CRIMINALS AND CLUES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19833, 31 December 1927, Page 2 (Supplement)

CRIMINALS AND CLUES.

HOW DETECTIVES WORK.

SCOTLAND YARD METHODS. POLICE WILES IN FRANCE. MAN ' i'GIVEN AWAY"- BY ' WIFE. The British police specialise, not in man-hunting, but in keeping an'- eye on the potential criminal, Mr.' Melville Davisson Post shows in his new book, ",The Man Hunters." They apprehend the criminal in many cases, as the result of knowing which criminal- is likely to have Committed the crime. ' Scotland Yard keeps careful registers, a Nickname and Alias Register and a Tattoo' and Deformity Register, and so on, and circulates to all police stations weekly lists of notorious criminals and ' iheir whereabouts. Continental criminologists declare that British police rely too much on identification, and quote the Louis Beck case as an alarming instance of its unreliability. Fifteen out of seventeen people identified the innocent Beck as the man who had defrauded them. Scotland Yard believes that a " clue " will always turn up. That clue, if carefully followed up, must lead to the criminal. It may nob, however, lead to his conviction. There another question obtrudes. If fortune is fiot on the side of the criminal, English law, Mr. Pos u implies, most emphatically is. In its legitimate anxiety to protect the innocent it makes things easier for the criminal. Mr. Post quotes a cynical French police Judge as saying : " Formerly there was something good about British justice—it had torture at its command." ' Nowadays the British criminal not only escapes torture, There is for* him no inquisition, no confrontation, no re-enactment Of the crime. Diplomacy in France. French detective methods fall, in Mr. Post's opinion, midway between the plodding, rule of thumb mothods' of Scotland Yard and the ultra-scientific methods of the University-trained men-hunters of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The French sleuth has assets peculiar to himself, a certain gift of intuition, a resourcefulness that (incidentally) he shares with the French criminal, a logical mind and a strong preference for the methods of diplomacy. As an example of this last is cited the case of the well-to-do dealer in antiques who was suspected of being a " fence " in a large way. No evidence, however, could be found,-nor were any stolen goods ever located on his premises.. Then one day an agent of the Surete accosted him in a name not his 'own as he was leaving the shop. The dealer protested that he was not the man named, but the ; agent persisted, and the dealer agreed to go to police headquarters and clear the matter up. At the police headquarters the agent secured possession of the dealer's- handkerchief, rushed with it back to the shop and told the dealer's wife that he had a message from her husband. All was discovered, the police would arrive at any minute and she must instantly pack all incriminating articles into two taxis waiting outside and remove them to a certain address. The agent showed the , dealer's handkerchief as proof that he had. come from him. The wife promptly led the way: to a secret closet vj]iere the stolen goods were kept. Helped by the agent she loaded them into the taxis and drove away—to the police station. Dealing With An Agitator. On another occasion the French police wished to deal with a noted agitator, the head of dangerous secret societies, editor in an incendiary newspaper and an avowed enemy of established law and order._ The police were reluctant to arrest him as they knew he corrted arrest. Instead they caused him to be appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour "for conspicuous acts of service to tho State." The announcement completely ruined him as an agitator, for l'is revolutionary associates would never believe that ho had not really earned the titlo. & German crime detectors aro famed for the thoroughness of their laboratory investigations. Their theory might almost be said to be that the right use of the microscope will solve av.iy problem and discover the author of any crime. To that extent their methods aro admirable and unimpeachable. A cap is found at the scene of a murder. Under the microscope two hairs are discovered adhering to the cap. The police are told, after those have been examined, that the murderer is probably "a man of middle age, of robust coristiution, black hair, intarmingled with grey, recently cut, commencing to go bait!.'" Hairr are found adhering to tho knife *»f a suspect. Ho tells the police they are the hairs of a rabbit he recently skinned. The police, suspecting them to be human hairs, send them to be analysed. The analyst replies that they are neither human hairs nor rabbit hairs, but squirrel hairs. It is recalled that the suspect was wearing a squirrel-skin coat on the night of the murder. He had committed the error of wiping his knifo on the coat! German and Austrian Methods. The question of recognition plays a large part in criminal detection. In the Sacco-Vanzetti trial witnesses identified one or other of the defendants, though they had seen them at a distance from which, the defence contended, nobody could recognise anybody. In Germany the criminologists would ascertain the distance the witness was from the prisoner, the state of the light, _ the hour of the day or, if the recognition took place at night, the nature and quantity pf artificial light in which recognition took place. Then, having tested the witness for abnormal eyesight, they would state positively if recognition was possible or not. It is to Austria, however, that Mr. Post bids ono to go if he is to see applied criminology at its zenith. There the scientific expert of Germany and the nimblewitted man-hunter of France are combined in the single person of the super-police-man. In Austria every policeman above the grade of N.C.O. must be a Bachelor of Laws, and to become a Bachelor of Laws calls for nine years' training at the University. Police officials in Austria rank, it appears, with British Members of tli© Royal Society. Their emoluments are high. *7fitle are conferred on them. It is possible that Scotland Yard would come in for more praise if man-controlling as well as man-hunting were dealt with. Austrian polica, so clever at catching criminals, seem protty inefficient when .it comes to controlling' or preventing mob violence, to handling crowds and shepherding agitators. Herein they could in turn learn something from Scotland Yard.