TURNED CRIMINAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 August 1928, Page 9

TURNED CRIMINAL

EX-CONSTABLE CONVICTED

BIG SAFE ROBBERY

Sentence of four years' penal servitude has been passed by tho Recorder, Sir Ernest Wild, at the Old Bailey on Walter Potter, aged 50, an ex-policeman, for being concerned in stealing a safe containing £1,419 from a post office in

High Road, Leyton. rpHE safe was stolen on March 26 and was found opened and abandoned at Grays. Over £l,OOO of the contents had not been recovered. Potter, a detective said, had served in the Kent Constabulary and the Metropolitan Police. He was invalided out in 1919 with an irreproachable character.

There were reasons for believing that during the last 12 months he had been engaged in crime, and that he was the ringleader of the safe robbery. From his acquaintance with police methods ho knew how to avoid their activities.

When arrested he had 141 10s In Treasury notes, and at his house were 11. skeleton keys. In the front room of a house where his wife was staying at Chatham was found a. suitcase containing 4,912 stamps, 814 postal orders and the post, office date stamp, all of which had been taken there a. few days before by Potter. Mr. Frederick Lovy, defending, said Potter had been commended eight or nine times by the Commissioner of Police while he was in the Force, and he had also been instrumental in saving 1.8 lives from fire.