U.S. FEDERAL AGENTS ARE HARD-HITTING FORCE

Taranaki Daily News, 13 March 1935, Page 12

U.S. FEDERAL AGENTS ARE HARD-HITTING FORCE

Have Smashed Careers Of Many Desperate Criminals

r DHE method of drawing crime inA vestigators from the ranks of the police without giving them special training, has been criticised. Even in the efficient. United States, however, this system operated for years —until, desperate at the menacing proportions which crime was assuming there, Mr Edgar Hoover took the bold step of organising a special division of picked men to stamp out kidnapping, gang warfare, and all big-scale crime. Indifferent to the biting sarcasm of the established police, the regular “cops,” and a critical public, he picked his men from every profession and every industry, rushed them through the mill of an intensive police training, and christened them “Federal Agents, Division of Investigation.” And this force, little understood outside the United States, now figures frequently in the news. Statutes were brushed up to give Edgar Hoover more control, and, bolstered up by these extra powers and new resources in armament ana

men, he launched his Federal agents against the forces of organised crime. There are 450 agents, including half a dozen aviators, a parachute jumper, university graduates, chauffeurs, foremen, salesmen, dll gaugers, scientists, teachers, doctors, newspaper reporters, accountants, bankers, chiefs of police, lawyers, detective bureau chiefs, plain detectives and sheriffs, painters, seamen, carpenters, lumbermen, radio-operators —men repesenting all sorts of trades, professions and industries. Several are famous wrestlers, five are expert boxers (one is a State inter-cdllegiate champion), many have played professional baseball and football, and nearly all are expert swimmers. Fourteen are experienced in handling all kinds of water craft. , When this polyglot collection of trades and sports was let loose to break up gangland they were promptly nicknamed the “boy detectives.” Then the label “boy scouts” fell upon them, and came, more or less, to rest. • . But the “scouts”.soon proved their mettle. One of the smallest and quietest of them has killed three criminals in gun battles, and has sent several of the States’ most notorious swindlers to gaol. Other “scouts” have bullet scars as Souvenirs of their underworld campaign, and several carry gangster bullets in their bodies. On 6 of the division’s best, Frank Lackey, a former cowboy and university graduate, has survived a bandit massacre to nurse a bullet next to his spine for the rest of his life. Each mishap to a “scout” encouraged the doubting public to ridicule the force for inexperience in underworld work, for being inexpert in the use of firearms, and lacking the rough-and-ready qualities of troopers or rangers. But, although more than 83 of the division’s personnel earns from behind a desk, they have all proved themselves good gunmen! , At the police arsenal the most dangerous weapons of modern bandit warfare have been entrusted to their hands—the gangster’s “rubbing-out” weapon; the “Tommy” sub-machine-gun; that rapid-fire .instrument of death, the monitor automatic rifle, firing 20 .30 calibre bullets with machine-gun rapidity, and hitting a target three miles away, if necesThe agents are supplied, too, with plentiful reserves of automatic Shotguns, popularly known as “riot” guns, high powered army rifles, gas riot guns and the latest of automatic pistols, and with these are waging successful, ruthless war on hardened bandits who shoot to kill. Selected for their fine physique, as well as for their mental qualifications arid versatility, they are kept strenuously at routine physical ex-

ercises, and given monthly practice on the rifle range with pistols, rifles, shotguns, and sub-machine-guns. In the past year, the special division captured an average of. from three to four fugitives from justice a day, and the identification unit assisted State and local authorities to identify 3818 criminals during the same period. Soon after they began their war on crime, the special division caught several famous desperadoes—Frank Nash, Sankey, “Machine-gun Kelly, Albert Bates; they crushed many kidnapping rings and racketeering syndicates, and last year they got Public Enemy No. I—Dillinger. While the investigators are working on the “outside” their assistants are busy building up a comprehensive reference library to cater for everything in crime, from fingerprinting to handwriting. Its files are taking in reedrds of watermarks, tyie tread patterns, bullets, cartridges and powders, type-writing specimens —even human hair. x In 1932 a special technical laboratory was established. Some of the instruments in the technical work include .the. comparison magnascope, in which linages of two separate bullets are brought within a single eyepiece for comparison (the Sydney police have ond); the binocular microscope, which uses lbw magnification for the. examination of handwriting; the research microscope which enables magnification up • to 1400 times; and the ultra-violet ray lamp, for 'the examination of the fluorescent and phosphorescent appearances of objects and substances though which they may be compared for evidence of tampering or substitution. Ana the Division’s identification files contain the largest and most complete collection of fingerprints in existence —4,372,619!