SCIENTIFIC CRIME INCREASING

Hokitika Guardian, 3 September 1931, Page 8

SCIENTIFIC CRIME INCREASING

MEANS OF DETENTION. A PROVINCIAL SCOTLAND YARD. S ’ LONDON, June 19. The outline of a scheme for a provincial Scotland Yard was given by Dr '"Hoyland Smith, the Leeds police surgeon, in a paper which he read at the annual con.erence of the Chief Constables’ Association at Leeds today. It was an undoubted tact he said, that crime was tending moie to he committed through scientific knowledge. The criminal of to-day achieved his nefarious object as a highly efficient expert, and the detectors of crime must be equipped with at least the same advantage in scientific knowledge as the criminal himself. The old Sherlock Holmes idea of the one-man detective existed only in the realms of fiction, for we lived in the day of narrow specialisation. The only objections he could see to his - scheme j for a p ovincial Scotland Yard were tine watertight compartments into which the. police forces had been divided and the difficulties caused by the absence of S.I.D. members from their own force. His notion was that the largest forces of a given area should provide one unit from their C.I.T). toward a group which would take up w; investigation of all the more important crimes in that area. Mobile Team. As a concrete example, the group might consist, in Yorkshire, of the detective representatives of the three Ridings and of Sheffield, Bradford, ana Leeds, who would pool their knowledge and resources in their investigation of ahy serious crime in Yorkshire. They should have associated with them a. forensic medical officer, and sliouiti be a mobile team, ready to proceed to any part of the country at any time. '.file scheme might be elaborated by the provisions of a centrally stationed motor-vehicle containing every necessary form of apparatus for the investigation of a crime on the spot. By such a scheme, Dr. Smith added, one would have approached as near as possible tlie ideal of Scotland Yard, without its drawbacks. It would be more effective and less expensive than, each force trying to keep its own experts and apparatus. Exhumations and Cremation. Turning to another aspect of crime and its detection, Dr; Smith said that events throughout the country had gone to prove how very easy it haa been for a person who had met an unnatural end to escape the attention of the coroner and the police. He would remind them in that connection of the number of exhumations which had taken place in the past year or two. Cremation was becoming increasingly popular and was obviously the only hygienic way of dealing with the dead, but it was lhat, without precautions, it would be unsafe to allow it to become a universal procedure. One solution would be for all dead- bodies to be viewed by an independent medical mail or, alternatively, for the contents of each death certificate to he considered by him, with a view to acquainting the coroner, when necessary