Radio Digest (June 1932-Mar 1933)

D. Thomas Cur tin digs into New York police files for dramatic facts. 1 olice 1 hrillers ! Action! By Tom Curtin THE police detective dramas which I am doing on the Lucky Strike hour over the NBC Red Network are true. The plots, the tricks, the clues, the methods of solution, I take straight out of the cases on police record. Before investigating the never-ending day and night battle in New York, between the sources on the side of the law, and those who try to uplift the law or batter it down, I had a feeling that nowhere in the world would any individual detective have to use his wits and ingenuity to the extent that he does here. After digging into the detective methods in hundreds of cases and knocking about with detectives on the job, I find the police task even greater than I had supposed — and the more I see from the inside the problems of these New York detectives, the more I admire their accomplishments. Some of the most interesting dramas that I plan to write are cases that may not be known to the public at all. For example, two years ago fires broke out and bombs exploded on barges in the harbor. Who was doing it? Week after week, and month after month the detectives assigned to the case worked quietly. There wasn't a thing to go into the papers as clue by clue they ferreted out four of the most able and cunning imported communists in the world. Two years of patient, steady, under-cover work, with death to face on many occasions, and finally the four men are brought to trial, heavily sentenced, and deported. On no one day is there a big newspaper story, but the whole thing added together makes a big drama. There is a greater variety to the New York detectives' work than the general public might suppose. There are cases in which some outstanding detectives are sent all over the world. And there is a variety in the work of the city itself, which calls for the development of squads where men become highly specialized, as in the case of the narcotic squad, safe and loft squad, bomb and alien squads, jewelry, forgery and the like. The waterfront detectives, with their fast launches, have a particularly romantic, adventurous lure for many. Modern detective work is naturally highly organized, and there is considerable cooperation between New York and the police departments throughout America and to varying extents abroad, and 31 yet the most successful detective must be an individual, with initiative and ability to cope with situations on his own, and pit his ingenuity against the ingenuity of the criminal. Some of the tricks used in the battle of wits between the crook and the detective may seem to belong to fiction rather than real life, but I assure my listeners that I have come on some things in these actual cases to rival anything in the best detective fiction. IV-Lany times as I work on these series I find myself wishing that my good friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was still living. I formed a warm friendship with the creator of Sherlock Holmes. One of the truths which I hope my listeners will get out of these Tuesday night dramas is the patience, persistence and tenacity shown by some of these detectives in running down a criminal. yOUR Radio Digest picks the comers. Last March it stated: "Somebody one of these days will wake up and sign Tom Curtin for his Thrillers. They are real Top Notchers." Here is the answer. When a man connected witn tne police force goes wrong, he gets plenty of publicity. I want to give some publicity right here to the wprk I have seen down at Police Headquarters, where inspectors and the men under them do any amount of extra work, without any thought of anything but a well handled job. And now a closing word about the police commissioner of New York City, Edward P. Mulrooney. In my international newspaper work and general adventuring, I have seen, first-hand, the workings of more than a dozen armies and their leaders, Scotland Yard, and some of the continental police systems, but I have never seen a body of men more thoroughly respect their leader than the men on the New York police force respect Commissioner Mulrooney. They know that he knows the ropes, that he came up through the ranks, and that he is where he is through honesty and outstanding ability. They know that he did not hesitate about plunging into the North River and swimming after a dangerous criminal, that he went alone into an apartment, gun in hand, to take two armed men, and that he led the attack against Two-gun Crowley last year up at West Ninetieth Street, going deliberately into the line of fire. There is a joy in working under that kind of a leader.