Scotland Yard Investigator Full Movie Download Mp4
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It is more than probable that since this book was written you havechanged your uniform and your beat. You are in the North Sea, inFlanders, in Gallipoli. Nowhere can admiral or general wish a better man.
I have known you long. I have for many years been thrown among you inall circumstances, and at all times. I have known you trudging yourbeat, have known you more especially as a detective, have known you inhigh administrative and executive positions. I have seen you arrestarmed murderers, have seen you tactfully reproving a drunkard, have seenyou solving tangled problems of crime, have seen you charging a mob,have seen you playing with a lost baby. I do not think there is anyphase of your work which I have not seen. And I want the public to know you.
You, whether you be Commissioner or constable, occupy a position ofdelicate and peculiar responsibility. You are poised between the trustand suspicion of those you serve, and you are never quite sure whetheryou will be blessed or blamed. I, who realise something[Pg 7] of yourtemptations and your qualities, know how seldom you fail in anemergency, how rarely you abuse your powers.
You will forgive me when I say you are not perfect. You have your littlefailings, and at times the defect of one man recoils on 20,000. Thereare matters I should like to see changed. But, on the whole, you areadmittedly still the best policeman in the world.
The war has claimed you and others of your profession. Astute commandingofficers have recognised you as "men who are handled and made," and manya constable of a year ago now wears an officer's stars. There are thoseof you who have gained other distinctions.
There is no branch of the service here dealt with that has not sent ofits best to the fighting line. None will recognise more willingly thanyou in the trenches that the luck has been yours. We know (you and I)that others have been, by no will of their own, left behind. It is tothese, in no small degree, that the safety and equanimity of London havebeen due. And it is as well that here tribute should be paid to thosewho have endured without retort the sneers of the malicious andill-informed as well as the multiplicity of extra duties the war hasentailed upon them.
One advantage, at least, the war has conferred on you. It has explodedthe ignorance of your profession to those thousands of citizens who haveelected to share something of your responsibilities. They at least knowsomething of your work; they at least know that the special constablecan never replace, though he may assist, the experienced police-officer.You always[Pg 8] understood the Londoner; now the Londoner is coming tounderstand you.
I have attempted no more than a sketch of the great machine of which youform part. But if it enlightens the public in some degree as to the waythey are served by you it will have achieved its purpose.
Perhaps one of the reasons for this ignorance is that Scotland Yardnever defends itself, never explains, never extenuates. Praise or blameit accepts in equal silence. It goes on its way, ignoring everythingthat does not concern it, acting swiftly, impartially, caring nothingsave for duty to be done.
Imperturbable, quiet-voiced, quiet-mannered, he sits planning the peaceof London. He is playing a perpetual game of chess on the great board ofthe metropolis with twenty thousand men as his pieces[Pg 11] against acosmopolitan fraternity of evil-doers who never rest. He is the one manin the service who must never make a mistake.
Since the days when Sir Richard Mayne built up the police organisationin its infancy, there has been no Commissioner who so nearly fulfils theideal of a great police administrator as Sir Edward Henry. Unlike mostof his predecessors, practically his whole life has been spent in thestudy of police science.
It is something more than forty years ago since he entered the IndianCivil Service as assistant magistrate collector. He became ultimatelyInspector-General of the Bengal Police, and then commissioner of a division.
It was there that he first established the finger-print system ofidentification, as a police device for the registration of habitualcriminals which he was to introduce later at Scotland Yard, and whichhas tightened the meshes round many a criminal who would otherwise have escaped justice.
Fourteen years ago he resigned his Indian post to becomeAssistant-Commissioner in charge of the Criminal InvestigationDepartment. Even then the intention was to "try" him for Commissioner.He spent a period in South Africa during the war reorganising the civilpolice of Johannesburg and Pretoria. In 1903, when Sir Edward Bradfordretired, he was appointed Commissioner.
Quick to observe, quick to commend or punish, whether it be highofficial or ordinary constable, he has come to be regarded withunswerving devotion by those under him. The police force as he took itover 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 alldepartments. Many of these have been veterans of from twenty to thirtyyears' service. They have told me of things done for the well-being ofthe force, the convenience of the public, and the confusion of the criminal.
