Listen Flatfoot . . .

Besides being an enduring monument to the bare-faced versatility of Producer Phillips H. (Seth Parker) Lord, the radio thriller Gang Busters is clearly the big-shot rackety rax on the U. S. air. Weekly for four years (now via CBS, Saturdays, 8 p.m. E.S.T.) it has tommy-gunned and tough-talked its way through U. S. crime files.

Gang Busters gets by broadcasting's self-censorship as a crime-doesn't-pay sermon, but some active law-&-order men think it is something else. Fiery Frank Xavier Reller, chief probation officer of the St. Louis Juvenile Court, tunes in regularly for two reasons: 1) to get a line on what tricky mischief St. Louis small fry may be up to the next week; 2) to keep abreast of new twists in gangland lingo.

Last week Officer Reller totted up his juvenile catch for 1939. Forty-six young law busters admittedly took their cues straight from Gang Busters. Perhaps 100 others used it as a sort of lexicon. At first Officer Reller was taken aback by such youthful belligerence as: "Listen, flatfoot, I ain't talkin' to you coppers." Nowadays, after listening to Gang Busters himself, he knows the right answer. It is: "Well, sit down there and start talkin', or I'll pin your ears back."

Out of chats like this, Officer Reller got the low-down on a chain of filling-station robberies, in which he said various Gang Buster techniques were used. One was to call the attendant by telephone to come out and fix a flat. Another was to work in threes, one to call the attendant into the washroom, another to stand lookout, the third to rifle the till.

At the Central States Probation and Parole Association meeting this month in Chicago, Probation Officer Reller will offer a resolution condemning the program as crime-inspiring, asking FCC to ban it and other thrillers like it from the U. S. air.

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