TRACKS OF CRIME

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1930, Page 10

TRACKS OF CRIME

POLICE AND THEIR DEVICES

When a London magistrate recently fined a. man for not having a wireless license, he told him he was not entitled to know who had informed the authorities. “You must take it that an all-seeing eye was responsible,” writes a former police inspector in a London journal. He proceeds:—-. . .

. 1 don’t know about an “allseemg” eye, but . ordinary eyes, opera glasses, telescopes and many other devices have been used io obtain information to pass on to the police or other authorities. Neighbours are not always neighbourly. Personally, I disliked having to act on such information; officially, I have had to do so.

We had a warrant for Mr. X. His wife told us frankly that he’d bolted; she did not know where. Twice the house was searched, without result. Then there came this note from a resident in the road: “Through my husband’s telescope I saw Mrs. X. go past her landing with a tray. There was a cup on it. To whdni was she taking it?” Yes, to iter husband. He had slipped back. I found him in a wardrobe, behind his wife’s dresses.

Somewhat similar was another note: “Mrs. A. is 100 artful to hang her husband’s washing on her line in the garden, but 1 can see into her kitchen from my top bedroom, and there’s a shirt and socks drying there now. 1 know you want to get him, so you'd better see where she sends them,” We did. And duly got .Mr. A., although the parcel of .clean clothes went to a Mr. C. I wasn't proud of the capture.

It’s an advantage, of course, if a “wanted” man can hide for a time. Til three weeks, for instance?, a moustache can be grown. One day a retired colonel stopped me. “I’d like you to come and see something I’ve noticed,” ho said, “it’s nearly one

o’clock, so I shan’t keep you long.” I went to his house, and he gave me a pair of good opera, glasses. “Watch that dog being fed in that back garden,” the colonel said, “and see if you spot anything peculiar.” 1 watched and saw a small dog chained to a big kennel. Just after one o'clock a woman came out With a plate of food and put it in the kennel. Twenty minutes later I went, uninvited, into the garden and looked into the kennel. Saying things he shouldn’t, a man crept out; he was “wanted” in a dozen towns. “Who gave me away?” he demanded. I smiled. “If you had asked ‘what,’ ” I replied, “I should have said the knife and fork on the plate.” For some time we had suspected a man of combining the honest occupation of a. jobbing watchmaker—he worked at home —with the dishonest occupation of breaking up stolen jewellery. We caught him eventually through a dustman. Chatting casually with me, he mentioned, as illustrating queer finds, that at the watchmaker’s house he often found loaves in the dustbin, and had noticed their insides had been cut. out.

Investigation revealed . that a baker’s roundsman had been bribed to leave certain prepared loaves. In them the stolen jewellery was conveyed. Good for the dustman!