Telephone and telegraphic communication have been perfected betweenstations, head-quarters and provincial police, the system ofidentification has been revised, young constables are taught their tradewith care and thoroughness, higher pay has been granted to all ranks,men are housed in greater comfort, red tape has been ruthlessly cutthrough, the relations between police and Press have been improved;there is a wider, broader spirit in all. A clean esprit de corps, verydifferent to that which at times long gone by has threatened theinterests of the public, has sprung up.
In all these things is to be seen the hand of Sir Edward Henry. ScotlandYard is not yet perfect; there still linger relics of the oldconservative spirit in certain directions; but the new method has madeitself felt. Initiative is encouraged in all ranks. Suggestions andcriticism from without are welcomed.
The Commissioner is a man of instant decision. Let anyone make asuggestion, and he ponders it for a second or so. Then he reaches for apen. "Yes, that's a good idea. We'll have an order on that." And in alittle the suggestion has become an official fact.
Little escapes his eye, but he is a man who makes sure. Every morning abundle of newspapers and periodicals is delivered at Scotland Yard to becarefully[Pg 14] scrutinised and to have every reference to the force markedwith blue pencil. Where there is an accusation against a particular man,or a criticism of methods in general, special attention is directed toit. But there is rarely any need for this. The Commissioner has probablyread it at breakfast. The point, whatever it is, is usually in a fairway to being dealt with before lunch.
From the moment a constable has been sworn in he is watched and selectedfor the post that best suits him. A man may do well in a semi-ruraldistrict who would be a failure in Commercial Road, E. He may beselected for office work, regulation of traffic, for the CriminalInvestigation Department, for the Thames Division, or for routine dutyin the street. Wherever he is he is the best man who can be found forthe work, and so from top to bottom of the ladder of promotion.
Many romances have been written of Scotland Yard, but imagination hassupplied the place of facts, for the tongues of those who have takenpart in dramatic episodes, more stirring than any in fiction, are locked.
Yet, in spite of all its cold, business-like atmosphere, the story ofthe Metropolitan Police is in itself a vivid romance which only aKipling could write as it should be written. Imagine the Commissioner,whose power is almost autocratic, weaving a net that is spread broadcastto catch within its meshes any person who breaks the King's peace or the King's laws.
As an instance of organisation, it may be interesting to recall thatduring the Coronation procession, when close on 600 detectives were onduty mingling with the crowds, it was possible for Mr. Frank Froest, thethen Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, in hisoffice, 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 onespot within twenty minutes.
It is organisation that makes Scotland Yard able to carry out its myriadduties, from testing motor omnibuses to plucking a murderer from hishiding place at the ends of the earth, from guarding the persons ofEmperors and Kings to preventing a Whitechapel bully from knocking hiswife about. The work must go on smoothly, silently, every departmentharmonising, every man working in one common effort.
The administrative and financial sides of the police are divided, theformer being under the Commissioner, the latter under the Receiver, Mr.G. H. Tripp. The maintenance of the Metropolitan Police is naturallyexpensive, the average cost of each constable annually being 102. Thegross expenditure during 1913-14 was 2,830,796; of this, 886,307 wasreceived from the Exchequer, 244,383 was from sums paid for theservices of constables lent to other districts, 1,512,072 from Londonratepayers, and the remainder from various sources.
The great deterrent against crime is not vindictive punishment; the morecertain you make detection, the less severe your punishment may be. Thebrilliant sleuth-hound work of which we read so often is a lessimportant factor in police work than organisation. Organisation it iswhich holds the peace of London. It is organisation that plucks themurderer from his fancied security at the ends of the earth, thatprevents the drunkard from making himself a nuisance to the public, thatprevents the defective motor-bus from becoming a danger or an annoyanceto the community.
In the tangle of departments and sub-departments,[Pg 17] bewildering to thecasual observer, there is an elastic order which welds the wholetogether. Not a man but knows his work. The top-notch of efficiency isgood enough for Scotland Yard. Its men are engaged in business pure andsimple, not in making shrewd detective deductions. The lime-light whichoccasionally bursts upon them distorts their ways and their duties.Really, they have little love for the dramatic. Newspaper notoriety isnot sought, and men cannot "work the Press," as in times gone by, toattain a fictitious reputation.
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