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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 of arrest, although the looted store is identified in fourteen 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 looted, 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 indicates 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 for weapons in an image taken by a New York Evening Journal 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. The two men in a photograph published in the New York Evening Journal 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 two of the sixteen men arrested for looting an unknown location.
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The man in the second photograph, also published in the New York Evening Journal, carrying a tall bin containing at least four or five pots of various sizes, with perhaps more merchandise not sticking out of 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 Williams 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. In the case of Larry, the storeowner also identified him as one of the men who had robbed his store.

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, a 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 127th Street and 155th Street connecting Harlem to the Bronx. 

Police arrested six other men 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 farthest from the store he had allegedly looted; Henry and Leacock were the closest. Police arrested all three, and Edward Larry, 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, may have been on their way home as they were arrested between the stores they allegedly looted and their homes. 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. Jacquelin 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. Detective Mark Redmond of the 28th Precinct first arrested arrested Clifford Mitchell at his home, 362 Lenox Avenue, although the address the Magistrates Court clerk recorded for Mitchell, likely in error, is 363 Lenox Avenue, a building across the street. An hour later, Detective Frank McKenna, also from the 28th Precinct, arrested Daughty Shavos at his home at 40 West 119th Street. Between them, Shavos and Mitchell allegedly had $50 of clothing in their possession, which Louis Levy identified as coming from his store. What led police to the men's homes is not mentioned in any sources. They may have attracted police attention trying to sell the clothing. It is also possible that Mitchell gave police Shavos' name.

Judges in the Court of Special Sessions convicted two of these men, Henry and Leacock, and acquitted two others, Williams and Jacquelin. Shavos was also tried in the Court of Special Sessions, but there is no record of the outcome. The grand jury dismissed the charges against Mitchell, and indicted Moore, Larry, and Ford. The later two pled guilty in the Court of General Sessions, while the judge dismissed the charges against Moore.

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