POLICE RADIO ARM

Taranaki Daily News, 24 May 1932, Page 3

POLICE RADIO ARM

SURPRISE FOR BURGLARS

HOW IT WORKS IN BIG CITIES.

PATROL CARS IN STREETS. One of the greatest stumbling-blocks in the path of housebreakers in big cities is the police radio. Here is a description, of how it works in San Francisco, where it is now in full use. Airs. Phyllis Tait is alone in her Greenwich Street home. Her husband has' been called out of the city for a few days by the illness of his mother Mrs. Tait is not a nervous woman? she has been alone much and thinks little of it. But this morning she awakens suddenly from a sound slumber. She hears a tapping at a window of the front room downstairs. There is a tinkle of glass and the sound of a window being raised stealthily. .There can be no doubt! A burglar, breaking In, has already broken in! As quietly as she can, Mrs. Tait lifts the telephone beside her bed. She dials “Operator” in the dark. Scarcely whispering, she breathes into the receiver. “Police! Quickly! Someone is breaking into my home at 3350, Greenwich Street.” ‘TROCEED THERE AT ONGE.” No need to call the police. The operator. would do that. Even if Mrs. Tait had failed to give her address the operator would have traced that call with only a few seconds’ delay. The operator calls the police operator. Quickly —as quickly as fingers may fly and voices speak —the police operator calls the bureau of inspectors. Lieut. William L. Da/iahy is in charge and. receives the call. He takes five steps across his office and into a sound-proof booth. He turns a switch and speaks into an instrument like a telephone without a receiver. “Burglars breaking into house at 3350, Greenwich Street. Cars 27 and 35 proceed there at once. Station KGPD, San Francisco Police Department speaking!” Three blocks from Mrs. Tait’s home ear 27 is parked. In it sit Patrolmen Ray Harris and Pat Hegarty. Maybe their tunics are unbuttoned and perhaps they are puffing at cigarettes. Discipline is not such an important thing at 3.30 a.m. With a whirr the car starts. Silently, and in a hurry, it whizzes .through the streets, swerves around a corner and skids to a stop in front ol 3350, Greenwich Street. “COME OUT OF THERE.” 1 Patrolman Hegatly seizes a sawed-off riot gun and runs to the back of the house, Patrolman Harris, his revolver in hand, walks up to the front door, sees the broken window and enters. Standing behind a door he snaps on the electric lights. A chair moves. Harris issues a confident command. “Come out of there, with your hands up!” Slowly a shamefaced prowler raises, first his hands, then his head, from behind the chair. It is but the work of a second for Harris to snap the handcuffs on him and remove his nasty-looking, cheap black gun. He calls to his partner, and then he calls up the stairs. “It’s all right, lady,” calls Harris. “We got him. Come take a look.” Mrs. .Tait slips on a negligee and comes downstairs. Just then another automobile whirrs up in front of the house. And another! And yet a fourth!! It seems to Mrs. Tait’s bewildered eyes that all of the policemen in the world have descended on her at once. And, it is not much more than a minute since she breathed that plea into the telephone! ‘lts the greatest crime prevention measure in the history of the Police Department, this radio business!” enthusiastically exclaims Lieut. Danahy. “We get ’em before they can start.” The lieutenant explained that at almost any hour of the day there are twenty or more automobiles equipped with radios on the street. Any home, any apartment, any place of business in all of San Francisco is only a few minutes distant from one of these cars. What an improvement on the days when one had to wait for a policeman to. come on foot or, at the fastest, behind & horse!