Monday, Sep. 16, 1929
Professor Added
Last week President Hoover's Crime Commission, appointed in April (TIME, May 27), held a meeting in Washington and decided to begin public hearings about crime and its remedies. With the commissioners met a figure new on the Washington scene--Police-Professor August Vollmer, just appointed as the commission's police work expert. Mr. Vollmer is chief of Berkeley, CaL, but he has a world reputation as a criminologist. Famed for the adaptation of a lie detector (through the discovery that falsehood produces a prompt rise in blood pressure), for the employment of P. D. students on the Berkeley police force, he has by request reorganized the police forces of Detroit, Los Angeles. Kansas City, San Diego, Havana. Greatest tribute of all, he was appointed last spring professor of Police Administration at the University of Chicago (TIME, May 27). Last week he was given indefinite leave of absence from Berkeley to work for the Crime Commission and his country.