Film Illustrates Scientific Crime Detection

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 257, 28 July 1939, Page 14

Film Illustrates Scientific Crime Detection

SCIENCE is now most important in ° crime detection and prevention. In Columbia’s “My Son is a Criminal,” which features Alan Baxter, Jacqueline Wells, Gordon Oliver and Willard Hdbertson, and concerns a retired police official whose son, unknown to him, is the head of a bandit gang, some of the processes employed by the police in the enforcement of the law are illustrated.

A new plastic compound is particularly effective, in finding a clue. The mixture when applied to the hand of a suspect and later removed, takes with it the fine grains of powder which have been embedded in the man’s skin by the explosion of a bullet. It is easy to tell by this means whether he has fired a gun within the last 24 hours, The compound is sufficiently strong to capture even those microscopic granules -which would penetrate his gloves should he attempt to conceal his finger-prints or defeat the compound’s purpose by that means.

The microscope and the test tube have condemned many a criminal, just as they have saved many another suspected of a crime. Strands of hair and clots of blood may, under the cold (spotlight of science, i>oint directly to only one individual and completely exonerate all others. This fact has been proved time and again in courts. Comparatively new to the police laboratory is a gelatine-like substance which permits the transfer of fingerprints. Previously prints found on a weapon or at the scene of a crime had to be dusted with powder and photographed. This sometimes involved various mechanical difficulties which have been completely removed by the new laboratory product. As demonstrated in a dramatic sequence of “My Son is a Criminal,” all Ihe investigator need do is to brush the new gelatine over the print lightly and allow it to dry. He then simply peels away the paper-thin coating, and With it a perfect copy of the print.