“Organised Crime In 20 dears"

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31230, 30 November 1966, Page 3

“Organised Crime In 20 dears"

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Nov. 29. Chicago’s Chief of Police, Superintendent O. W. Wilson, predicted today that New Zealand would probably have organised crime within 20 years.

It was far more menacing than individual criminal activity and had to be opposed at all costs, he said. Even if New Zealand did not produce the criminal class capable of running organised crime, there were plenty in other countries who would

come here and take over as soon as the cities got big enough. Mr Wilson, here for a few days before going to Australia to lecture to senior police administrators, has been head of the Chicago Police Force since 1960. He was a professor of police administration and dean of the School of Criminology in the University of California.

Mr Wilson said 70 per cent of crime in the United States was committed by people under 25, and the actual incidence of crime was increasing by 5 per cent each year. On the average there was a murdej and about three rapes a day in Chicago, he said. The

most prevalent crime was car theft —28,000 a year—followed by burglary, then armed robbery. As people became more prosperous and educational standards rose, so did the incidence of crime, “I am sure that the job of a police chief is much easier in a poverty-stricken country which also has a low educational standard,” said Mr Wilson.

The Chicago police had good co-operation with the public and since mid-1964 had had a scheme by which citizens were encouraged to report anything suspicious. To last month 4000 arrests had been directly attributed to the “crime stop” scheme:

He said he was surprised New Zealand police did not regularly Cany arms. Many of his men carried two guns, he said —one openly displayed and the second concealed. There had been a number of cases where a policeman had been disarmed by criminals, then had been able to make an arrest by using the second gun.

He saw no prospect of disarming the police so long as the public had unlimited access to guns. In Chicago alone it was estimated that there were at least 100,000 pistols and revolvers in the possession of people who had no reason to have them.