GUARDING SEVEN MILLION

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4433, 12 September 1939, Page 3

GUARDING SEVEN MILLION

LONDON'S POLICE FORCE

After weeks of intensive and secret operations, calling for the full time activities of a specially selected group of detectives, Scotland Yard, famed London Criminal Investigation Department headquarters, believes it has now successfully checked an unusual crime wave, wrote a staff man of the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’ recently. Part of the credit for this success is given by Yard officials to the “ Joneses ” in the suburbs, the ordinary householders who have been called upon for co-operation recently to an unprecedented extent. The crime wave which has now receded consisted of a serious increase in the number of suburban burglaries, which caused considerable comment among members of the public and in the Press. Largely responsible for an increase in this type of crime has been the spread of London, the mushroom growth of new housing estates, which Has had the effect of lengthening police beats in many districts. Scotland Yard decided to concentrate on a study of suburban crime, classification of criminals’ habits, education of suburban houseowners in the means to prevent burglars from breaking in., A new squad was formed, popularly called the “ Moving Squad,” which kept track of each wave of burglaries in each district, moving from one district to another and making detailed inquiries into thieves’ methods, local conditions, and so on. After a time it actually became possible on numerous occasions for the Moving Squad to anticipate when a wave would be likelv to break in any district. The Moving* Squad brought the specialised talents of the Yard experts more closely into conjunction with the localised knowledge of district police As a result the increase in crimes in suburbia has been checked and a slight but noticeable decrease has taken its place. The underlying feature of the work of Scotland Yard is the fact that the word “ police ” stands for something more friendly and more human in London than in most other European capitals. The London force comprises 20,000 men. Headquarters in Scotland Yard is a quiet court, tucked away among Government secretarial offices, near to the Houses of Parliament. The area for the protection of which these 20,000 policemen are responsible is 700 square miles in extent and has 7,000,000 inhabitants. The keynote of their activities is collaboration with the public as well as with one another. This is shown not only by remarkable security of life and property now existing throughout the whole of that great human hive which is London, but also by the readiness shown by the man in the street here, to help the police in their work. When a London policeman finds himself in difficulty and blows his whistle to summon aid, it is at least as often a passer-by as the nearest constable who is first upon the scene to aid him. Inside the headquarters are many stone stairways and lengthy corridors leading to offices where the latest police appliances may be seen by those privileged to visit these closely guarded quarters. Some of the more noticeable of the appliances are for co-ordinating radiocasting with motorised police work. The new system has been introduced by stages. The first was the setting up of telephone call boxes at short distances from one another throughout the whole of the London area. Anybody can now enter any one of these boxes and by dialling the “ emergency ” number 999 can ring up Scotland Yard direct. Tlje “ emergency ” calls are automatically sorted. The quarter of London from which each one comes is indicated by a coloured light upon the wall at the Scotland Yard end. Watching over each group of these coloured lights is an operator with a map to correspond spread out before him. Patrolling each area are police cars which are individually in radio communication with the operator. The position of each car as it goes over its particular “ beat ” is indicated by a movable disc. Each disc carries variously coloured rings indicating whether a car is free for fresh duty or if not, how it is engaged. The operator has himself been trained in patrol work, and decides upon the spot, whether any particular call that reaches him is of such a kind as to deserve investigation. If he holds that this is the case, he speaks direct by radio to the nearest disengaged police car. So rapid is the whole transaction that it is claimed a car can usually reach in._i.rom one to three minutes the spot trom which a call has been sent Police boats patrolling the River Thames inside the Metropolitan area are similarly equipped, and the procedure in their case is the same. Fingerprint and photograph departments, using infra-red rays and other means of detecting otherwise invisible traces of crime co-operate in the work of identifying both incriminated persons and exhibits that may come into the hands of the police.