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Arrested for unknown activities & Released before court (3)
Historians Dominic J. Capeci and Martha Wilkerson explained the larger proportion of those arrested in the later racial disorder in Detroit in 1943 who were not prosecuted (711 of 1893) as "revealing police strategy to disperse crowds by apprehending lawbreakers and spectators alike." That explanation seems likely to apply to these arrests in Harlem given that the charge reported in the press was riot, a charge that likely indicated they had been among crowds on the street. In other cases, that charge was amended in court to either a more specific offense such as malicious mischief for breaking windows or burglary for looting or reduced to disorderly conduct when there was no evidence for such a charge. In these cases, given that police opted to release them rather than taking them to court, there appears to have been no evidence that these men had been anything other than spectators.
Ten additional men also appear to have been released without prosecution. They had also appeared in published lists of those arrested, in their case for petit larceny, indicating alleged looting, and in the 32nd Precinct "police reports" gathered by the MCCH, index cards apparently transcribed from the blotter. No document collecting those arrested during the disorder in that precinct was prepared by MCCH staff. In regards to these men, the outcome recorded on the cards was "Final Disposition ?."