| Show t BEFORE DIEHLS i I The Police court resembled a court martial yesterday Four soldiers from Fort Douglas were on trial 1 for raising a riot on a Second South street car Friday night and the captain of their company appeared In person to testify as to the good character of the men and aid them in the trial Ills effort wan unavailing however as the bo sIn s-in blue were lined 25 each the captain cap-tain advancing the money to pay the fines According to the story of Conductor H IL Sweeney the soldier men boarded the car about 1015 and took seats near the back door When he came to collect col-lect the fares Private Stern paid his nickel and then Private Harrison offered I of-fered to pay the farts of all four ui the same time directing the conductor to return Sterns nickel to him This was i refused and thereupon Harrison said he would not pay a cent until Sterns rebate was paid At this the conductor stopped the car and ordered the men to get off at the same time seizing Harrison by the collar to eject him A muffle followed in which three windows were broken and the terrified passengers fled from the car The rumpus was renewed outside out-side and the angry soldiers declared the car should not proceed to the fort without them In this however they were mistaken as the car went east while they were traveling west In the patrol wagon About a dozen witnesses were examined exam-ined and all told practically the Bame story Private Stern conducted the case for himself and his associates and showed remarkable cleverness In questioning ques-tioning the witnesses The soldiers did not deny the fact of their struggle with the conductor but Insisted that they were merely protecting themselves from an unprovoked assault It was shown that the amount of the fares was several sev-eral times offered to the conductor In passing sentence upon you said the court I want to say a word about the disgraceful brawls which are of almost al-most nightly occurrence on the cars which go to the fort I myself have witnessed scenes far worse than the one described here by these witnesses which seems to have come to the notice no-tice of the police only because some windows were broken You soldiers must be made to understand that you cannot come into this city and terror ise unoffending clticns and start drunken riots wherever you take the notion I know your officers are doing all they can to check these practices but the city cannot rely wholly upon their efforts It Is the sentence of the court that you each pay a fine of X25 This penalty was evidently a great surprise to the men In uniform who had expected acquittal l and many of the spectators were astonished at what they regarded as the severity of the sentence Among these was Capt James P TIarbeson who had testified that the four men were among the best behaved soldiers in his command and men upon whom he could always rely A L Caldwell was the victim of misplaced confidence He said he had offered to do some work for a woman L on Second East street provided sue would give him a lunch While he tolled the lady Instead of putting up a lunch sent for the police who invited in-vited him to a nice little spread In the city jail This man may be guilty of begging as charged Bald the court but there are no witnesses here to prove what he said to the woman or how he acted If she has not enough Interest In the case to appear and prosecute she Isnt entitled to protection and ought to be bothered by tramps You are discharged dis-charged o Denny Kearnp admitted quite frankly that he lingered In saloons when he felt like it because he considered saloons more agreeable places to linger than hardware stores or carpenter shops I but he could not see why he should be I called a vagrant on that account He had money paid his own way and only waited In Salt Lake until his attorney attor-ney could collect some money due to him I have known this man for four months said Officer Gatehouse unreeling un-reeling his tall form au he rose to take the stand He said he had 50 and was paying 5 i a week for room and board Now at 5 a week how long would that oO last This was a problem In arithmetic that no one offered to Eolve and Officer Gatehouse probably Is still puzzling over It Kearns offered to get witnesses if given time so he was allowed until Monday to prepare his case t Y v Sam Jones for vagrancy was lined 515 John Coyne drunk for the first time was discharged The cases of Sarah Martin alias Myers and Verna Raymond were continued until Monday Mon-day |
