SCOTLAND YARD

Grey River Argus, 15 December 1937, Page 6

SCOTLAND YARD

MANY RACKETS NOT CLEARED UP BY IT. Said to be the greatest, best-equip-ped crime-hunting headquarters in the world, is New Scotland Yard, turreted lightstone building facing the Thames at the Westminster end of the Embankment. Recently, however, ex-Detective Harold Brust, for ten years in the crack crime-fighting special brand of "the Yard,” exposed it as an overcrowded cubbyhole unequal to the task of dealing with the changing face of the English underworld. No fantastic sensationalism was famous novelist Edgar Wallace’s prediction that U.S. racketeering methods would come to "London, thinks Brust. Armed hold-ups have increased alarmingly Known to the police are many rackets which they have so far been unable to stamp out. Typical is the "sponge and pail” service given to bookmakers on .racetracks. When a gang battens on a victim it beats him into submission to its demands by the simple expedient of’ crowding round his stand and blocking the approach of punters who wish to make bets. Soon the bookmaker gives way and is thereafter regularly visited by a gang member who arrives with a i pail of water and a sponge with which to clean his board of chalkmarks. Woe betide the bookmaker who does not drop his silver “service fee” into the bucket. SCHOOLS FOR CROOKS. There are schools for crooks, un-der-world "colleges,” alleges Brust, where recruits are trained in up-to-date methods. Swindles now being worked include: Enticing university students to gaming houses where victims are allowed to pay with lUO’s subsequently used for extortion purposes. Bogus grievance racket in which crooks take an “accident” against a well-known business and obtain their plunder by threatening troublesome legal action and publicity. Worst sufferers are hairdressers, who must always be wary of "scalp-disease” swindlers and restaurateurs who may any day have a customer trying the old dodge of inserting a tack or a pin into his food. Crooks who manoeuvre shops and stores into awkward positions by managing to get themselves wrongfully arrested. Brust believes the only solution to the problem of Scotland Yard’Sj chronic overcrowding is a skyscraper] ot 50 storeys, with a landing-ground on the roof for the Yard's own air fleet, television and film equipment make-up and acting school, specialist departments, modern press and publicity bureau, and a private police underground railway system through which officers could be rushed in stream-lined railcars to any outlying suburb within 30. miles, at: a speed of 100 m.p.h. I