Bigger and Better Crimes POLICE HEADQUARTERS. By Quentin Reynolds. (Cassell,
18s.) GREATER London, with a population of nearly eight and U millions, is policed—remarkably efficiently, all things considereg —by fewer than 16,000 men and women: New York, with loo than half London's area and the same size population, is goao,r by a full-strength force of 21,000. There all similarities end. is most obvious from this study is the vast degree of differell,c,c1 in working methods between the world's two most famous Polirn, forces; differences which arise from the structure of the C°
munities served. to!
Mr. Reynolds pays tribute to the New York force by this detailed story of how both the policeman and the sYst.w.0 work. His central figure is Frank Phillips, today a detetill inspector in administrative control of several departments, started walking a beat on the lower East Side thirty years18,4 he is the most decorated of American policemen, with tre`;;;), commendations, awards for dozens of arrests, patient inves"oi tions, desperate pursuits. The tone of this account is one of almost breathless admiration, and considering the varieties of crime, the general ruthlessness of criminals, the complexitieso judicial administration and of the penal system, one can admire men like Phillips, whose chief attribute is absow
dedication. ,
Armed police are considered essential in a society which is;°10 condones violence, which admires the ruthless, which automat i1 expects all its policemen to be totally corrupt; and in which lawbreaker almost invariably carries a weapon. New York's °vial and-robbers struggle is only one remove from the jungle e„6 now, with a daily average of one murder and three cases of filorti By comparison London is as safe and unexciting as a Cotswold village. But, given the same scale of rich Pic',Iofi, for the daring and any relaxation of our attitude to gun-collioi we too would face a comparable scale of violence, brutalitY corruption, in which only policemen with the same sort of c,10 devotion that Frank Phillips has could keep our police SP reasonably clean and safe.
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