POLICEMAN’S “BIBLE”

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 June 1932, Page 7

POLICEMAN’S “BIBLE”

REVISERS’ TASK AT YARD. Ono of the most interesting and most voluminous books published in England is being revised by a special staff at New Scotland Yard. I!, is generally known as “The Policeman’s Bible.” Officially it is called the General Orders and Regulations of the Metropolitan Force. There is no other volume like it in the world. It consists of nearly 700 closely-printed pages, and it has been built up by its innumerable authors for more than a hundred years—evei’ since the Metropolitan Police Force came info existence. The volume has never been finished, and never will be. When the new revised book is issued it will retain much of its immense bulk.

Nearly every day narrow printed strips with deletions, additions, and corrections will, as was always the case, be circulated and pasted into its pages to swell its necessary unwieldiness and add to the already encylopaedic knowledge which the London policeman must possess. Briefly, this massive tome tells the London police everything they may, or may not, do in every conceivable case in which they may be called upon to act. Murders, frauds, street disturbances, suicides, fires, drowning, street patrol, telephones, wireless, sheep scab, accidents, domestic squabbles, epileptic fits, the protection of little children (find the aged weak, burglars, jiujitsu. swindlers, possession of firearms. local by-laws—these and hundreds of otijier varied subjects are dealt with lucidly, and with careful regard to the strict letter of the law. Three years ago the Royal Commission -on Police Powers reported I hat “this book has grown so bulky that it must be beyond the powers of most constables to master its contents, and its simplification is desirable.” The Commission urged that there ‘should be one standard Instruction Book issued to all police forces, and they announced that Sir Leonard Dunning, one of his Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary, was preparing such a book, and that it would shortly he available for use.