THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1955.
THE BACK-ROOM BOYS OF HONGKONG'S CID
How they track down criminals from fingerprints
By William Smyly ·
W
ITH records and of an inch of the side of his the chamber of à organisation thumb on.
revolver.
destroyed during When a print comes in to be the Japanese oc- identified, DSI Koh takes it cupation. the Hongkong quietly over to his magnifying to Count
Criminal Investigation De- glass and sit down
the ridges and study the out-
partment has had, since the
line
and
characteristics. He e
war, to face the tedious job looks a little worried, but is of building anew the records unhurried and slow. Yet his
mind
is like a 20x terrier on and equipment which such
the scent of a rat. Sometimes an organisation needs to be has to worry the problem, help if track down sys- comparing and recounting ridges tematic criminals.
on thumbprints for weeks, be-
"The quickest job was to fore he gets a result.
build up a "scenes of Crime"
department, with
trained
detectives and photo-
graphers, backed by a corns
QUICKEST
His quickest identification... was when a print on a lady's
of experts, such as the handbag was renticed in five belistics and medical mutes, and the identity of the officers and their
ta circulated equip thief
ment.
de-
The "Sernes of Crime" partment makes the first cx- tensive investigation and on- the-spot reerd of any serious
crime.
One of its "pieces of equip ment" is the Single Print Collection.
2 library of in- dividual ingerprints of selected such as convicted
criminals
thieves and housebreakers whow prints are most likly tour up in the wrong places,
UNHURRIED
slations.
police.
The longest identification that he he solved tack 24 hours et work over his magnifying glass, spread over several weeks, be- fore ä section of
the
print photogrpas un en article was "
identified with its Positively
of section
one of the correct
1,000 cards in his library.
His life has become like that of puricularly chronic cross- word addict. Every case that, WOR comes is a new clue and makes at it till he has hini
Worry" the answer.
DSI Kch Ah-chong testing a silver urn for fingerprints.
magnifying
The classification in this de- presions through partment is made from a sheet glasses, the latest set of prints with the rolled impression of cane in. all ten digits, from which a formula, devised 50 years ago
So sometimes when there is nothing else on hand, he pulls out an unsolved mystery from a top drawer and puts in an- This library of prints, which tend to get unmanageable if it other half hour's worrying by Sir Edward Henry of Scol- gets too large. was compiled by an old case that hardly anyone land Yard, is worked out by a Detective Sub-Inspector Koh else remember.
full-time staff of 28 police const- Ah-chong, who specialised in A much longer job for the "bics
and chrks trained 1. method of by "Tarry
Wised
which the
of Scotland print Index under Single Print police records of all convicted No two finger prints are ever Synpm"-and now lists 21,000 criminals are filed the Identi- completely identical. Even the pin's from the 2,100 selected fleation Bureau.
prints of different fingers on canylus thought most likely to
the same hand are not com be at work in Hongkong.
pletely identical.
Yard-Wen devised CID was to build up a tinger- count and sort "ridges."
One of his outstanding deter tions was the positive identifi- from an estion of a gunman impression made by a quarter
The war, ilke an amnesty, gave all but a few Hongkong criminais a clean record. It was even-better than getting a clean sheet. There sheet at all.
vas
Checking a new sheet of fingerprints with those on record for an identification.
Blizzard traps sledge team in the frozen north
'OUR FOOD RAN OUT- -WOLVES ATTACKED?
St. John's, Newfoundland. wandered round and round in
Although this is an old and no well-known fae, its importance? is still constantly stressed, be-
ON 44 auys Donald Baird desolate wasteland--and then
Foda Eskimo Companion crossed our own wacks.
fought an Arctic blizzard. Their food ran out. Wolves attacked. But the two min survived.
..
And now 22-year-old Donald has told his story at Cape Doric, a
103
a:
the
Ienely trading post
Istand to Hudson Bay. ;
Baffin
entience to
"We decided to build ar Igloo and wait for the-weather guess "the winds were 10 MIL
"
is
one of hundreds of drawers in a place where the first classi- fication varled from 1/1 to 32/32. After this Live
sub classifications broke the possi- bilities down still further.
The library grows at such a rate. I began to wonder how soon it would push the rest of the CID off their third floor in the new Police Headquarters.
Sir Edward Henry's system provides so many sub-divisions. so evenly distributed among all possible fingerprints, that the Hongkong CID can trace any one of its 150,000 sets of prints without fail.
SECRETS
Scotland Yard uses the same method to trace cases in 1 library of two million convicted criminals.
25.
And the FBI, who stock Ser-
well vicemen's prints as those of criminals, use it to sort out a set that has topped 125 million.
