convicted. His other inquiries had to be shared amongst his colleagues. At the time, there were only five detectives in the break squad. In most of the places visited, the staff were visibly enlivened by the burglary, very ready to play Sherlock Holmes, and keen to see a detective “at work.” The detective called at a factory. A curious clue, a small sixfingered hand-print in dust below a lavatory window from which the louvres had been removed, was shown proudly to him. It turned out, on close examination, to be a double print. The offender had twice put a hand on almost the same spot on the wall when getting in the window. The offender was able to get out of the factory by unlocking a door from the inside. The size of the hand print and the size of the window made it clear that the offender was a child. The detective showed the manager how the child had been able to walk down an alleyway, get a handy box, unscrew the attachments holding the louvres—the screws were facing outwards —and enter through a space that seemed impossibly small until the possibility of a child burglar was considered. “Phizgig” The manager said he would have a gate, with barbed wire on top, put across the entrance to the alleyway, and strengthen the building’s security in several other ways. The detective knew that another building nearby had been burgled by a child. Later, he would consult the local uniform policeman; and he had another clue because the method of entry had been the same in each instance. At this point in his inquiries the detective was called back to the C. 1.8. office by radiotelephone. There he had a telephone conversation with an informer —“phizgig” as informers are called by the detectives. The case of child burglar had to be shelved while the detective followed the new lead in a much more serious burglary. The child burglar was apprehended some weeks later by another member of the break squad. After considering the timing of the crime the value that could be placed on the “information received,” and various other factors that could be known only to himself, the detective consulted the chief detective and obtained the services of another detective. On the road again the inquiries car—the only suggestion of its being a police car was its radio aerial—stopped a short distance from a suburban property with a large macrocarpa hedge along its road boundary. We approached the hedge on foot and saw what we were looking for, a wheat sack lying between the roots of the trees in the hedge and below the level of the footpath. Surprised After consultation, the detective who had received the tip-off went back to the police car and drove it down the drive to a house on the property well back from the road. He went there to question a man although he expected this man would leave the house when he saw the juS-

police car, and hide in nearby paddocks. This is what happened. The other detective and myself remained on the road side of the hedge, keeping an eye on the sack. The detective left the house and drove off a short distance in the police car. The detective with me moved to the driveway. J bent down to keep an eye on the sack and came almost face to face with a man. He had bent down and grasped the top of the sack in one hand. I don’t know who was the more surprised. “Good morning, How are you?” I said feebly. “All right!” the man replied conversationally. “Have you got the loot?” I asked, equally polite.

In a second he and the sack were gone.

There followed a wild chase through weeds and bushes in the paddock between the hedge and the house. The man dropped the sack. He was barefoot and beat the pursuing detective to the house. The other detective accelerated down the drive in the police car. Doors slammed, women swore, and then the man who had taken the sack went quietly into the police car. Public Disinterest The sack was filled with goods stolen from a shop which had been burgled a few weeks previously. An unusual aspect of this inquiry, to a person outside the police, was the lack of attention by members of the public to what must have seemed strange behaviour—two men lurking round a hedge for half an hour; a chase across a paddock, and women crying out. This lack of interest did not surprise the detectives. The police in Christchurch have long accepted that most persons notice very little. If they do see something strange or suspicious they do nothing about it. I found that detectives on special night patrols, watching buildings, going into properties, and testing doors, did not cause anyone to telephone the police to inform them of these unusual happenings. Lack of interest in the unusual is one reason why burglars and thieves can operate without worrying too much about their activities being brought to the notice of the police—until after their crimes have been committed.