MELBOURNE TERRORISED.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 September 1926, Page 2

MELBOURNE TERRORISED.

GUNMEN WORK OPENLY. POLICE AFRAID TO MOVE. AN AMAZING STATEMENT. Sydney, Aug. 20. An amazing admission by the Detective Superintendent at Melbourne Police Headquarters demonstrates how effectively criminals have taken charge of Victoria. It also demonstrates the hopeless state of inefficiency into which the Victorian police force has been allowed to decline. An underworld gang has been terrorising Melbourne residents for months past, and lias even gone so far as to extend the same terrorism to members of its own fraternity. Many criminals who have operated successfully in one sphere or another have recently complained to the police that there is one gang in Melbourne, robbing its own kind. It has been the recent experience that when a crook makes n haul he is visited by the gang in question, and part of the proceeds demanded at the point of the gun. This..levying of toll has become so insistent that the criminals have turned to the police for help. And in the face of that appeal Superintendent Campbell stated this week that though warrants had been taken out for the arrest of five men, the police were afraid to go straight forward in connection with them, owing to the very serious consequences that would assuredly follow the arrests. In other words, the police anticipated an underworld vendetta. But Melbourne residents are complaining that the terrorism complained of is not restricted to the underworld, and they are demanding instant police action' to stop the rapid spread of the actions of a well-known gang of criminals. At 3..5 p.m. on Tuesday four men walked into the office of William-Bruce, land agent, in Collins Street, covered him with a revolver, and robbed him of every penny. “We are going to clear you all up,” they said as they departed unhurriedly. An hour later the same gang went into the back bar of Richardson’s Hotel, Swanston Street, and induced William Ilamar, another estate agent, to go Into a passage, where, at the point of the revolver they robbed him also. Bruce, their first victim, reported his robbery to the police as soon as the men had gone. . Next day r in Collins Street, he was accosted by the same men, who, in view of scores of pedestrians in the street at the time, violently assaulted him, leaving him lying on the footpath. "That’ll' teach you to squeal to the police,” tbev said. And the same gang is believed to have, robbed Mrs. Elizabeth Patrick, in her home at South Yarra, of three diamond rings and £35 in cash. They entered her home in broad daylight, and committed the theft while one of them covered her with a revolver.

Those incidents, according to the Melbourne police, represent but a small proportion of the score being tallied up against the gang. And they are afraid to arrest them.