MODERN DETECTIVE

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 June 1930, Page 9

MODERN DETECTIVE

NOTHING LIKE FICTION.

The detective of to-day is little like the figure of .fiction, says Raymond Daniell in tho New York “Times.” Like everything else, detection of crime is becoming much more highly systematised. 'A jewellery store has been held up. Three men, one gripping a pistol, dash into the streeet. A policeman in uniform runs from the corner, drops two of them with a jiu-jitsu trick learned in Police College and fells the third with his nightstick. By the time the bandits Start, scrambling to their feet, the patrolman has them covered with his revolver. For this coup a graveful police commissioner makes him a detective, third grade, much in the manner of a sovereign conferring knighthood upou a'loyal subject. An incident of that sort has been the reason for the selection of many of New York’s 1500 detectives. The method of choice is thus based upon the sometimes erroneous premise that a brave patrolman is bound to be a smart detective. That it works as well as it does is due not to any mental change that takes place with the shedding of a blue uniform and brass buttons, but to an organised- system of crime detection, the functioning of which is dependent upon a few experts and a large number of trustworthy individuals doing routine tasks.

Onco the accolade has been bestowed, the recipient without more ado becomes a full-fledged detective. Henceforth you will find him assignee to a precinct squad in a dingy office on the second floor of a police station. Its walls are plastered with photographs of wanted men. Oak desks ot tho roll-top variety and ordinary kitchen chairs are its furniture. Its visitors are that motley army of those who seek and those who are sought. Women come in search of lost jewels, missing husbands, protection, help. Men call to complain and to explain. For each case there is a prescribed method of procedure—trailing, “planting,” viewing the rogues’ gallery, comparing fingerprints, notifying pawnshops, and whatnots. The modern detective sails a charted sea, but the variations of each case provide him with an opportunity to use his. own knowledge, skill, and experience Upon the intelligence with which he applies himself depends his usefulness and success.

It is seldom that he is endoy/' with the omniscience of the detectives of fiction. Usually he lacks their seemingly ’ superhuman powers of deduction. Informers, or “stool pigeons,” experts within the department, and artificial aids take’ their place. Nor is the storybook portrait of the detectives’ appearance an accurate one. Due to their manner of appointment, the workaday sleuths seldom conform to a type, although usually they are recognisable to crooks and to each other for wiv they are. The New York detective is not always flat-footed, although oi.tr?

he clings to the black service shoe of his uniformed days. Nor is he always bull-necked.

Prior to joining tho department he may have been a steam-fitter, a longshoreman, or a white-collar worker. One detective studied for a priesthood, and became a policeman when matrimony side-tracked him from hir chosen profession. Another started out to be a prize-fighter, but gave it a career in the ring on the theory that though the profits on the force were smaller the expectation of li.:e was greater.

In some respects nearly all detectives are alike, however. From constant association with liars and crooks they develop a hypersensitive suspicion. Like most men whose work eeps them away from home a great deal of the time, they have an inordinate love of home and fireside. Nearly all have a strong conviction that in dealing with gangsters and gunmen strong-arm methods are best. A short length of rubber hose and a strong right arm have solved more crimes than logic and intelligence, they will tell you. Cruel and hard in ■dealing with criminals, they often are sentimentalists at heart, unable to hear a hard-luck story without digging down into their pockets.

SYSTEMATISATION. Knowledge of practical psychologj’ and an understanding, of human nature are the qualities essential, to the making of a really good detective, according to Deputy-chief Inspector Edward P. Mulrooney, head of the detective division,’ after thirty-three years of observation. But instances of individual initiative and shrewdness are not so common or so essential as they once were. The business of solving, crime, like nearly everything else, is becoming more systematised. Faced with a mysterious case, the modern detective is more likely to ask a solution through one of the many aids at his disposal than to sit brooding upon theories. The Bureau of Criminal Identification at police headquarters, for instance, has more than 1,000,000 finger prints of known criminals and upward of 3000,000 photographs. They have' provided the key to many a mystery. The science of ballistics is making it possible to trace a slayer s weapon from the bullet removed from his victim. Chemistry and the surgery of the autopsy room constantly make harder the way of the murderer.

