INCREASE OF CRIME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21647, 18 May 1932, Page 4

INCREASE OF CRIME

YOUNG MEN OUT OF HAND 200 SMASH-AND-GRAB RAIDS RECENT INCIDENTS. V (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 7. Crime is increasing. “ Something must be done,’' the Loudon newspapers say in chorus. Smash-and-grab car raids have followed each other in quick succession during the past weeks. The number of crimes of this kind during the past three months is nearly 200. Six years ago a New Zealander invented a device which made smash-and-grab raids impossible. For the outlay of about £IOO and a few shillings a month for upkeep, every jeweller in London could have been definitely protected. Two or three jewellers fitted their windows with this excellent device, but one has heard nothing about it since. Possibly the shopkeepers (prefer the insurance money to immunity from this form of theft. At least £loo,ooo'worth of jewellery* has been stolen by car bandits within a radius of a quarter of a mile in the West End during the last few months. Shopkeepers, post office officials, and bank cashiers are alarmed/ (says the News-Chronicle). Jewellers are arming themselves and pleading for greater police protection. Underwriters, who are paying huge sums in insurance, are considering the formation of patrols of plainclothed men as guards. Action for defensive measures is being taken by Mr E. Sinclair, whose jewellery shop in Burlington Gardens, London, has just been raided for the second time to the tune of £ISOO. He is to confer with fellow-jewellers in this area. The National Association of Goldsmiths also has the matter under consideration. BQRSTAL TRAINING.

The demand for more accommodation for young criminals in this country is officially stated to be the reason for the proposal of the Prison Commissioners to retain Maidstone Gaol, which it was last year decided to sell to the Kent County Council fo r £23,750.

The council, at a special meeting, decided to continue negotiations with the commissioners ag to the terms on which they would relinquish their right to buy the gaol. The commissioners in a letter to the council stated: — “ Since it was decided to sell the prison the position has changed, in consequence of the large increase in the number of youths committed for Borstal training. “It has been necessary to appropriate as a Borstal institution the establishment which it has been, intended to use,for the accommodation of the prisoners of the class now detained in Maidstone Prison. “ Moreover, the necessity of reducing the number of prisoners confined in Dartmoor Prisop makes a further demand oh the accommodation at the disposal of the commissioners.” IDLE YOUTHS. At Manchester sessions Sir Walter Greaves-Lord, K.C., M.P., expressed regret that the proportion of young persons in the calendar was, if anything, on the increase. ‘ “ While one realises that the state of the labour market has something to do with it,” he continued, “at the same time there is not now quite such a shortage of work for young people as for persons who have reached adult age. Therefore, it is not entirely lack of work that accounts for it. One does not hear quite so much now of young people going to work and being discharged through slackness. Unfortunately, one does hear of a young person obtaining a situation and getting tired of it, and then 'obtaining another and getting tired of that. “It looks as if there is a tendency among youths of the present generation not to realise the necessity and dignity of work. If that does continue it is bound to have a very serious effect on succeeding generations. One can only hope that in the course of time young people will realise that it is work and not idleness that has built this country up.” In the Blue Book just issued by the Home Office. the growth of crime was ascribed largely to two causes —industrial depression and the fact that . “ persons now under 30 were under 16 in 1917, the year in which the. absence of parental and other supervision brought juvenile crime to its peak.” POLICE HANDICAPPED. Complaints that the police are handicapped in dealing with crime were made, by the chief constable of Reading, Mr T. A. Burrows, in an address to the Reading Rotary Club. The police, said Mr Burrows, were to some extent hampered by what was known as the judges’ rules, and by the Royal Commission of 1928 on police procedure. Mr Burrows read the rules relating to the Caution of suspected persons before they made a statement, and continued: Do you think these rules are fair to the police? Are they necessary? No one has ever practised third degree in this country, and no suspect has ever been tortured into making admissions. “ Supposing I am interviewing a suspect, but just as I have got on good terms with him and he is going to say something useful, I have to stop and formally tell him that he need not say anything unless he wants to, and I have to write down what he says .in longhand. What chance have I of surprising him? Crime’s detection must be carried out without too much regard for etiquette.” A MATTER OF SECONDS. What shopping crowds at first thought was a fantastic scene in Burlington Gardens one morning last week was in reality one of the most audacious smash-and-grab raids yet perpetrated in the West End of London. Three well-dressed young men operated with such swiftness, ease, and completeness that they escaped with £IOOO worth of diamond and emerald rings, \ and baffled !/ strenuous efforts to arrest them. About 10.30 the men drove up in a car from the direction of New Bond street. They passed roadmen, taxicab drivers, and shoppers, and stopped in front of a jewellery shop. Two of them jumped out, and one of them, using a “ jack ” covered with brown paper, smashed the double plate glass window, then plunged the instrument through the glass of a case containing rings, grabbed a pad of these, and drove away through Burlington street. The car was later found deserted in Golden square. The affair occupied only a few seconds. When people near realised what had happened some gave chase, but it was fruitVICAR ANi) WATCHMAN. The Rev. T. P. Stevens, vicar of Grove Park, near Bromley, Kent (says an Evening Standard correspondent), is prepared to hire himself out. at 5s a time as a house watchman to raise £2500 for a new hall he contemplates building. “ It will take a long time to collect the £2500,” said the vicar, “ but I am perfectly willing to try it. Recently there has been an epidemic of burglaries in this district. It has become so serious that women in the neighbourhood are afraid to go out alone or stay at home alone. My idea, therefore, is to act as sort of watchman. I am prepared to keep watch at the home of any of my parishioners while they are out visiting or at theatres or kinemns. I am pretty full up with writing, but I could do a good deal of it wjjilo watching. There have been about 200 burglaries at Grove Park since I have been here. Recently (he vicarage was burgled; there has been one at the church, and one of my churchwardens has been a victim.” “BUZZ OFF.” , Police-constable Oates, a young man with two years’ service in the Metropolitan Force, tackled, single-handed, three men who had broken into a fvine and spirit shop in Bayswater. He was knocked down in the fight, and received a severe kick in the chest, but was not seriously hurt. He saw a man near a motor car close to the shop, and as he approached the man jumped into the car and drove off. During the fight more than a dozen bottles of whisky and other spirits were knocked off shelves and broken. The man escaped with some liquor. A man went into the sub-post office in Pimlico road, London, and pointed a dummy revolver at- the assistant, Miss Barbara Wain, aged 20. She faced the man and said “You had better buzz off,” and he ran away without taking anything, mounted a bicycle and rode off.