CRIMINALS AND CLUES

Evening Star, Issue 19763, 13 January 1928, Page 11

CRIMINALS AND CLUES

HOW DETECTIVES WORK SCOTLAND YARD METHODS The British police specialise, not in man-hunting, but in keeping an eye on the potential criminal, Mr Melville Davisson Post shows in his new book, ‘The Man Hunters.’ They apprehend the criminal, in many cases, as the result of knowing which criminal is likely to have committed the crime. Scotland Yard keeps careful registers, a Nickname and Alias Register and' a Tattoo and Deformity Register, and so on, and circulates to all police stations weekly lists of notorious criminals and their whereabouts. Continental criminologists declare that British police rely, too much on identification, and quote the Louis Beck case as an alarming instance of its unreliability. Fifteen out of seventeen people identified the innocent Beck as the - man who had defrauded them. Scotland Yard believes that a “ clue” will always turn up. That clue, if carefully followed up, must lead to the criminal. It may not, however, lead to his conviction. There another question obtrudes. If fortune is not on the side of the criminal, English law, Mr Post implies, most emphatically is. In its legitimate anxiety to protect the innocent it makes things easier for the criminal. Mr Post quotes a cynical French police judge as saying; “ Formerly there was something good about British justice—it had torture at its _ command.” Nowadays the British criminal not only escapes torture. There is for him no inquisition, no confrontation, no re-enactment of the crime. DIPLOMACY IN FRANCE. French detective methods fall, in Mr Post’s opinion, midway between the plodding, rule-of-thumb methods of Scotland Yard and the ultra-scientific methods of the university-trained hunters of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The French sleuth has assets peculiar to himself, a certain gift of intuition, a resourcefulness that (incidentally) he shares with the French criminal, a logical mind and a strong preference for the methods oi diplomacy. As an example of this last is cited the case of the well-to-do dca’er in antiques who was snspecood of bring a “force” in a large way. Nr- evidence, however, could be found, nor were any stolen goods ever located on his premises. Then one day an agent of the Surette accosted him in a name not his own as he was leaving the shop. The dealer protested that he was .not the man named, but the agent persisted, and the dealer agreed to go to police headquarters and clear the matter. At the police headquarters the agent secured possession of the dealer’s handkerchief, rushed with it back to the shop and told the dealer’s wife that ho had a message for her husband. All was discovered, the police would arrive at any minute and she must instantly pack all incriminating articles into two taxis waiting outside and remove them to a certain address. The agent showed the dealer’s handkerchief as proof that he had come from him. The wife promptly led the way to a secret cioset where the stolen goods were kept. Helped by the agent, she loaded them into the taxis and drove aw ay—to the police station. DEALING WITH AN AGITATOR. On another occasion, the French police wished to deal with a noted agitator, the head of dangerous secret societies, editor of an incendiary newspaper and an avowed enemy of established law and order. The police were reluctant to arrest him as they knowlie courted arrest. Instead they caused him to be appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour ‘‘for conspicuous acts of service to the State.” The an'louneement completely ruined him as ■vn agitator, for his rorrilnt' -n-M-v-r' • '

ciates would never believe that he had not really earned the title. German crime detectors are famed for tho thoroughness of their laboratory investigations. Their theory might also ho said to be that the right use of the microscope will solve any problem and discover the author of any crime. To that extent their methods are admirable and unimpeachable. A cap is found at the scene of a murder. Under the miseroscopc two hairs are discovered adhering to the cap. The police are told, after these have been examined, that tho murderer is probably a “man of middle age, of robust constitution, black hair, intermingled with grey, recently cut, commencing to go bald.” Hairs are found adhering to the knife of a suspect. He tells the police they are the hairs of a rabbit, ho recently skinned. The police, suspecting them to he human hairs, send idiom to he analysed. The analyst replies that they are neither human hairs nor rabbit hairs, but squirrel hairs. It is recalled that the suspect was wearing a squirrel-skin coat on the night of the murder. He had committed the error of wiping his knife on the coat! GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN METHODS. Tho question of recognition plays a largo part in criminal detection. In the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, witnesses identified one or other of the defendants, though they had seen them at a distance from which the defence contended,nobody could recognise anybody. In Germany the criminologists would ascertain the distance the witness was from tho prisoner, tho state of the light, tho hour of the day, or, if the recognition took place at night, tho nature and quantity of artifical light in which recognition took place. .Then, having tested the witness for abnormal eyesight, they would state positively if recognition was possible or not. It is to Austria, however, that Mr Post bids one to go if he is to see applied criminology at its /.onith. There the scientific expert of Germany and the nimbie-wittod man-hunter 'of Prance are combined in the single person of the super-policeman. In Austria every policeman above tho grade of N.C.O. must be a Bachelor of Laws, and to become a Bachelor of Laws calls for nine year’s training at the University. Police officials in Austria rank, it appears, with British members of the Royal Society. Their emoluments are high. Titles are conferred on them. It is possible that Scotland Yard would conio in for more praise if mancontrolling as welt as man-hunting were dealt with. Austrian police, so clever at catching criminals, seem pretty inefficent when it comes to controlling or preventing mob violence, to handling crowds and shepherding agitators. Herein they could in turn learn something from Scotland Yard.