Take a typical case. A safe has been robbed in an office building on Fifth Avenue in the ’forties. Two detectives from the East Fifty-first street station arc assigned to the case. Meanwhile the crime has been reported to headquarters. A member of the safe and loft squad is sent along to help them. The chances are it will be John Morrissey, and. perhaps he will have Herman Levine with him. Safe-cracking, unlike ordinary burglary, is a highly specialised art. It is seldom attempted by amateurs, and when it is so attempted it is rarely successful. Morrissey knows all the old-timers; knows their methods, and after examining the safe can usually make a pretty good guess as to which one of the dozen or more gangs in the United States committed the crime; If tho “can-opener” method was used, for instance, Morrissey would suspect the safe was opened by a pupil of Jake and Leon Kramer, who introduced it to the United States and who are now serving life sentences at Clinton prison as members of tho notorious Whittemore gang. Immediately an alarm is broadcast for tho apprehension of the suspects. Tho “experting” does not stop there. While Morrissey is looking [ things over another detective is going i over evegry bit of furniture witli a.

powerful magnifying glass real detectives actually carry them- looking for fingerprints. Unless the cracksmen have been unusually cautious they arc almost certain to have left the tell-tale marks somewhere. When the marks are found, fine powder is sprayed upon them and then. dusted off. Wherever the ridges of the fingers have pressed down, they will have left only exudation to which the powder sticks, emphasising the loop:? and whorls. The marks are photographed and enlarged. Then they are compared with the records down-town Often they furnish a positive identification, more valuable in court than the thief’s calling card would be, and usually Morrissey’s guess is corroborated. From then on it is chiefly a, mater of capturing the suspect, illthough the detective work generally continues in an effort to trace the sale of the cracksman’s tools, and in hunting for possible accomplices on the inside. Experiments are being made now to determine whether a way can be found satisfactorily to take fingerprints from bodies and from clothing. FINDING THE SUSPECT. Once a suspect is settled upon, all the resources of the police departments of New York and other cities are set to work to capture him. Pictures are broadcast throughout the land. His wife will be watched, her telephone wires tapped. His haunts will bo shadowed. Information of his whereabouts will be sought from underworld informers, and traps will be set for him.

There are other experts like Morrissey in the department. Abraham Stratton, who died recently, could tell. by a glance inside a watch case or' underneath a bracelet, where the article was made, how much it cost, and eliminate all but half-a-dozen retailers as sellers.- Ho did this by learning the manufacturers’ marks, indistinguishable to unpractised eyes. Most of his lore he taught to Inspector Joseph Donovan, who is carrying on his work, invaluable in trapping a thief claiming property as his own, and in identifying bodies by the jewellery upon them. Joseph Toner and William Raftis, of the pick-pocket squad, boast that they can tell a pickpocket before he makes a move, and have proved it upon occasion to doubting Thomases. Lieutenant Edw'ard Dillon has trapped many an automobile thief by his knowledge of where each manufacturer places each of the plates bearing the car’s serial number. The average thief, wily enough to change the plates in four or five places to correspond with faked bills of sale, almost always overlooks one or more. That is where Dillon’s knowledge effectually comes in. In the bomb squad there is Sergeant

Emil Polhegani, who thwarted a plot to dynamite St. Patrick’s Cathedral by joining the conspirators. He played his part so well that it was not until the would-be bombers went on trial that they knew he had double-crossed them. Two other noteworthy actors in the department are Sergeant John M'Meonnemy and Policewoman Margaret Schneider, who works with him in trapping vendors of narcotics. Hundreds of peddlers of heroin, cocaine, and morphine have been caught by them, and are now behind prison bars. Harry Butts, the bespectacled little pistol expert of the department, has achieved so widespread a reputation that other cities are constantly requesting his aid in murder cases. There is one other aspect of crime detection. That is the use of “stool pigeons.” How general the practice is can only be guessetl at, but certainly it figures in many arrests, which the detective can explain only by saying: “Oh, I got information that led me to believe——"

It is equally certain that it played an even more prominent part in the detective work of the past. It is a sordid business. This is how it works: A detective, finding difficulty in solving his cases, makes a bargain with an old offender to let him carry on his racket unmolested in exchange for underworld information. Or the bargain may be made with a young offender, caught for the first time for a minor offence. The detective suggests to the court that since this is “the first time the kid’s gone wrong,” another chance would do no harm.