OCR Text |
Show Crime Noiv Rampant In Occupied Paris Robbers Prey on Shopkeepers Shop-keepers and Pedestrians. PARIS. Just as hold-up men and robbers found this capital's blackout propitious for their trade, chaos brought a new crop of swindlers who seem to find easy money in a multitude of schemes tied up with the country's present predicament The police are daily arresting people who obtain money by promising prom-ising to have war prisoners released or even merely to transmit parcels or news. Anxious relatives of France's 2,000,000 soldiers in German Ger-man captivity have proved easy for tricksters, who are not' always adventurers. ad-venturers. In some cases functionaries function-aries have been convicted of taking bribes for goods they were unable to deliver. Latest arrests include a school mistress, also persons working in minor jobs in various official and semi-official organizations set up to handle prisoners' parcels, relief, and so on. Other enterprising swindlers swin-dlers have started "totalitarian" movements and similar political parties of their own, only to vanish when they have collected a sufficient amount of membership dues. What, however, is causing Parisians Pari-sians more concern than the activities activi-ties of swindlers and petty grafters are armed bands of robbers who are nightly making the Paris streets unsafe un-safe for shopkeepers and pedestrians. pedestri-ans. In some cases these robbers use automobiles, which baffles the '. public who knows how extremely difficult it is to obtain a permit to ; use a car these days. A recent decree stipulated shoot-1 shoot-1 tag by a fifing squad within 24 hours ' for robberies at the point of a gun. i blackjack or other weapon, but holdups hold-ups continue and although the police have been able to catch some delinquents, delin-quents, the first execution still has to be announced. |