Читать книгу Scotland Yard: The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police - George Dilnot - Страница 8

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We who live in London are rather apt to take our police for granted. Occasionally, in a mood of complacency, we boast of the finest police force in the world; at other times, we hint darkly at corruption and brutality among a gang of men too clever, too unscrupulous to be found out. We associate Scotland Yard with detectives—miraculous creations of imaginative writers—forgetting that the Criminal Investigation Department is but one branch in a wondrously complex organisation. Of that organisation itself, we know little. And in spite of—or perhaps because of—the mass of writing that has made its name familiar all over the world, there exists but the haziest notion as to how it performs its functions.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this ignorance is that Scotland Yard never defends itself, never explains, never extenuates. Praise or blame it accepts in equal silence. It goes on its way, ignoring everything that does not concern it, acting swiftly, impartially, caring nothing save for duty to be done.

There is romance in Scotland Yard—a romance that has never been written, that may never be written. It concerns the building up, in the face of incredible obstacles, of a vast, ingenious machine which has become one of the greatest instruments of civilisation the world has ever seen.

Imagine an army of 20,000 men encamped over seven hundred square miles, with its outposts in every quarter of the globe—an army engaged in never-ceasing warfare with the guerillas of crime and disorder. Imagine something of the work it does.

In a city of seven million souls, crammed with incalculable wealth, there are less than a thousand habitual thieves—the exact number is 706—and 161 receivers of stolen goods. In spite of all its temptations, there are but seventeen thousand serious crimes in a year, while the number of more trivial offences is only one hundred and seventy thousand. Few of the perpetrators escape justice. Compare this record with that of any city in the world. Ask Paris, ask New York, ask Petrograd, and you will begin to realise how well protected London is.

In a large soft-carpeted room, its big double windows open to catch the breezes that blow from the river, sits the man upon whom the ultimate responsibility for all this devolves, a slim-built, erect man of sixty odd, with moustache once auburn but now grey, grey hair and shrewd hazel eyes—Sir Edward Henry.

Imperturbable, quiet-voiced, quiet-mannered, he sits planning the peace of London. He is playing a perpetual game of chess on the great board of the metropolis with twenty thousand men as his pieces against a cosmopolitan fraternity of evil-doers who never rest. He is the one man in the service who must never make a mistake.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police sleeps on no bed of roses. He must be as supple as willow, as rigid as steel, must possess the tact of a diplomatist, with the impartiality of a judge.

Since the days when Sir Richard Mayne built up the police organisation in its infancy, there has been no Commissioner who so nearly fulfils the ideal of a great police administrator as Sir Edward Henry. Unlike most of his predecessors, practically his whole life has been spent in the study of police science.

It is something more than forty years ago since he entered the Indian Civil Service as assistant magistrate collector. He became ultimately Inspector-General of the Bengal Police, and then commissioner of a division.

It was there that he first established the finger-print system of identification, as a police device for the registration of habitual criminals which he was to introduce later at Scotland Yard, and which has tightened the meshes round many a criminal who would otherwise have escaped justice.

The man in the street knows little of the silent man who is undoubtedly the greatest police organiser in the world. Even on this very matter of finger-prints there is a general confusion with Bertillonage—a totally different thing. The Henry system has practically ousted Bertillonage in every civilised country. If Sir Edward had done nothing but that he would have ranked as one of the greatest reformers in criminal detection. But he has done more—much more.

Fourteen years ago he resigned his Indian post to become Assistant-Commissioner in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department. Even then the intention was to "try" him for Commissioner. He spent a period in South Africa during the war reorganising the civil police of Johannesburg and Pretoria. In 1903, when Sir Edward Bradford retired, he was appointed Commissioner.

He found that the vast complex machinery of which he assumed control was running a little less freely than it should. The police force was like an old established business—still sound, but inclined to work in a groove. It needed a chief with courage, individuality, ideas, initiative, and the organising powers of a Kitchener. These qualities were almost at once revealed in Sir Edward Henry.

