SCOTLAND YARD

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 June 1934, Page 12

SCOTLAND YARD

SECRET OF SUCCESS. Scotland Yard again! ..News from Washington indicates that the increase in racketeering lias led the President to the adisability cf creating a Federal police and detective force of a character described as “somewhat akin to Scotland Yard” (says a writer in the “New York Times”). . Such news as this must make the eyes of racketeers get bigger and bigger. True, it might be pointed out. that such a force would be even more chastening in its effect on racketeers if the President were to create along with it a population “somewhat akin” to the English population. Racketeering would then cease of its own accord. But the inculcation of a sense of law in the general populace is necessarily a long ami rocky road. It may be that talk .about this proposal to beat racketeering should only be indulged in by people with perfectly steady heads, for it skirts the brink of a deep and wide chasm —the chasm which yawns between fact and fiction at Scotland Yard. In fiction Scotland Yard is far in adance other official detective bodies, so much' so that its name has become almost synonymous with the, swift and sure punishment of crimel

But in fact,' as distinct from fiction, there is no mysterious secret hidden away in the big red and white buildingoverlooking .the Thames. As far as technical riiethods go,, Scotland Yard can only dp what every other frontrank detective service- does, and vice versa. It- can and does hit upon its own congenial combination of, methods. Between the enormous card indexes of the Berlin detective and the brilliant guesswork of the Paris detective, Scotland Yard strikes a middle point. But, thi'S is not its secret. The one thing which makes it the most famous detective force in the world is the character of the population, for in criminal matters the English are always on the side of the police and against the criminal. They give- the police a degree of co-operation which makes it easier to • catch criminals in England than in any other country. ITS METHODS. How does Scotland Yard v/ork? By the usual detective methods, but. with perhaps a slightly different emphasis. It uses informers, as everybody else dees. It also makes quick and effective use of the public by appealing for information and this is more typical of Scotland Yard than of most other detective services. A questidiiaire is drawn up for tbe use of everybody who can give information of any sort. The answers which this questionaire brings in are sent to the men who sit with luke-warm' 1 cups, of tea. beside them in LlieiropflUul after roomful of large quarto volumes whicb. make up the criminal records at Scotland Yard. 3’hesd studious men sori out the answers and search their classified volumes for the likely man.

Suppose that a. youngster of twentyone has been interrupted in a burglary and has accidentally killed a man in making his getaway. In twenty-four hours Scotland Yard has so much information about hiin.that a detective goes straiglit to-a down-river pub.finds his man sitting behind a stovo, and taps him on the shoulder. He comes quietly and a. few weeks later he is hanged. It is all done on information received from outsiders, mostly from members of the. general' public Whose only .motive’is the res-' peel for law which”makes them rally instantly to the police.' ' Such cases have notring to do with iho, spectaculitr Scotland Yard fiction, yet they

comprise from 99. to 95 per cent, of all the arrests which the Yard makes. But suppose that the information which pours into Scotland Yard cannot be made to fit any known criminal. Mere than, -a • thousand statements, perhaps, are taken from the public. Every one of them is .individually followed up as far as it leads. For the. moment all of thein lead nowhere, for they seem to refer to a man who is unknown to Scotland Yard. SMALL BEGINNINGS. In this case Scotland Yard is, up a tree. It does .not give up—it never gives up—but its hope now lies in another direction, for new criminals usually arrest themselves by their clumsiness in leaving clues behind thein. They may be no more than microscopic clues, but they are not beyond the reach of tbe little black “murder bags” which are always packed and waiting at Scotland Yard. These contain the complete tools-of the modern detective’s trade.

From this beginning there arise the more, spectacular cases of detection in which arrests are made on evidence built up from the burnt matchstick which the criminal left behind him. In such cases the' Scotland Yard of fact begins to approach that of fiction. And such cases account for less than 5 per cent, of all the arrests that Scotland Yard makes.

Of course, if a new criminal leaves no. clue behind him, Scotland Yard remains where it is—up a tree. In fact, it remains up a tree at times when other detective forces would certainly find means of coming down to earth and making an arrest; for while in criminal matters the English .are always on the side of the police, as against the State, they are- always on the side of the individual citizen. . Theso two traits in the English character have results which may seem to be mutually contradictory but in rediity are not. One result, as .has already been noted, is that England is the easiest, of all countries in which to catch a criminal. At the-same time the English insistence on the rights of the individual makes the legal, process of arrest a more difficult one in England than in any other country in the world. Thus, Scotland Yard works under tlie peculiar conditions ■which its population imposes on it. It is as wondci’fully organised as all metropolitan forces are —liiore so than most, because it. is not a municipal force, but a Government, force administered by the Home Office, and with a national status in one or two very limited' respects. There are, for example, 400,000 “dabs” in its finger-print bureau. They cover all .the- convictions felonies and for some misdeamours in England and Wales during the last, thirty years. Its habitual convicts' registry ’covers the same territory tor the last seventy years. -Its register of laundry marks is also national.-

It publishes a national twice-a-week police newspaper copious]} 1 illustrated with profile and full-face photographs, r.s well as a, London evening, paper, also for police use only, with four daily and two Sunday editions. Yon can buy none of these newspapers on the bookstalls, and none of their various, editors is ever worried by the libel laws. It has a “black museum” stored with the relics of bygone London crimes, and in this Grand Guignol the prosaic Scotland Yard of tact suddenly leaps the chasm which divides it from the macabre Scotland Yard of fiction.