POLICE METHODS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 98, 22 October 1913, Page 3

POLICE METHODS

SUPPRESSING INFORMATION OF CRIMES "PREPOSTEROUS AND RIDICULOUS SECRECY." [BY TEL.EGBAPH — SPECIAL TO THE POST.3 AUCKLAND, This Day. Three cases of safe burglaries have occurred within the past iortmght, and there have been numerous instances of minor burglaries. "When a burglary takes place in Auckland a preposterous and ridiculous tecrcy is the police order of the day," the Herald remarked this morning in commenting on the reluctance of the police to give information regarding crime!) of thus class. "From time immomorable the wisdom of our fathers has realised the advantages of 'hue and cry,' and of thus, calling in the public to the aid of the law. " This system is followed still in the United Kingdom, where it is recognised as of less importance that the police should be debited with many undetected offences than that criminals should escape who might otherwise be captured. The only possible explanation is that our police force is so inadequate to its work that the authorities shrink from allowing the public to know what a number of serious crimes, are perpetrated in the cities without detection and" conviction following. Mr. Herdman should initiate a much-needed -reform by abolishing thfc existing practice of concealing crimes from the public and returning to the normal ana sensible system of encouraging publicity- as an aid to detection. In conclusion, reference is made to the Kohn burglary, when th>? police attempted to prevent the public from knowing that this burglary had taken place, bub full particulars appeared in the Herald. The result was that -the burglar wae captured in San Francisco, the only ground for arresting him being that he had in his pcteaesMMi jewellery as described in the Herald. He was* brought back, convicted, and the jewellery recovered.