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they should be regarded by the officers of the force not as rivals, but as colleagues called in on account of the special features of the case and entitled to every assistance that can be given,
9. It is of the highest importance that the question whether such assistance should be sought from New Scotland Yard should be settled in any particular case with the utmost promptitude, as much may depend on the Metropolitan officer reaching the scene of the crime at the earliest opportunity. Not only will delay give the criminal a longer time in which to escape, but valuable clues may be removed, obliterated or obscured, and the difficulty of investigation much increased. The Chief Constable should consider the question with- out delay, and decide at the earliest possible moment whether the aid of a specially trained detective is required.
10. Any application for assistance should be sent immediately, by telephone or telegram, to New Scotland Yard, where an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department is on duty day and night. Notice of the application should be sent subsequently to the Home Office by letter.
11. Nothing should be done pending the arrival of the officer that might destroy possible clues. The surroundings of the crime should be left untouched, as far as possible, and police officers should be posted with strict orders to prevent any person from entering or disturbing the premises in which the crime took place. In cases of murder it is specially desirable that nothing should be done, except where necessary for imperative reasons, to alter the position or the condition of the victim's body, and none of the traces of the crime should be removed. Further, it is necessary to prevent the inmates of a house in which a crime has occurred from removing or destroying articles which might be found subsequently to have a bearing on the investigation.
12. No charges are made for services rendered in such cases by officers of the Metropolitan Police unless, in the Secretary of State's opinion, the case was not sufficiently serious or obscure to require assist- ance, or there was undue delay in making the application. In such an event the costs incurred by the Metropolitan Police in complying with the application will be regarded as chargeable to the funds of the police force from which the application came.
Crimes in Railway Trains.
13. Where a crime of violence has been committed in a railway train, the services of an officer from London should be requisitioned at once. It is of the utmost importance that the carriage should be examined exhaustively by an officer having special experience in this class of crime. Further, that as the railway train may have passed through several Police districts, and the crime may have been planned or commenced in one district and completed in another, there should be no question as to the authority which is to undertake the investigation, and no lack of co-ordination in the efforts of the different police forces.
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Route Forms and other Notices.
14. A police force sending " informations or other notices to other forces with a view to distribution amongst their divisional or other stations should send sufficient copies to avoid the necessity of separate reproduction of the notice by those forces.
15. Time will often be saved by sending notices for distribution throughout a county force to the different Superintendents instead of to headquarters; when this is done, the Chief Constable of that force should be informed to which divisions they have been so sent. But some county Chief Constables may prefer to have copies for distribution sent generally in the first instance to their headquarters office, where further particulars may often be usefully added to the notices received from other districts before they are circulated to the divisions,
16. The circulation of notices which are not likely to lead to any good result should be avoided, such as route forms without photo- graphs or without such definite particulars as could give means of identifying the accused.
17. If the accused is arrested, an intimation of the arrest should be sent at once to those forces which have been asked previously to effect his arrest, for those forces can then cease to look out for the man, and there will be no risk of some other man being wrongly arrested after the real offender has been arrested elsewhere.
18. In sending notices intended for circulation in the Metropolitan Police district, three copies of informations, circulars, descriptive bills, etc., and two copies of all route forms (with or without photographs) should be sent to New Scotland Yard.
19. Communications on police matters in Ireland should be addressed to the following officers :-
(a) As regards Northern Ireland: The Inspector-General, Royal
Ulster Constabulary, Belfast.
(b) As regards the Irish Free State: The Chief Commissioner, Dublin Metropolitan Police, Dublin, or the Commissioner of the Civic Guard, Dublin Castle, Dublin, as the case may be.
Applications for Fiat of Attorney-General.
20. Whenever the Police propose to institute criminal proceedings for which the fiat of the Attorney-General is required by statute, the application to him should be sent under cover to the Chief Clerk, Law Officers' Department, Royal Courts of Justice, London, W.C. 2.
The application should contain—
(i) a précis of the facts and of the evidence, which should disclose
a prima facie case against the person or persons accused; (ii) the names of the witnesses available in support of a prose-
cution;
(iii) a certificate, signed by the Chief Constable or a responsible
officer, to the following effect :--
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'I hereby certify that I have made inquiries and satisfied myself that the facts are as stated in the annexed application for the fiat of His Majesty's Attorney- General. (Signed).
Chief Constable,"
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