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Show POLICE PROTESTING PARDON FOR DEWEY Assert Release Would Havo Unfavorable Unfavor-able Effect Upon Criminal Class and Increase Danger in Work. The members of the city police force began the circulation of a petition yesterday yes-terday protesting against the requested pardon of Elmer L. Dewey, who was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for the slaying of Sergeant Henry Johnston in a local hotel July 4, 1911. The iolice allege that a pardon in this case would be tantamount to making mak-ing officers a target for criminals' bullets. bul-lets. It is asserted that Dewey was none too heavilv punished bv the court and the officers ask that the sentence sen-tence stand. In part the petition reads: As policemen we are called upon each da' to take our lives in our hands in dealing with desperate criminals, who are deterred from acts of violence only by fear of punishment by the courts. To make the criminals understand under-stand that their acts of lawlessness, lawless-ness, particularly when committed while resisting arrest, will be firmly firm-ly dealt with aud punished is the only support and assistance which the state can give us in dealing with criminals, and if the very moderate sentence imposed by the court upon Dewey in this case should be set aside by the board of pardons, we believe that it would nave an unfavorable influence upon the criminal class in general, as well as to make the police officers themselves feel that the community communi-ty does not ctand behind them as it should in the performance of their arduous and dangerous duties. |