What Kind of Police Service Do We Want?
| Date | 01 July 1946 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X4601900308 |
| Author | Thomas Fawcett |
| Published date | 01 July 1946 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
208
THE
POLICE
JOURNAL
Enquiries were
then
made as to the possibility of obtaining, from
the various firms from whom similar machines had been stolen, samples
of the typewriting produced by their respective machines. Authenti-
cated standards were obtained from ten firms.
In
nine cases these
standards were original work and, in one case, the firm was able to
produce carbon copies of letters which had been typewritten on their
stolen machine.
These
ten sets of standards were
then
examined for
type characteristics, and compared with samples of typewriting taken
direct from the ten machines.
It
was found that in six instances the
typewriting produced by a machine was identical with the typewriting
in the standards received from one of the firms.
For
the purpose of preparing court productions the identified
standards were again carefully examined, and notes taken of all the words
which illustrated the characteristics discovered in the typewriting
produced by the six machines.
It
was
then
arranged
that
the typists
who normally used these machines before they were stolen should each
type
out
copies of the noted words on their respective machines, typing
each word four times.
A book of photographs was
then
prepared for each machine, show-
ing enlargements of the noted words taken from the text of the standards
and enlargements of the corresponding words typewritten on the
machine by the typist. (Photograph No.
10
shows a portion of one of
the court productions.)
At the subsequent court proceedings evidence on the typewriting
identification was given by two members of the Bureau and accepted
by the court as proof of previous ownership of the machines in question.
The
accused were both found guilty and sentenced to
12
months and
6months imprisonment respectively.
What
kind of Police Service do we
want?
By
CONSTABLE
THOMAS
FAWCETT
Sheffield City Police
WHAT EVER else its critics may say about the Police Service it
cannot be disputed that it has played its full share in coping
with the manifold problems of
the
past six years.
Nor
can it be claimed
that
the
Service has been backward in meeting
the
inevitable complexi-
ties of peace. Despite all the publicity given to the inevitable post-war
increase in crime, the
blunt
truth
is that there is nothing remotely
approaching the state of lawlessness which might reasonably have
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