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Arrests for inciting crowds (15)
Three white men were among those arrested for riot, all in front of the Kress store at the beginning of the disorder, in order to get them off the street and prevent them inciting the crowds on 125th Street. Daniel Miller tried to speak to the crowd and was arrested when someone threw the rock that broke the store window. Although he had not encouraged such an attack, so had not actually committed the offense of riot, he was arrested on that charge — and District Attorney Dodge's efforts to blame the disorder on Communists led prosecutors to prosecute him for that offense. (A second white man, Harry Gordon, also arrested when he tried to speak to the crowd, was not charged with riot but for assaulting one of the police officers who arrested him, so is not categorized as having incited a crowd.) Not apprehended was an unnamed black man who introduced first Miller and then Gordon, suggesting that at that point in the disorder police were more concerned about white Communists, a familiar target, than about other members of the crowd. The two white other men, Sam Jameson and Murray Samuels, together with Claudio Vaibolo, were members of the Young Liberators who picketed the Kress store. When they refused to move on, police arrested them. Like Miller, their actions did not appear to fit a charge of riot — their signs did not call for violence — and their prosecution for that offense too reflected Dodge's anti-Communist agenda. Communist Party speakers had been a presence in Harlem for several years, providing police with ample reason to anticipate that those on 125th Street would arouse the crowds drawn to the Kress store.
Only John King among the Black men arrested for inciting crowds was arrested as the result of police efforts to control crowds on the street. Told to move on from the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue, he refused and threatened to “put that Kress store out of business and punish that man that injured the child.”
Police arrested eight of the remaining nine Black men after they allegedly urged others on the streets to attack businesses or police (there are no details of the circumstances of the arrest of the other man, John Hawkins). All of those incidents occurred in the context of attacks on store windows by groups of people. The men alleged to have urged others to attack the stores were the only members of those groups arrested. Leon Mauraine and David Smith were allegedly part of the same group, arrested after police responded to windows being broken in a drug store at 322 Lenox Avenue and pursued the group responsible. However, the arresting officer alleged both men had urged the group to attack the store, attributing the same words to Mauraine and Smith. While that charge might have been the court clerk's clumsy recording of the officer's statement, it does draw attention to how in charging them with riot rather than simply with breaking windows, police made their efforts to control the violence appear more effective, effectively claiming to have identified and focused on those leading the disorder.
The arrests of Claude Jones and William Ford occurred around the same time on 125th Street, after crowds pushed past police on 7th Avenue barring access to the block containing the Kress store. Jones allegedly broke windows in the Blumstein department store and Ford in Kress' store. However, what they allegedly urged others in the crowd to do was to attack not the stores but police. Not only were those calls discordant with events at the time, there is no evidence that crowds on the street specifically targeted police rather than clashing with them in efforts to target businesses for attacks or later looting.
A second cluster of arrests occurred soon after midnight on Lenox Avenue near 126th Street, with police apprehending first Leon Mauraine and David Smith, then Bernard Smith, and finally John Kennedy Jones. Multiple different officers made those arrests, indicating that a detachment of police were stationed at the intersection. Unclear is whether it was the same group allegedly attacking the three stores, dispersing when police reacted and then reforming, or whether there were several different groups on Lenox Avenue at that time.