Blaming the Police for Failing to Catch Jack the Ripper

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Blaming the Police for Failing to Catch Jack the Ripper

In 1880s the police force were very much in its infancy, such things

as forensics, DNA, finger printing were not available at that time.

The only tools available to the police were very primitive; in fact,

the only tools were post mortems, door-to-door enquiries, photography

(which was extremely basic) and having witnesses. The police was only

really set up for crime prevention. Other problems faced was the fact

that the police were seen as favouring the middle class, Because of

the bloody Sunday riots where the police got too violent with a crowd

of protesters protesting against the unemployment. This would have

made it extremely difficult at policing White Chapel

There were many points in the ripper investigation where it has been

suggested that the police were to be blamed for the failure in

capturing jack the ripper. Such points were the abuse of evidence and

the failure to cooperate between the city police and the metropolitan

police. An example of this was on the night of the "night double

murders" Eddoes apron was found by a constable by a graphitised door

reading "the Juwes are the men are The men That Will not be blamed for

nothing". This message could have been written by the ripper himself,

city police wanted to photograph this but Warren (from the

metropolitan police) felt that waiting until there was enough light to

be photographed might have caused anti-Semitic riots against those

Jews living in the area whom English residence already suspected. It

is believed that on the whole most of the two police force worked well

together, but there is still evidence that more senior officers did

not. Did the failure of the two police forces result in the killer

walking free? Most sources do not fault either force of failing to

solve the ripper murders; even by today's standards this case would

have been extremely challenging.

Another point that the police were to blame for the failure to capture

jack the ripper was that they wasted a lot of time in following up

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