The New York herald., 1922-04-02
By Arthur B. Reeve.
- ATRoLMAN CHARLES FLOOD.
fifty years on the police force, has
just made his first arrest

just made his first arrest.
Much water has passed under the BROOK.
lyn Bridge, which was begun the wear
Flood Joined the force-and a very differ.
ent breed of criminals to-day pass over the
Bridge of Sighs to the Tombs.
Time has moved since 1872.
In the half century that Flood has
been patiently awaiting the supreme
moment Of his first arrest the world
has seen the evolution of the great mod
ern warfare of science against crime. B
Science" in the apprehension and
Identification of criminals in the days !
when Flood joined the force consisted
in loose description of the appearance
and build of criminal, wood cut infre-
quently photograph
Just about that time the father of the
great Bertillon was founding the School of
Anthropology in Paris in 1874. 1t was not
until 1890 that Alphonse Bertillon described
the system of Identification of criminals.
known as anthropometry, in his book,
Photographic Judiciaire."
About the same time Sir Edward r.
Henry was trying out through the Bengal
police under his administration a system
of finger prints for Identification. For
years Sir Francis Galton had studied fin
ger prints before he published his book on
Finger Prints" in 1892. Then Sir Edwards
in London invented or devised the method
of finger print filing that made the system
workable.
tiication has developed in this fifty years.
In the days when Flood Joined the force
handbills and the mails supplemented the
newspapers in crime detection. Science
had added the telegraph and the cables.
The telephone had yet to reach its present
development. Wireless was unknown-as
to-day it awaits the expansion that the last
fifty years saw for the telephone.
Wireless Photography to
Aid Law Against Crime
Another fifty years and we shall be pick
ing our criminals up right out Of the air
by wireless long distance alarm and broad
casted radio-photographs.
Fifty years ago was the age of keyhole
evidence. gossip, stool pigeons Nowadays
we have the dictagrapn, the little mechan-
ical eavesdropper which lands the evildoer
with the evidence of his own lips. Some
day we shall have the wireless dictagraph
working.
Contrast the bloodhounds of Eliza cross
ing the ice with the modern police dog
which climbs ladder.
Half a century ago the only way to stop
a mob or an escaping criminal was with
shot, which might miss him. To-day we
are just on the verge OF stopping them
with bombs OF tear gas, chloracetophenone
with lachrymatory gas and sneezing gas.
One of the latest patents that has come
to my attention is burglar alarm which
shoots star shell to summon the police
and emits asphyxiating gas that stupehes
the criminal until the police arrive to take
him.
Evidently this inventor has been affected
by the spectacular efficiency OF the war.
He has the idea, however, of science of the
future-makng the criminal world no
mans land.
In the last fifty years criminals. too,
have taken up science. But the scientific
criminal has not been very successful in
point OF fact. He leaves too many clews.
For example, there was the famous
Arthur Warren Waite case. We found that