In the force it was soon felt that a new power had arisen. The Commissioner was not only a name but an actuality. Nothing was so trivial as to escape his attention; nothing too wide for him to grasp. He knew his men—it is said that he knows every man in the force, an exaggeration with a great deal of truth in it—and they soon knew him.

Quick to observe, quick to commend or punish, whether it be high official or ordinary constable, he has come to be regarded with unswerving devotion by those under him. The police force as he took it over and as it is now may seem the same thing to the ordinary observer. To those who knew something of its working it is a vastly different thing.

I have passed many years among police officers of all grades and all departments. Many of these have been veterans of from twenty to thirty years' service. They have told me of things done for the well-being of the force, the convenience of the public, and the confusion of the criminal.

Telephone and telegraphic communication have been perfected between stations, head-quarters and provincial police, the system of identification has been revised, young constables are taught their trade with care and thoroughness, higher pay has been granted to all ranks, men are housed in greater comfort, red tape has been ruthlessly cut through, the relations between police and Press have been improved; there is a wider, broader spirit in all. A clean esprit de corps, very different to that which at times long gone by has threatened the interests of the public, has sprung up.

In all these things is to be seen the hand of Sir Edward Henry. Scotland Yard is not yet perfect; there still linger relics of the old conservative spirit in certain directions; but the new method has made itself felt. Initiative is encouraged in all ranks. Suggestions and criticism from without are welcomed.

The Commissioner is a man of instant decision. Let anyone make a suggestion, and he ponders it for a second or so. Then he reaches for a pen. "Yes, that's a good idea. We'll have an order on that." And in a little the suggestion has become an official fact.

Little escapes his eye, but he is a man who makes sure. Every morning a bundle of newspapers and periodicals is delivered at Scotland Yard to be carefully scrutinised and to have every reference to the force marked with blue pencil. Where there is an accusation against a particular man, or a criticism of methods in general, special attention is directed to it. But there is rarely any need for this. The Commissioner has probably read it at breakfast. The point, whatever it is, is usually in a fair way to being dealt with before lunch.

From the moment a constable has been sworn in he is watched and selected for the post that best suits him. A man may do well in a semi-rural district who would be a failure in Commercial Road, E. He may be selected for office work, regulation of traffic, for the Criminal Investigation Department, for the Thames Division, or for routine duty in the street. Wherever he is he is the best man who can be found for the work, and so from top to bottom of the ladder of promotion.

Many romances have been written of Scotland Yard, but imagination has supplied the place of facts, for the tongues of those who have taken part in dramatic episodes, more stirring than any in fiction, are locked.

Yet, in spite of all its cold, business-like atmosphere, the story of the Metropolitan Police is in itself a vivid romance which only a Kipling could write as it should be written. Imagine the Commissioner, whose power is almost autocratic, weaving a net that is spread broadcast to catch within its meshes any person who breaks the King's peace or the King's laws.

And, although now and again the personal factor is discernible in some piece of work, it is mainly cold, precise, business-like organisation which holds the net so close. Telephones, telegraphs, and motor cars link the police stations of London closely—so closely that within less than half an hour 20,000 men can be informed of the particulars of a crime.

As an instance of organisation, it may be interesting to recall that during the Coronation procession, when close on 600 detectives were on duty mingling with the crowds, it was possible for Mr. Frank Froest, the then Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, in his office, to get a message to or from any one of them within ten minutes. A large proportion of the whole body could have been concentrated on one spot within twenty minutes.

It is organisation that makes Scotland Yard able to carry out its myriad duties, from testing motor omnibuses to plucking a murderer from his hiding place at the ends of the earth, from guarding the persons of Emperors and Kings to preventing a Whitechapel bully from knocking his wife about. The work must go on smoothly, silently, every department harmonising, every man working in one common effort.

The administrative and financial sides of the police are divided, the former being under the Commissioner, the latter under the Receiver, Mr. G. H. Tripp. The maintenance of the Metropolitan Police is naturally expensive, the average cost of each constable annually being £102. The gross expenditure during 1913-14 was £2,830,796; of this, £886,307 was received from the Exchequer, £244,383 was from sums paid for the services of constables lent to other districts, £1,512,072 from London ratepayers, and the remainder from various sources.