Other departments on' the Photo- third floor include the graphic Department and Forensic Scierice Laboratory.
the
the
The Photographic Depar mant. with seven full-time police photographers, has all latest and best equipment in its camera cupboards and dark
Several
devices some are experi-
rooms. SCCT
2nd
are
But there is also a room that acts as a studio, display room
and cinema. Here lies a pile of tragic and horrifying photo- graph albums-police records of murder and suicide:
over
It was No. 18043-police re-
Among others, one thing that cords of the 18048th person to be arrested and Ongerprinted in strikes you as you flick 1955. Not everyone who
the art paper and the worse taken. than dead scream out from the arrested has his prints And if he is not convicted, the silence of their photographic police- record is either destroyed, or print-what, a price a
the given to him as a souvenir if man may have to pay in
How. service of Hongkong.... he wants it.
many of them are killed in the course of their duty:
The record was checked by the Dispatch Clerk, booked by the Trace Book Clerk. and passed to one of the battery of 15 fingerprint men to examined and classified.
Then the prints were taken to
cause if it were to be preved the Main File and put away in
that two people could possibly produce identical prints the entire method of finerprinting would have to be changed and the system would lose most DI its value in Law,
A fingerprint is also un- changeable, Criminals have attempted to change 0% obliterate their prints by burn- ing with fire or acid and by cutting But the minute char-
acteristics of a print can always be traced, unless
the
man cuts off his hand. Even in a dead body, the finger print is sometimes one of the recognisable identifications to
vanish.
CLASSIFIED
last
A print la classified first by a mathematical formula based or the general outlines of the ridges whorls, loops, and arches and by counting the number of ridges from a point in the pattern called a "delta.".
After this, individual char-
" acteristics cr irregularities are
noted and compared.
As I walked through the houses bright airy room that this department and look out through broad windows over the Naval Dockyard and Kow- loon Bay, past quiet rows of policemen and clerks sitting at
The Forensic Science Labora- tory has an even grimmer tale to tell. I will take you there in my-next article.
(To Be Continued Next Saturday)
How I
BLUSHED!
They make the customer sees at home.
TEN GIRLS SERVED.. MY BEER
their desks and studying im- | RICHARD WILSON, 20 years old, set out on a world tour with only £15. Here he gives further extracts from his travel note book. The country: JAPAN.
BAFFIN
Case Borsel
GREENLAND
Frakisker Bay!
TWO MEN KRASPER
*I KLEDIN
VCANADA
300
MILES
Selling of Baird's, ordeal' touching 85 miles an hour and left and had to kill live of our it was below zero, was below. dogs.
LACK OF FOOD
With the Eskimo, named We did not get our bearings
T
Later we went out and shot two antelopes. We also found some frozen fish."
Donald and Gotochie loaded
I still have my brown hair, and Matsuko's elder sisters were polite enough not to complain of it.
SHUFFLERS
You always take your shoes off in the porch of a Japanese house, and pad about inside in socks or slippers.
When the first railways were built the passengers
left their WAS glad there were shoes on the station platform no women bathers and a man had to be hired to pick them up and throw them inside the train before It
present when I went to the
hot springs at Matsue, steamed away!
You often see men taking oft For here everyone their trousers In the trains to splashes about in the open make themselves comfortable on air as bare as on the day night journeys the Japanese winter is 20 cold that they they were born.
wear plenty underneath
I had been embarrassed enough already that afternoon -in a beer parlour at Otaru, where 10 lovely misses sat themselves down"". at my table and began to caress me.
They were waitresses whose job was to make the customers "feel at home."
OH! OH!
A
THE BOMB
Ta children's party a photo- Erapher nearly blinded u all trying to take a group photo with a home-made flashbulb..
Afterwards, still rubbing my eyes, 1 overheard one nine-year-
ber. "That old boy say to another: was just like the picadon
A friend explained: "That is the antelopes and fish on to BLACK hair is something our word for the atom bomb. Osteene. Denzid set out from
which no young Japanese Literally it means brightness Cape Dorset with 11 dogs in a again for eight days and we their sledge, harnessed up the
remaining siz dogs and a week can do without. In Tokyo my noise I realised how deep an slower for a 300-mile trek to spent them all in that
later staggered back to the host's young daughter, a seduc Impression Hiroshima had ma Frota Pay-on the Atlantic little lee hut
dour of the Hudson Bay Com- tive five-year-old nimed on Japan. Ride of Baffin Island. The date: Food ran low. That night pahy post at Cape. Dorse girls wouldn't look at me with city of Hiroshima. It is all Matsuko, assured me that the Later walked through the JEDELY 15.
our Husky dogs were attacked
They suffered no ill effects, my English mouse hair, rebuilt but in such a ram Tered two-thirds of by wolves, we could bear
She soleumily advised me to shackle, tumble down fasttion Fall survived.
Was Site Mrs Louise Baird cat-lots Laks. Now let Donald tell what the Huskies
sald, at her home in the New- acquire the fashionable pigment. But the children were play~ bappered
"We decided to head back to foundland fching village of I took her advice, far: criip - ing happily in the winter, gure- The blizzard hit us. We lost Cape Docset. When we arrived. Twaingateste never 3051 wwders of dried seaweeraro
of direction" and at Mingo Leke we had no food faith.
Lonely
made
the journey and reached Mingo the fight going on outside, But And !. when' she heard, her son nt seaweed in order to that it resembles a shanty, towIL..
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