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Arrests for breaking windows (20)
Details of the circumstances in which police made arrests for breaking windows can be found for only for those seven people categorized as inciting crowds, Leroy Brown, William Ford, Claude Jones, John Kennedy Jones, Leon Mauraine, Bernard Smith, and David Smith. Those were cases where those arrested allegedly incited crowds and were also charged with riot, a felony, meaning those cases have District Attorney's case files. All seven arrests were made by police officers close enough to both allegedly see objects being thrown at windows and to hear what was being shouted by individuals, but not close enough to arrest more than one or two members of groups attacking stores. Some of those officers were likely stationed nearby. Detectives were identified as the arresting officer in seven additional arrests for breaking windows for which there are no details, those of Arthur Bennett, James Bright, David Bragg, Louise Brown, Warren Johnson, Rose Murrell, William Norris, Henry Stewart, and Charles Wright. In plainclothes not uniforms, so perhaps not recognized as police by those allegedly breaking windows, detectives may also have been close to windows that were broken.
Where those arrested for looting stores often allegedly had items in their possession that provided a basis for police officers to make arrests, that was not the case in those arrests for breaking windows recorded in the District Attorney's case files or in the one published photograph of an arrest. Captioned "Suspected Rock-Tosser in Custody of Police" when published in the New York Evening Journal, that image showed a Black man wearing a hat being walked between a white man in a hat and jacket, likely a police detective, and a uniformed patrolman. Without the caption, there is nothing to indicate the charge against him. The theater visible in the background, across a wide street, makes it likely that this photograph was taken on 125th Street. If that was the case, the man may be Claude Jones or William Ford.