SCOTLAND YARD’S INVISIBLE FORCETHE FLYING SQUAD
CONTROLLED BY WIRELESS In the "Flying Squad,” Scotland Yard’s newest arm, all the achievements of science that can aid authority have been mustered against the criminal classes. What is this romantic unit of which so much is heard and so little seen? How does it function? Although there is much about it that must necessarily remain secret, many of the questions that have arisen in the public mind about it are answered below by a Daily Mail special correspondent who has been allowed to make a close study of it.
An hour ago, he writes, I was watching the "Flying Squad" from within, through the courtesy of Sir William Horwood, Commissioner of Police. To-morrow it may pass me in tho street, and if it does I shall undoubtedly fail to recognise it. It is an Invisible Force. That, perhaps, is tho most remarkable of the many remarkable things about it. It protects eight millions people against the criminal classes and is known to none except those who are connected with it.
Parade it through the streets tomorrow before crowds as dense as those that attend the Lord Mayor's Show, and next week it will pass through the streets unrecognised. Daily it goes about its work in all parts of the vast area it protects, y6t nowhere does it earn a second look. It is looking on London always, yet London never sees it.
Some day I may meet a man who will say he knows the "Flying Squad" quite well, for after all, there are still many who remember seeing the Russian legions pass through London. If I meet such a person I shall tell him this:—
There is to be found at Scotland Yard a man who is responsible for every tired wheel belonging to the Metropolitan Police. Ho knows every vehicle belonging to the Force. Yet he would sometimes see them in the street and not recognise them if it were not for the smart' salute of an official inside them. A typical family car of the touring type is awaiting in a jam of traffic held up by a policeman in, say Clapham street. It must wait its turn or earn the reprimand of the officer. A car that resembles 10,000 others crawls behind a tramway-car in North London. At the back sits a somewhat impatient man—perhaps a business man chafing to be home.
Another does a brisk round erf a London park . A fourth dawdles in Theatreland. A van calls at the London Docks. Another draws up at the gates of Kew Gardens. The "Flying Squad"!, Thc'cars, the
vans ,and the men in them—all belong to Scotland Yard’s quick-striking arm. Without a doubt you have seen them, and you will see them again and again. But you will never know that «au have. But, you may reason, there is nothing but law-abiding hustle at Clapham at this moment, strict attention to the band at the West End Park, high spirits in Theatreland, honest toil at the London Docks, and calm at Kew. What could the "Flying Squad" do if by the very perversity of things, there should be a murder at Piccadilly Circus at this very moment, and if the murderers turned the bonnet of a highspeed car down Regent street and made olf at 60, 70 miles an hour? Como with me up one of the liftshafts at Scotland Yard. It will help you to understand We must have gone almost to tho top of the building, to the very leadin of the aerial that is believed to be higher than that of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and therefore the highest in London. Tape is clicking through a machine that needs no human attention. It represents message in code concerning crime on an international scale. What it is all about must remain one of the many secrets of Scotland Yard, and in any case it does not concern us at this moment.
Walking beside a long length of benches covered with wireless apparatus of a most efficient kind we come'to a designing room, in which experts can evolve wdrcless apparatus that is ahead of the general practice at the moment. Behind a neat switchboard huge banks of accumulators are being charged. Near at hand an improvement for wireless reception in a moving car—an improvement thought out by Scotland Yard itself—is under test.
Beneath us is the brain of the great police organisation of London, the most famous in the world,/which every civilised country n the world tries to use as its pattern. Here, in this upper room, is its voice.
It is in that little square room, which might be called the control tower, although it has no name. The room is lined with metal, so that not eVen' the electric railways beneath, the tramways outside, nor tho electric lifts round about can interfere with the delicate apparatus at which sits a keen looking young man. His faco is impassive, but liis hands are -busy. His ear-phones are bringing him messages in a constant stream, and his fingers are sending back replies. He is speaking to those very ordinarylooking cars and vans in a Clapham streot ,a London park, Theatreland, the London Docks, Kew Gardons, to all or one of the flying Squad vehicles out at that moment.
Some are able to reply to him—even beneath the Thames in the Blackwall Tunnel, a police team would be able to hear his bidding.
We have assumed that murders have left their victim in Piccadilly Circus and are making off up Regent street at 70 miles an hour. Scotland Yard beard of it mero seconds ago. The voice is telling it in dots and dashes to the Flying Squad all over London.
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Bibliographic details
Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6809, 12 January 1929, Page 4
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961SCOTLAND YARD’S INVISIBLE FORCETHE FLYING SQUAD Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6809, 12 January 1929, Page 4
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