Stemming the Underworld Tide

From Nanatno Free Pres

LANCED AGAINST Nanaimo’s
mal freedom from crime, the cost of
cing by B. C. Police local detachment
hods which costs the city about $13,000
ear, appears to be good business. The
- of forming and maintaining an
quate City Police Department would
exceed that cost to the ratepayers.
nicipal policing and law enforcement
the Provincial Police method has the
antage of wider scope than could
sibly be secured by purely local ad-
istration, for the activities of B.C.
ice are closely related in all operating
ts, and Nanaimo gets the advantage
this province-wide scope police integ-
on.
\nother distinct advantage was made
Jent recently, when, as a result of
C. Police “seeing eye’ contacts at
ncouver, Nanaimo’s police warned all
iness people and residents here that
te a number of undesirables from the
inland city were taking boat for Van-
ier Island points. Advised in ad-
ice, local police are enabled to identify
these so-called undesirables as they
» down from the gangplanks. Where
police consider it necessary, a quiet
rd is immediately passed, so that the
ect of scrutiny is made aware that
local police have noted arrival, and
t surveillance may be expected, with
ck apprehension where such appears
tified.
Particularly was the warning given
hotel and rooming house operators
ose record has been a most praise-
rthy one throughout war years and
extra burdens of operating in a heav-

INGERPRINT

Editorial “Nanaimo Free Press”

YLICE OFFICIALS and B. C. Police
gerprint experts seated in Police Mag-
rate Lionel Beevor Potts’ courtroom
s week fidgeted a bit and cast knowing
inces at one another as a Vancouver
vyer defending an Indian advance
ange theory. Were this man of law
rrect in this theory it would prove a
mb of atomic force shattering to smith-
sens the long-proven theory of the
rtillon system that no two humans
ssess identical fingerprints, and that
e practice over a score of years has
oven this to be true.

The accused Indian had left clear-cut
iger and palm prints upon a greasy

FTEENTH EDITION

s, December 5th, 1945.

ily garrisoned town. Military authorities
have frequently given unstinted praise
to Nanaimo “one of the most sex-
disease-free army camps in all Canada.”
This is a record worth keeping, for the
V-D evil has been kept to a remarkable
minimum here.

It is always post-war history that wo-
men of loose character follow troops
with money, carrying with them degen-
erate men~ who operate on the fringes
of crime and violence. Nanaimo, a de-
mobilization point, is getting the name
among this underworld fraternity as a
“payoff town”, and that is why the police
here, as elsewhere, are finding each day
a greater number of undesirables to
“move along’. Hotel and rooming house
operators can continue keeping Nanaimo
in the highly reputable position it enjoys
by using extra precautions in the matter
of renting rooms to unknown people.
There are more than sufficient legitimate
patrons to fill every room in Nanaimo
every night, and the co-operation of those
having such premises will go far toward
helping the police keep tight control of
the local situation.

Basically, however, the condition spot-
lights a deplorably weak spot in our
system. That of finding that the “move
along” order by police keeps this un-
wanted and menacing population circu-
lating from town to town and city to
city, like gypsies. Until, however, some
system of segregation and compulsory
treatment is devised, cities and towns
will continue shoving these people around,
marked, malevolent and menacing, one
of the unsolved problems of a weak
social system.

as

THEORIZING

Monday, January 21st, 1946.

His hands
could be

kitchen table within a cafe.
were so dirty that the prints
“read” with the naked eye.
The lawyer closely gftizzed all the
fingerprint experts as to whether or not
any of them ever studied the results of
heredity as affecting “inbred tribes” of
Coast Indians. None had. Did they know
that in such tribes heredity traits oftimes
resulted in the handing down of deform-
ities and physical characteristics from
father to son? They admitted they had
knowledge that this did occur. Did they
know that such heredity could even ex-
tend to the similarity of epidermis, so
that actual skin-print duplications could

occur? None of the experts would admit
this, shaking positive heads and sticking
close by the rote of their teaching that
“no two human fingerprints are iden-
tical.”

Try as he might, the lawyer could not
shake them out of this fixation. It was
the spring and mainstay of their pro-
fession, and were it not the whole
structure of strength upon which the
fingerprint system is built would have
come tumbling down. They would go no
further than to positively prove by photo-
graphs enlarged five times the original
size, that in 21 points the “whorls” and
“ending ridges” and other technical terms
for the characteristics of the prints, that
the Indian’s fingerprints taken at police
headquarters, and those taken from the
prints left within the burglarized prem-
ises were identical.

The lawyer made a good try upon a
new theory, doubtless his own astute

so

Heredity and Fingerprints? “You can’t prove it
by me,” says Fingerprint Expert A. G. Carmichael
of the B. C. Police Bureau.

reasoning. He went as far as he could,
but he did not need to press the point,
anyway, for his client was acquitted
upon other grounds, which were that
while the court was fully convinced the
Indian actually committed the burglary,
all evidence showed that he was drunk,
so overcome by alcohol poisoning that
he had no control at the time of his in-
tentions or actions.

BEING happy is like keeping the buttons
on your tunic polished. It’s a habit.

AUNT Mandy Snow was being cross-
questioned in court, in an action over
some property left by her husband who
had died without making a will.

“Ah’m bein’ pestered so much by dem
lawyers’ questions,” declared Aunt Mandy
to the judge, “dat sometimes ah’m almost
sorry my husband died.”

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