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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

Arrests for looting away from the scene (9)

While police arrested most of those they alleged had been looting at the scene, having witnessed their actions, one third (9 of 27) were arrested at other locations at least several blocks from the business that had been looted (for just over half of the arrests (33/60) the sources do not provide a location). <check this - arrests for looting refers to details in only 25 cases>

What caused police to stop these men is not made clear in any sources. The most likely reason is that they were carrying goods that police suspected might have been looting, but photographs in newspapers of police reportedly searching Black men for weapons suggest that officers more indiscriminately stopped people on the street. Certainly police treatment of Black residents of Harlem at other times indicate that they would not have felt any need to have a justification for stopping and searching those they encountered during the disorder. Such policing extended to vehicles as well as pedestrians. Police had stopped a car to search its occupants in an image taken by a NYEJ? photographer, and one of those arrested for looting, Edward Larry, had been observed in a taxi. 

Two photographs of men arrested for looting show individuals carrying large amounts of merchandise that would have attracted the attention of police on the lookout for looters. The men are not identified. Two are carrying shopping bags from the Rex Food Market at 348 Lenox Avenue, one of the businesses whose owner sued the city for damages, so could be one of the sixteen men arrested for looting an unknown location. The man in the second photograph, carrying a tall bin containing at least four or five pots of various sizes, with perhaps more merchandise not sticking out the top, might be James Williams. One of three men arrested away from looted stores who allegedly had a quantity of goods in their possession, the affidavit recorded he was carrying four pots of different sizes, two pans, a pitcher, two pails, a bread box and a cloth lamp. Edward Larry had a box containing eight shirts (although the police officer may not have been able to see them as Larry was in a taxi). Jean Jacquelin had two ladies’ suits and two pairs of trousers in his possession.

However, police evidently also stopped others they had not allegedly seen looting who had nothing obvious in their possession. Arnold Ford had a package that cannot have been large; it contained three cakes of soap, a can of shoe polish, two pairs of garters, six spools of thread, a jar of vaseline and three packets of tea, with a value of $1.15. John Henry and Oscar Leacock between them had $75 of jewelry, most likely watches and rings rather than anything more bulky. The relatively indiscriminate nature of police arrests for looting is also evident in a comment reportedly made during the line-up of those arrested before they were taken to court. “One Negro woman still had in her possession five milk bottles,” a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote. “Police were doubtful that she drank as much milk as all that.”

Storeowners claimed to be able to identify the goods found in the possession of eight of the nine men arrested away from the scene of their alleged looting. Those statements are more credible in the case of jewelry and clothing than more commonplace items such as pans or soap - although identification of such items might have been helped if they were in shopping bags like those being carried by the men in the NYEJ photograph.

None of the reports of the arrest of Joseph Moore mention what items, if any, he had in his possession when Patrolman Louis Frikser arrested him. A few minutes earlier Frisker had arrested Arnold Ford, who was carrying a small package. The two men were prosecuted together, charged with taking merchandise from Harry Lash's 5c and 10c store, although the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded the charge against Moore as "Acc'd stolen goods during the riot" not "Burglarized store during riot" as in Ford's case. The first charge suggested Moore had not obtained whatever goods he had allegedly stolen directly from the store, a version of events not mentioned anywhere else. Prosecutors erased any distinction in the charges against Ford and Moore in the Harlem Magistrate Court, charging both with burglary.

Frisker arrested Ford and Moore on the Third Avenue Bridge, distance from store. It is not clear if the patrolman had been deployed on the bridge in response to the disorder or the location was a part of a regular patrol. Both men lived in the Bronx, near to the bridge, which was one of five thoroughfares between ? and ? connecting Harlem to the Bronx. 

Police arrested six other men arrested on the major avenues running through Harlem; Henry and Leacock and Williams on Lenox Avenue, Larry on 7th Avenue, and Jacquelin on 8th Avenue. Williams was the furthest from the store he had allegedly looted; Henry and Leacock were the closest. All three, and Edward Larry, were arrested in areas which saw clusters of attacks on stores and violence, bringing numbers of police who the men would have had to pass by. All four, and Ford and Moore, were arrested between the stores they allegedly looted and their homes, so may have been on their way home. Police arrested Jacquelin on Eighth Avenue at the very end of the disorder, when cars were patrolling the avenue. Ten minutes earlier officers in a patrol car on the avenue a block north had shot and killed James Thompson while trying to arrest him for allegedly looting a grocery store. He lived close by, several buildings to the east on West 127th Street, so was leaving home rather than returning there.

The remaining two men police arrested without witnessing their alleged looting were arrested in the late afternoon of March 20, after the disorder. Police arrested Daughty Shavos at his home at ?, and likely also arrested Clifford Mitchell at his home, 36? Lenox Avenue, although the address the Magistrates Court clerk recorded for Mitchell, likely in error, is 36? Lenox Avenue a building across the street. Between them Shavos and Mitchell allegedly had ? of clothing in their possession, which identified?. What led police to their homes is not mentioned in any sources. They may have attracted police attention trying to sell the clothing.

Outcomes - i.e does this evidence stand up in court? Could also address this with as part of? convicted? released?

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