THE NIGHT SIDE OF MELBOURNE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 20 April 1907, Page 1

THE NIGHT SIDE OF MELBOURNE.

THE DETECTIVE SQUAD. WORK IN DARK. CORNERS. THE LANE OF THE FORTY THIEVES. Fearless in the discharge of their duty, swift and secret in their movements. The Night Squad strike terror into the hearts of the criminals of Melbourne, says the "Argus." None, except the senior of the patrol, knows to-day the hour at which the gang will take the street to-morrow evening, and none except the senior knows the hour at which they will leave the city in the keeping of the uniformpolice. Unlike the uniform men, they do not parade when they go on and off duty, and seldom are any of the gang to be seen at Russell-street. Cunning and secrecy are the tools used by the men they are out to fight, and to win through the Night Squad must not only use the same weapons as their opponents — they must use them better ! JThe squad is weak in numbers. Ordinarily there are ten men and tho senior, but when crime is brisk, and there is an influx of countrymen to the city, the squad is reinforced by two or threo additional men. What is wanting numerically is counterbalanced in other ways. The ten are all picked men. It might be said that every member of the police force is or has been a trained athlete, that many are intelligent men, "and that some have an extensive knowledge of the criminal classes. The Night Squad are all men in the fighting prime of life, and each one of them is capable of making fast time over any sprint distance. To be an athlete only will not make a young constable eligible for the squad ; he must be conscientious, pluckier than it is ordinarily pleasant for a man to be, and above all, he must know the "crooks" as he knows his brothers. The Squad is out for big jobs only, and each one of the ten must be capable of handling Tialf-a-dozen garotters. It is not a very long time since duty brought one of them into Grogan's jane. A Chinese offender was hiding in a den filled with aliens. At its best Grogan's lane is an unsafe locality, but at midnight, when a criminal is hiding from justice, it is not good to hear or see what sometimes happens thero. The plain-clothes man approached the hovel where he knew the wanted man was in hiding, but just as he came under one of the windows, a huge stone was thrown down on him. Fortunately it missed his head, but, striking his shoulder, it felled him to the pavement. In a few moments he had regained his feet, and had flung open the door. Half-a-dozen fists darted out at him, and he fell back again, just in time to avoid a knife-thrust by a Chinese hand. Many men would have considered that duty had been .satisfied, but no so the plain-clothes man. In five minutes the man he wanted was hand-cuffed, half-a---dozen Chinese were sprawling on the floor, and a dozen others had fled from the building, shrieking imprecations on the man who had burst upon them with the fury of a bull maddened by the sting of a banderillo. The same man was one of the few who ever mastered the once notorious Bill Buck singlehanded. When "Bill" appeared inthe City Court the next morning his arm was in a sling. It had been fractured in the fray. "He ain't a man at all," complained the prisoner. "He's one of those things that you read about." Each of the ten has had his share of hard knocks and foul-play, and some of them have played the part of targets for revolver snots fired by desperate criminals. The instructions issued to the squad are that- they should frequent the darkest lanes of the city, and that thoy should be seen as little as possible. They work in pairs, and only when it is necessary to approach a man from both sides at once are they supposed to seperate. When they meet the senior or another pair, the meeting-place must be a dark doorway. The names of all the criminals they meet are jotted down in their note-books, together with a record of the street in which thoy were seen and the hour of the meeting. Whenever a "crook" is seen in conversation with a "mug" they are to be shadowed. Each man ia given a certain ground to cover, but if necessary to leave the city in order bo track a man to one of the suburbs they are supposed to do so. "That is the beauty of the squad," said the Senior-Constable. Mv men are picked men, and I can rely oh them. If they fail to keep an appointment with me I can be sure they are away after someone. As soon as that particular job is through they hasten back to their own district. The fact is there is something of romance in the work of the "squad," and that something has crept into the hearts of all the men. They Jove the work, and fn loving it they perform their duty we u. The notes taken by the patrol of the names of tho criminals they met during the night's work are invaluable. Often and often it happens that a man who has beon wanted for some time is brought to justice in this way." Garotting, serious assaults, and burglaries are tbe crimes to which the squad pay their attention. For various reasons they do not trouble with minor offences. The chief of these is that were they to be seen in the City Court too frequently they would be too easily marked by the criminals, and another is that it is considered that the man who is out in the streets till half-paat 4 or 5 in the morning should not be called upon to present himself at the City Watchpuse at 10 o'clock to give evidence in a trivial case. Members of the squad have also been instructed that, should they witness a fight between two men, they should take no part m the affair unless it promises to become serious. Were arrests to be made m connection with every fight that takes place in Cumberland-place, Grogan s-lane, Commercial-lane, Expira-tion-lane, or Providence-place, there would need U> be 60 plain-clothes men at work m the slums instead of ten. According to Senior-constable Hocking, there has been an average of two cases of garotting a night for the last three months. lii nearly every case that the complainant would bring into court a conviction has been gained, and in all arrests lhave been effected. Should an offence be committed by four men, a description of one of them will often lead to the arrest and identification of the four. Criminals work in gangs, and knowledge of the the composition of each gang is the most important item in the plain clothesman's outfit, The men of the nlgbt squad do much of their work in disguise. The secret police who figure largely in yellow novels would lose much of their charm were they to be deprived of their oiitfitp of false wigs, humps, false moustaches and whiskers. The disguise of the practical police of the night squad is not affected by tho means adopted by the puppets of the cheap novel. When they desire to disguise themselves they do so in a very simple matter of fact kind of way. They "swap" hats. Thy wear cast oIT clothes two sizes too small for them. They huddle themselves close against ihe warm walls of an engine-house, and spit and look true pictures of dejection. "The two greatest difficulties with