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

Arrests for looting (60)

Details of the circumstances in which police made arrests for looting can be found for twenty-seven of the sixty people taken into custody. Police officers most often had seen crowds in front of stores or heard glass breaking, resulting in twelve arrests. Less often they saw individuals reaching into windows or coming out of stores, making six arrests. Officers had to come from some distance to make an arrest — from cars patrolling the streets, from positions on intersections, or from guarding stores across the street. As a result, officers often fired guns at suspected looters — both the individuals police killed, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, allegedly had been seen looting — and did not get to the scene in time to arrest all those involved before they ran off. On only two of the twelve occasions police saw crowds taking goods from stores was there evidence that they arrested several people at the same time, three men at the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue and two men at 1916 7th Avenue. A man and a woman were also arrested at the same time at 340 Lenox Avenue, but there were no details of the circumstances of those arrests. There are two other police officers that the Magistrates Court docket book recorded as each having arrested three men at the same address, the Romanoff Drug Store at 375 Lenox Avenue and the Butler Food Market at 1974 7th Avenue, likely indicating they were arrested at the same time, but no sources provide details of those arrests. More than one person was arrested for looting four other stores, at 372 Lenox Avenue, 374 Lenox Avenue, 400 Lenox Avenue, and 200 West 128th Street, but those arrests came at different times. Police also made nine arrests away from the business the men had allegedly looted. There was no information on the circumstances of the remaining thirty-one arrests for looting.

Several of those police did arrest, at least, denied they had been involved in looting (details are not available for all those arrested). Arthur Merritt and Hezekiah Wright said they had been part of a crowd drawn to the scene as police had been. Others admitted having done only some of what police alleged: Arnold Ford and Horace Fowler said that they had taken merchandise but not broken windows to gain access to a business; Charles Saunders and Edward Larry said that they had not gone into a store but had picked up merchandise off the street (which Arnold Ford later told his probation officer that he had done); and Carl Jones and Thomas Jackson said that they had broken windows but not taken merchandise. Others may have offered similar statements in the police line-up the morning after the disorder; a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote “Many in the lineup still carried things they admitted picking up in the street, but denied reaching into broken shop windows to secure" [sic?]. Cigarettes were the favorite item "found." A story in the New York Sun included a similar claim, that “Many admitted thefts from stores damaged during the riot, stealing everything from toothbrushes to shirts and groceries, but all denied breaking the store windows, insisting that they had picked up the articles from the street after others had thrown them out of stores.” In court such admissions warranted lesser charges than burglary. More broadly, they distinguished those who made them from looters, from those who attacked stores and created disorder, and associated them instead with onlookers and passersby whose behavior was less out of the ordinary.

Merchandise that police allegedly found in an individual’s possession provided the basis for officers to make arrests, and was central to the arrests of the nine individuals police did not allegedly witness taking goods from stores. This was the case often enough that police estimated “that the plunder recovered so far today will fill a ton truck,” according to the New York Sun. Photographs showed individuals arrested for looting carrying the merchandise they had allegedly stolen. The image below published in the New York Evening Journal shows a man in the foreground carrying a full shopping bag labeled as coming from Rex Food Market at 348 Lenox Avenue, as well as what appears to be an alarm clock and at least one other item. Behind him a second man carries three metal boxes in his left hand, and in his right hand, just visible in the background, a full shopping bag of the same design as the first man. The Afro-American incorporated the details of the photograph, which it did not publish, into a story: to illustrate the claim that "Police arrested pillagers wherever they could," the reporter added "One man was arrested carrying three new steel cash boxes taken from a stationary store. Another had a shopping bag full of loot." (The New York Herald Tribune published an Associated Press image of the same scene taken a second earlier or later, showing the man in the foreground with his head turned slightly more toward the police officer behind him, and that officer with his nightstick raised slightly higher, in front of his face.)
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A third man arrested for looting photographed by the New York Evening Journal was carrying even larger items, a tall bin containing at least four or five pots of various sizes, with perhaps more merchandise not sticking out the top. The police officer following him is carrying two wooden poles, perhaps brooms or mops also found in the man's possession — although it's not clear he could have carried any more than he did in the photograph. The man in the images may be James Williams. Among those arrested for looting for which there was information on goods allegedly found in their possession, only he was charged with taking hardware.

The arrested men in the photographs are carrying large amounts of merchandise that would have attracted the attention of police looking for looters. Three of those arrested away from looted stores allegedly had a similar quantity of goods in their possession. James 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, at 5:40 AM. Police similarly alleged that some those arrested at looted locations carried bulky items: Lawrence Humphrey had a 50lb bag of rice; Thomas Babbitt had two cases of soap.

However, police evidently also stopped four 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. Patrolman William Clements stopped Edward Larry after observing him in a taxi without being able to see if he had anything in his possession. The relatively indiscriminate nature of police arrests for looting was also evident in a comment 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 claims to be able to identify the goods found in the possession of those arrested away from the scene as coming from their stores are more credible in the case of jewelry and clothing than more commonplace items such as pans or soap. Merchandise police claim to have found in the possession of several of those arrested at looted stores was even more unexceptional and unlikely to have been able to be identified by a storeowner — unless it was in a labeled shopping bag like those visible in the the New York Evening Journal photograph: Amie Taylor had eighteen packets of gum; Arthur Merritt had two cans of beans, a can of milk, and a can of tuna fish; Joseph Wade had several toy pistols; Milton Ackerman had two rolls of paper, worth five cents, and eight cents' worth of napkins; Raymond Easley had an unspecified number of cigars. Perhaps more noteworthy in the context of the disorder were the man’s suit and a lady’s coat carried by Horace Fowler and the bag of laundry in Lamter Jackson’s possession.

On three occasions, police effectively, and in one case apparently literally, found goods when none were in the possession of an individual when an arrest was made. Officers claimed Hezekiel Wright and Thomas Jackson had dropped items before they got to the men. With merchandise thrown from stores spread over many sections of Harlem’s sidewalk, goods would likely have been nearby anyone police confronted. Police took until sometime in early April to mention the looted horn and socket set they claimed Lloyd Hobbs had in his possession when Officer McInerney shot him, after not recording them as evidence at the time of the shooting. After police witnesses produced the items during testimony before the MCCH in May, the New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and the New York World-Telegram reported that police could not explain where that evidence had been before it was delivered to the District Attorney. Witnesses at the scene said Hobbs had not been carrying anything.

While the newspaper reports of the police line-up suggest that many of those arrested still had the goods they had allegedly stolen in their possession as they were being taken to court, in three cases, police apparently could not produce allegedly stolen merchandise or convincing evidence that it existed, as prosecutors reduced the charge against those individuals from burglary or larceny to unlawful entry and disorderly conduct. (A lack of evidence of looting may also be why ten of those named in published lists of those arrested for looting did not appear in court.) Magistrates transferred an additional seven defendants to the Court of Special Sessions, indicating that prosecutors did not provide adequate evidence of at least one element of a burglary charge.

Arrests (128)

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