Central Police Station – a policeman’s critique

It is necessary to here also direct attention to the conditions prevailing at the Central Police Station – the most important and the busiest Police Station in the Metropolitan District. The Central Police Station is totally unsuited to meet modern requirements: it is obsolete; the accommodation and facilities in the charge room are insufficient and unsatisfactory; there is not a room available there in which a Detective or Policeman can interview a complainant or prisoner, nor is there a room in which to detain a suspected person pending identification, nor for accommodating witnesses called there to identify suspects, nor is there a room in which persons may be lined up for identification purposes in a satisfactory manner. At present it is necessary to detain suspects on a 4ft bench in the charge room in full view of the public visiting there on business and within hearing of the business being transacted; the “line-up” for identifications takes place in an exercise yard at the rear of the cells, and men and women called to identify suspects have to pass through cell corridors, in view of large numbers of prisoners, and are frequently unnerved in the process when they arrive at the place of identification; all this is out of date and most unsatisfactory from public and Police points of view. The facilities in the matter of cells and rooms for attending to the wants of female prisoners (First Offenders included) and for the taking of finger prints, photographs, descriptions and other particulars of prisoners are, to say the least, primitive.