How Much Credit to Police?

[Tani]

When you read the police's thoughts on the case, whether in memoranda, letters, casefiles etc. how much stock do you put into these?

How reliable do you find certain pieces of information, opinions, and rumours?

How much stock ought we put into these writings when reviewing the case?

For ex. Kosminsky as suspect; the police putting faith in DB letter; Met vs CoL Police on graffito etc.



IOW how much weight on a given topic do the words of police carry in your opinion?

[The Rookie Detective]

I think the MacNagthen Memorandum, that was written to counter the idea of Cutbush having been Ripper, is the main reason why Curbush is today often overlooked as a potential Ripper suspect.

Macnagthen essentially gets Cutbush off the hook.

[John Wheat]

When you read the police's thoughts on the case, whether in memoranda, letters, casefiles etc. how much stock do you put into these?

How reliable do you find certain pieces of information, opinions, and rumours?

How much stock ought we put into these writings when reviewing the case?

For ex. Kosminsky as suspect; the police putting faith in DB letter; Met vs CoL Police on graffito etc.



IOW how much weight on a given topic do the words of police carry in your opinion?

The info is unreliable. At the end of the day if the Police at the time were that good they would have caught Jack.

[Doctored Whatsit]

IOW how much weight on a given topic do the words of police carry in your opinion?

Whereas we cannot ignore the facts various relevant police officers reported at the time, we can only accept their opinions with caution. There is very little agreement when it comes to their opinions, for example on how many were victims of JtR, or who were their favoured suspects. Memoirs require extra caution because they are trying to provide interesting material for their readers, amplifying any success, concealing their failures, suggesting that they knew much more than people realised, and evidently often writing without reference to exact details of names and dates etc.

Their memories were fallible, and cannot be relied upon. Inspector Reid, for example, at Alice McKenzie's inquest, reported that coins found under her body were similar to events in Annie Chapman's murder. But Reid wasn't involved at the Chapman death, and the coins there only existed in newspaper stories, and not police reports.

Caution!

[Lewis C]

I trust police reports about the murders more than newspaper reports. I also mostly believe anything factual the police said about the crime scenes.

When it comes to police opinions about suspects, I consider police suspicion to be a valid reason to consider someone a suspect, but Anderson, Macnaghten, Abberline, and Littlefield each favored a different suspect, at least 3 of them have to be wrong. So police suspicion is a valid argument for each of their suspects, but that suspicion is far from being a conclusive argument. And it doesn't rule out other suspects. If at least 3 of those 4 policemen were wrong, then maybe all 4 of them were wrong.

[Monty]

The police are the most reliable source of information we have

[Doctored Whatsit]

The police are the most reliable source of information we have

I agree. My comments at #4 were meant to indicate the important difference between the facts officially reported at the time of a murder, which cannot be ignored, compared to the recollections made years later, and opinions such as how many victims etc, which are far less reliable.

[John Wheat]

The police are the most reliable source of information we have

This ia true although I'd say there opinions are very flawed.

[Lewis C]

I agree. My comments at #4 were meant to indicate the important difference between the facts officially reported at the time of a murder, which cannot be ignored, compared to the recollections made years later, and opinions such as how many victims etc, which are far less reliable.

I agree with that.

[Scott Nelson]

The info is unreliable. At the end of the day if the Police at the time were that good they would have caught Jack.

I think they did. Unfortunately, since there was no hard evidence and his family intervened, he avoided prosecution. This would have been known only to a select few senior officials.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Tani,

The answer to your question is "None."

The police continued to lie through their teeth in pointing blame at an unknown individual, no matter who he might be.

For the past 137 years the police have steered us away from the truth about this gigantic hoax.

Regards,

Simon

[John Wheat]

I think they did. Unfortunately, since there was no hard evidence and his family intervened, he avoided prosecution. This would have been known only to a select few senior officials.

But the Police at the time differed on who they thought the Ripper was.

[Scott Nelson]

Yes. I think because only those present at the identification and a few superiors would have been 'in the know' and those that weren't developed their own theories about the Ripper's identity.

[Fiver]

The police continued to lie through their teeth in pointing blame at an unknown individual, no matter who he might be.

Some police said the Ripper was unknown. Others named suspects, but they almost never agreed on which suspect the Ripper was.

For the past 137 years the police have steered us away from the truth about this gigantic hoax.

How can there be a hoax when the police did not agree on if the Ripper was identified, let alone who the Ripper was? They couldn't even agree on how many victims there were or if the Ripper had any anatomical knowledge. The variety of police opinions matches people stumbling in the dark, not a unified effort to point towards or away from any individual suspect.