He picks up a typewritten table, and his finger glides to a particular spot. That table tells him how many men a 5, 10, or 20 per cent. draft from neighbouring divisions will give.
In another minute he is in consultation with Sir Frederick Wodehouse, the Assistant Commissioner who controls the department, and possibly with Sir Edward Henry himself. All three are men used to unhesitating decisions, and with an intimate knowledge of the force.
A few sharp words and the private wires again begin to get busy. Almost immediately the reserves from the neighbouring divisions commence to mobilise, and are poured into the disturbed area as swiftly as means of communication allow. It is a riddle solved with quiet precision, and no district is bereft of adequate guardianship. One of the exigencies of the business has been met.
If the public ever thought about such a feat at all, they would consider it as something of a miracle. But it is not as spectacular as the catching of a criminal, and the only persons who call indirect attention to it are those who would have us believe that great, hulking policemen have batoned helpless men and women who were, of course, doing nothing, although broken bottles and stones may litter the thoroughfare where an affray has taken place.
It is curious this suspicion of the police which sometimes affects otherwise clear-headed people. You pick out men whose character is without flaw from their childhood upwards. You put them into a blue uniform, and lo! their whole personality alters. They are hypocrites and bullies, bribed by bookmakers and prostitutes, and capable of any sort of baseness.
Let us return to the Riddle Department. The secret of dealing with such a happening as I have painted above lies naturally in the organisation.
Every division has a certain number of reserve men--approximately 10 per cent.
They are picked veterans of not less than eight years' service, who receive an additional eighteenpence per week, and must always be ready to carry out special work when called upon. These, then, are first called out, and other men are taken as occasion demands.
There are other branches of the Metropolitan Police where a mistake would make havoc in a department or division; here it would affect the service as a whole.
The Executive Department is as much concerned in the work of every other part of that complex machine as the engineers of a great ship are in keeping the vessel moving. Sir Frederick Wodehouse, who is at its head, in his quarter of a century's service as police administrator--twelve of which have been spent with the City Police and the remainder at Scotland Yard--has always been keenly alive to the necessity of keeping pace with the science of organisation. He has as his right-hand men Superintendents West and White, who split up the work between them--one in charge of the Executive Department itself, the other supervising the Statistical Department.
It will be understood why I call it a Riddle Department when I explain some of its duties. It is concerned with the discipline and administration of the force as a whole; the organisation of men when they have to be used in mass; it controls the public and private telephone and telegraph service of the force; it compiles statistics on all sorts of police subjects: it edits and issues "Informations," "The Inebriates' List," "The Cycle List," "The Pawnbrokers' List," reward bills, and police notices; it makes traffic regulations; it works with the Board of Agriculture when cattle disease breaks out; it issues pedlars' and sweeps' certificates; it keeps a gruesome record--a sort of photographic morgue--of all dead bodies found in London; and it has to give its consent before any summons may be taken out by a police officer.
That is the merest inadequate list of its duties. While other departments are clean-cut, knowing where their work begins and ends, the Executive Department has no limit.
Anything that does not properly belong anywhere else goes to the Executive Department. That is why it specialises in solving riddles.
It is in such a department as this that alertness of mind and elasticity of resource are developed. When war broke out, it had to spend many sleepless days and nights in what was practically a redisposition of the force. Hundreds of the force had enlisted, and innumerable new duties and problems arose. A system of co-ordination between the immense new bodies of special constables and the regular force had to be evolved.
Depleted divisions had to be readjusted, men selected for particular work, a system of co-ordination with the Special Constabulary made, and a hundred re-arrangements made.
So, when a great procession takes place, as at the Coronation festivities, the most meticulous organisation is necessary. It seems simple to order so many men to arrange themselves at so many paces apart over a certain number of miles. But the problem is much more complex.
First it has to be decided where the men are to come from. Then they have to be disposed strategically so that no man shall be wasted where he is not needed; there have to be reserves ready at hand for emergencies; it has to be decided what streets shall be closed and when, what streets shall remain open; how a vast number of men shall obtain food and rest, and so on.
All this without offending an eager populace, thronging the streets night and day, and without exposing outer London to the risk of marauders when its guardians are enormously diminished in numbers.
We all know that it has been done, and how cheerfully every man in the force, from constable to Commissioner, give up leisure and comfort to carry out the demands made upon them.
But of the long, long planning and scheming we know little. The working out of draft schemes; the hours spent in conference with superintendents of divisions; the poring over maps and sectional plans--of this unceasing labour we never heard, although we accepted its result almost without comment.
Such work as this goes on whenever there is likely to be a gathering anywhere in London, be it a boat-race or a Suffragette procession.
A point that is always borne in mind, and which is emphasised in the "Police Code," is that "traffic should never be closed until the last moment consistent with public safety, and be re-opened as soon as possible." Something of the same process goes on when there is a likelihood of riot and disorder, but in some contingencies it is often necessary to act immediately, as I have already pointed out.
Nevertheless, in a district where it is known that disorder may break out the police are usually reinforced beforehand.
