PAMPERED DESPERADOES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 94, 20 April 1912, Page 12

PAMPERED DESPERADOES.

At the funeral in' Paris ot the policeman Gamier, shot by automobile pirates on Tuesday outside the St. Lazaro statioijj M. Lepine, Prefeot of Police, referred to the alarming; growth of crimes of violence involving loss of .life. The Prefeot, in very vigorous language, protested against the extraordinary tolerance and consideration displayed by Paris Judges towards notorious criminals guilty of the shedding of human blood. Scarcely a single day passed without a case of armed aggression against the members of tho small body of police who sought to protect the lives and property of the citizens. Very often, »aid the Prefect, the perpetrators of these oriines were old offenders, and as_ such were liable to deportation. But, instead of their being sent out of France, they were invariably turned loose at the expiration of their sentences and permitted to go back' to their old haunts and prey once more upon sooiety. The pretext for this was either that their physioal health would suffer by the climate of French Puinea, or else that the cost -of their maintenance in the penal colony would placja an additional, burden on the shoulders of the taxpayers. The result of this misplaced bumanitarianism was that honest citizens fell by scores before the Browning revolvers of these pampered desperadoes. There were thousands of hardened criminals in and around Paris, and their numbers were increasing every day. \