FOR A CRIMINAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22052, 7 September 1933, Page 10

FOR A CRIMINAL

APPEAL BY POLICE (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 24. It has been left for the chief of the Sydney Metropolitan Police (Superintendent Mackay) to supply the latest answer to the age-old complaint by criminals that the police hound them down and dog them in their search for honest work—for salvation as a citigen. He has made through the Sydney press an extraordinary appeal for work for a convicted criminal who had expressed his determination to go straight. Superintendent Mackay is recognised as a shrewd judge of character, and he has had no hesitation in recommending the man, who is 30 years of age, strong physically and of good appearance. He has been convicted for stealing motor cars and for house-breaking. Now he has made a firm resolution to abandon his life of crime and in the coursb of a conversation with Superintendent Mackay he said he would rather cut his throat that stoop to the stealing of a handkerchief. Strange as it may seem the Sydney police have a good reputation among those who break away from the narrow path of the law. There are several cases on record where the police have found positions for men, and women, who have reformed, and they have seldom been mistaken in their selection of those who are deserving of help. A policeman is naturally a good judge of character, and when a criminal says that he has reformed they do not find it very difficult to judge the sincerity of the statement. Among the employees in scores of city and suburban concerns are wayward youths and men who have been placed'in jobs through the action of some policeman, and they know better than betray the trust that has been placed in them. . . The most remarkable case of criminal reformation, due in a large measure to the aid of the police, is that of a notorious safebreaker who, in Sydney, was sentenced to ten years in gaol for a series of crimes. After he was released from gaol the man told two of the detectives that he was finished with his career of crime, and that he would go straight. He asked them to help him in his search for a job. The detectives beljeved in him and finally induced a Melbourne business firm to sign on the man. Ho quickly became a tally clerk, and in the course of his duties he handled hundreds of pounds after the manner of the most trusted of servants. He married a Melbourne girl, and now he owns the house in which he lives. He has two daughters who attend a convent high school. In Sydney the most recent case of reformation is that of “ Gunman ” Coffey, whose reputation in the underworld was of the worst. He was a desperate and menacing thief, and now ho is a member of the Sydney City Mission —a valuable worker for that organisation.