The department is responsible for the communications of Scotland Yard.
The telegraphs and telephones are continually at work night and day.
With a few exceptions, every station is linked by wire to headquarters.
Tape machines record every outgoing and incoming message so that a message is clear and unmistakable. One operator at work at Scotland Yard can send a message simultaneously to every main station. There is a private telephone system by which stations can talk with stations and headquarters without delay, and without fear of secrets being "tapped,"
and the public system is also used.
It is not so very long ago that the only wire communication was by an antiquated A.B.C. instrument which worked laboriously and slowly, and such a thing as a telephone was undreamed of.
Then it was a matter of much formality and sometimes intolerable slowness for a provincial force to get in touch on a matter of urgency.
Now it is merely a question of a trunk call.
This naturally brings me to a consideration of Scotland Yard in a new and little-known light--as a newspaper office. For daily, weekly, and evening papers are issued from the big, red-brick building. Some of them are issued by the Criminal Record Office, some by the Executive Department. It will be convenient, however, to deal with them in a mass.
They are papers sometimes much more interesting and informative than those to be procured on the bookstalls, but much gold could not buy one for a private person.
Best known of all, perhaps, is the _Police Gazette_, a four-page sheet published on Tuesdays and Fridays, and issued broadcast over the kingdom. Its correspondents are police officials everywhere. It publishes photographs occasionally, usually official ones taken in profile and side-face. It deals with what the newspapers call "sensations" unsensationally, and its editor is free from that bugbear of most editors--the fear of a libel action.
The Tuesday edition deals almost entirely with deserters from the Navy and Army, while Friday's issue is concerned with bigger fry--criminals and crime. It is an interesting paper with an extensive circulation, and is, perhaps, more carefully read by those into whose hands it falls than any other publication, however fascinating.
The official title of what may be called the evening paper is _Printed Informations_. This is a sheet about foolscap size, and its publication is confined to the Metropolitan Police. It is printed four times a day, except on Sundays when it is issued twice, and distributed by brisk little motor cars among the various stations. Some idea of its contents may be gathered from the headings: "Wanted for Crime," "In Custody for Crime," "Property Stolen," "Property Lost or Stolen," "Persons or Bodies Found," "Persons Missing," "Animals Lost or Stolen."
Apart from these papers, which are purely confidential, there are other papers issued. There is the "Black List" issued to publicans, with portraits and descriptions of persons to whom it is an offence to supply liquor, and the "Pawnbrokers' List and Cycle List," which has to be sent to those persons to whom stolen property might be offered for pledge or sale. These latter are distributed from each station by hand.
It is at the Statistical Department that many of the riddles are fired.
It has the record of each man in its files, knows his official character, his medical history, and so on.
Now and again some one wants to know how many street accidents occurred in London during a particular week. The department produces a carefully prepared table showing the number and details in each case.
Figures may be unattractive things, yet at any moment the statistics collected in that quiet, methodical office may have a direct effect on any one of London's teeming millions.
When the order went forth that all cyclists in London should carry rear lights it was probably a string of figures put together in that department which was responsible--figures which showed the number of accidents that had been caused in the absence of any such precaution.
It keeps track of everything done by the police, individually and collectively. Ask how many charges were preferred by the police in one year. You will learn at once that there were 133,000, that 26,000 summonses were issued by police officers, and 63,000 were served on behalf of private persons.
There are about three hundred mounted police in the force, and these, as a whole, come under the control of the department, although at ordinary times they are attached to divisions.
They used to be attached to the outer divisions, but it was found that they were too far away when an emergency arose, for, after all, the mounted man is of most use in controlling unruly crowds. So now they are with the inner divisions, within easy reach of the most crowded thoroughfares when needed.
All the men in this branch of the service have been thoroughly trained in horsemanship, and those who have seen them at work on their adroit horses, keeping back a mass of pushing, struggling people, or dexterously dispersing a threatening crowd, know their worth as maintainers of order.
Both the Executive and Statistical Departments are concerned with reports which are the basis of all discipline and organisation in the Metropolitan Police. The first--"The Morning Report"--is compiled by the superintendents of divisions, and passed and commented upon by the Chief Constables in charge of districts.
This is London's bill of criminal health. It shows what has happened beyond the ordinary over seven hundred square miles in the preceding twenty-four hours. A murder, a riot, a robbery, a fire, a street collision--all things are recorded. Every police station, it should be said, keeps an "Occurrence Book" and it is from this that the reports are compiled.
Then there is the "Morning Report of Crime." This is largely the work of the divisional detective-inspectors. Every crime for which a person can be indicted is included here, and an elaborate report of the steps that have been taken. Comments are made upon this by both the Chief Constable of the district and the Assistant-Commissioner of the C.I.D.--commendations, reprimands, suggestions.
The third report is the "Morning State," which deals with matters of internal administration of the force itself--numbers available, disciplinary matters, affairs of health.
All these reports ultimately reach the departments for record and for the transmission of orders.
CHAPTER XII.
THE SAILOR POLICE.