SIGNS OF CRIME WAVE

Southland Times, Issue 25546, 14 December 1944, Page 5

SIGNS OF CRIME WAVE

YOUNG GANGSTERS IN UNITED STATES (Rec. 10.45 p.m.) WASHINGTON, December 13. The first signs of a postwar crime wave of considerable magnitude are already appearing, said Mr J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F. 8.1. He added that groups of G-men were being brought back to headquarters for retraining in the three avenues of crime which he expected would prove most troublesome. These are kidnapping, extortion and bank robbery.

Mr Hoover said that bank robberies and kidnapping were on the increase. The number of crimes being committed by discharged servicemen was a factor influencing the increase in crime. Juvenile delinquency had grown to sizeable proportions and the economic readjustments of workers and former servicemen, who had criminal tendencies before going to the war and who had now learned to kill, might prove difficult. YOUTHFUL CRIMINALS “The most desperate of the postwar criminals will be young men in thenlate ’teens or early twenties,” said Mr Hoover. “Already many former soldiers who learned to shoot men in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy are forming gangs, the bulk of whose members are teen-age delinquents. Many of these bands of young desperadoes have figured in daring bank robberies in which the lives of many innocent persons have been placed in jeopardy. “We will use all the latest developments of science, including television, in our efforts to smash this coming crime wave.”