Douglas daily dispatch., 1928-02-28
INEFF|C|ENGY
POLICE, COURT
CAUSES
National Crime Commission
Summarizes Findings of
Surveys
CLEVELAND BEST
In Buffalo, N. Y, Only
Three Percent of Rob
bers Are Caught
BEST

NEW YORK, Feb. 27 (P)-The in
efficiency Of police and the courts has
made crime about the safest business
in the United States, Dr. Louis N
Robinson states in report made pub
lie today by the national crime COM
mission.
The report summarizes the findings
of a committee of which Frank
o. Lowden, former. governor of Illi-
noiS, is chairman. 1t includes figures
purporting to show the ratio of ar
rests to crimes committed and the
number of convictions compared with
arrests
The combined figures of murder
and manslaughter for the entire coun-'
try of England place the ratio of ar
rests for these crimes at 50 per cent
The city in the United States in
which the police are most efficient
in dealing with killings is Cleveland,
where the V0~centage is 83, says the
report. Baltimore has percentage
of 68, Kansas City SO and st. Louis
sixteen.
In robbery cases the ratio of ar
rests to crimes drops sharply with
Cleveland at the top of the list with
49 per cent. In Buffalo, N. Y, only
three per cent of the robbers are
caught, the report says.
Robbery in Buffalo the report
says, must be a particularly lucra-
0n11iN1n Ac in
only three per cent of the cases, the
number who were finally convicted
is necessarily so small that the luck
less individual who is occasionally
caught and convicted must attribute
his misfortune to an act of God, as
he would be in case of disastrous
storm, shipwreck or earthquake"
Failure of the courts to convict in
many cases is laid to two causes
neglect on the part of police to OBJ
tain the necessary evidence and the
inefficiency of court machinery. The
criminal, the commission holds, has
ing imprisonment.
Science has as yet gained little
foothoId in the work of protecting
society from crime" the report con-
cludes
The report said city police cannot
be excused on the ground of ancient
and outwcrn forms of police organiza-
ton, and the army intelligence tests
as applied to the police force in Cleve-
land were quoted to sustain the con-
tention that the trouble is in the lack
of average intelligence in the police
force, particularly in the supervisory
branches.
Compared to privates in the United
States army, the report said police
patrolmen have only three per cent in
class A as compared with nine per
cent in the army, nine per cent in
class B as compared with. IA per cent
in the army, although in class C they
have 90 per cent as compared with 81
per cent in the army.
"A little over 25 per cent of police
patrolnen were found to be falling in
c. D or E classes, not capable of COM
pleting third grade, which means of
the moron grade of feeble mindedneSs:
only 33 per cent ha daverage or c
intelligence which means that So per
cent we're class G or below, ranging
from those not capable of completing
high school class to the worst of the
moron class"
"How can such men," the report
asked "be expected or even trained to
apprehend criminals?"
The committee recommended that
the police force be taken out of politics
and "do what we have done with our
school system. place it on a higher
plane than other branches of public
work, demanding and getting more
than we are accustomed to demand
and pet elsewhere in public admins
tration"