The police tried to come with lots of tactics and ways in which to capture the Ripper. Many were useless and did not get them any closer to solving the case. They were not very successful and were extremely ineffective no matter what they tried.
Source F is a police leaflet urging the public to come forward with any information that had about the murders - "you are earnestly requested to communicate at once with the nearest Police Station". As there were no witnesses that actually saw the Ripper in action or knew what he exactly looked like, the Police were unable to rely on the statements. .
Source G describes the reason why the offering of a reward was stopped. It started "to produce more harm than good" in previous years. This was because people wanted the money and so devised stories of who the murderer was etc. The Police knew that if they were to put out a reward, they would receive a lot of useless information. Therefore, no witnesses came forward as there was nothing in it for them. This led them to sell their stories to the press as they would get paid for it.
The police tried to capture the Ripper by using a decoy of a policeman dressed as a prostitute, like setting trap. As the use of disguises was limited due to the times, they were not very convincing and so the idea was later abandoned when no progress was made in catching the Ripper. .
Every lead, suspect, witness and the deceased's friends and relatives were thoroughly interrogated but the results were disappointing and the police received heavy critical comments. .
Police visited common lodging houses interviewing the lodgers and gave out thousands of handbills to encourage more witnesses. Also specific occupations were investigated: butchers, slaughterers, sailors etc. This did not get them any further but it at least looked like they were doing something and were narrowing down their suspects. .
