IMPROVED POLICEMEN.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5203, 19 September 1885, Page 4

IMPROVED POLICEMEN.

It has recently been proposed that the police should be provided with roller skates, to be worn when on daty. The advocates of this scheme maintain that a policeman conld skate over the sidewalk much faster than a burglar or cashier could run, and could thus easily overtake a flying criminal. Also, the skating policeman, who should notice a fight in progress a block or two from him eonld arrive on the scene in time to prevent a murder and to make an arrest. A charge by a platoon of skating policemen would be an imposing sight, but it might not strike terror into a mob. All the latter would have to do would be to throw a few stones on the pavement in front of the advancing column in order to enjoy the pleasing spectacle of a whole platoon of policemen suddenly standing on their heads. The roller skate suggestion is vastly inferior in merit to that more recently made by a prominent chemist. This truly able man proposes to supply the forces with indiarubber waistcoats filled with hydrogen gas. A policeman thus equipped would be so light that he could run with amazing swiftness. His progress while running would be a series of bounds. He would strike the pavement, Bay, three times only while running the length of an ordinary block, and each rebound would carry him at least fifty feet forward at an average height of six feet above the ground. No runaway criminal could; possibly escape an officer thus equipped, and the patrolman would find the duty of walking over his beat so easy that he would never be compelled to lean against a lamp-post or to rest himself on a doorstep. In case he wanted to enter a house, the door of which should be locked, he could readily leap from the pavement into a second-story window, and in case of charging a mob, a platoon of policemen would spring into the air and descend on the heads of the mob with a force that would be irresistible.—New York Times.