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• 1 2023-06-14T14:50:23+00:00 The MCCH investigation of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs continues 105 plain 2023-12-17T00:43:44+00:00 James Tartar, the MCCH's investigator, described two charges as the focus of the MCCH's effort to "get the facts" about the shooting:

  1. Patrolman John F. McInerney deliberately shot Lloyd Hobbs without provocation
  2. That Lloyd Hobbs was charged with burglary in order to justify the policeman's claim that he was forced to shoot in order to effect an arrest

  Although Hays expected all three police witnesses to answer those charges on April 20, only Patrolman Watterson and Detective O'Brien testified. While no explanation was offered at the hearing for Patrolman McInerney's absence, Tartar recorded that the officer had been "granted a sick leave." Hays required that he be at the next hearing as his absence “gave the public a bad impression,” according to the Home News, but his leave extended until at least June 7, after the subcommittee final hearing, so he never testified publicly. The testimony of his partner, Patrolman Watterson, did not entirely answer the first charge about which the MCCH sought facts. He had not left the patrol car. While he had seen a man come out of the automobile store window with items in his hand, he could not identify him as Hobbs. McInerney told him it was Hobbs. Watterson heard his partner call out to the men outside the store to stop, but did not see what happened after that. He was reversing the patrol car to follow McInerney and the men as they ran north on 7th Avenue. He turned the car into 128th Street, and then saw his partner standing over Hobbs and a horn and socket set on the ground next to the boy. Contradicting the police reports, he testified that objects were not thrown at him and McInerney until after his partner shot the boy, when a crowd began to gather. Watterson then grabbed his rifle, leveled it at the crowd and told them to come no further while McInerney loaded Hobbs into the patrol car.
  
  Watterson's testimony was cut short when Hays took exception to heckling from an audience member, who had called out, "Will the dog bark a little louder, please?” Hays had warned, in his letter to Dodge after the grand jury's decision, that, "One of the most ominous features which emerges from the evidence we have taken appears to be a lack of confidence the people of Harlem have in the police, and their feeling that Negroes cannot expect justice." The heckling, hissing, and booing with which the audience reacted to the police witnesses that appeared in public hearings as the MCCH investigation of the killing continued bore out that warning.
  
  While Watterson did not return to the stand after Hays adjourned the hearing to regain order, Detective O'Brien later appeared to testify about his investigation of the shooting of Hobbs. He was questioned about the items that Hobbs had allegedly stolen, which were not recorded in the police blotter or the report sent from the 28th Precinct to Commissioner Valentine that Tartar had obtained. O'Brien testified that while McInerey mentioned the stolen items when they spoke at the hospital immediately after Hobbs was shot, he did not actually see them until the patrolman brought them to the District Attorney's office on April 1. ILD lawyers questioning the detective seized on that twelve-day interval to suggest McInerney could have obtained the horn and socket set after he shot the boy to justify his actions. Hays asked for the items to be fingerprinted to see if Hobbs had actually touched them.
  
  After the hearing, Tartar made further attempts to identify eyewitnesses and "to get information concerning the whereabouts of the stolen items." An interview with ADA Price confirmed that McInerney brought the horn and socket set to the DA's office on April 1st, while a visit to the property clerk's office at police headquarters revealed that those items were not delivered there until April 8, 1935. That meant that the patrolman had those items in his possession for nineteen days after the shooting. Hays questioned O'Brien about that information at the subcommittee's final hearing on May 18, to which the detective brought the horn and socket set. O'Brien said he did not know when they had been turned in, but countered that they were described in the arrest record. As Tartar later explained to E. Franklin Frazier, who led the MCCH's research, the arrest record was a book containing a form that was filled in as the next record keeping step after a summary was entered into the police blotter, the record the MCCH investigator had seen. O'Brien had made no mention of the arrest record in his previous testimony or the reports he filed as part of his investigation. He also testified that no fingerprints had been found on the items — or more precisely, that only smudges had been found.
  
  Three additional eyewitnesses also testified in the MCCH hearing on May 18. Tartar reported that they had been found as a result of a survey of the neighborhood, implying that he had found them. However, at the hearing, Clarence Wilson testified that he had obtained the addresses of two witnesses from Lawyer Hobbs. One, John Bennett, did not respond when called on, but Wilson encountered another man who was an eyewitness, Marshall Pfifer, when looking for Joseph Hughes, the second witness. Hughes was too sick to attend the hearing, so Wilson recounted what he had seen. Warren Wright, the third man, provided no details of how he had been found. All three men told the same story as Malloy, Moore, and Pitts had in the earlier hearing: Hobbs was not carrying anything and McInerney had not called out for him to stop before shooting him. Wright and Hughes saw those events from different perspectives than the earlier witnesses: Wright was at the entrance to the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue, south of the automobile supply store, while Hughes was in 201 West 128th Street, toward which Hobbs was running when McInerney shot him. (Pfifer was on the same corner across 128th Street from the store as Malloy, Moore and Pitts, and, like the later man, had been there since around 10:00 PM.) Around April 20, Tartar also interviewed the owners of the businesses on the same block as the automobile supply store, to obtain information on when their windows were broken and what losses they suffered, providing some support for the testimony that the automobile supply store's windows were broken before Hobbs arrived offered by Pfifer, as well as Malloy and Moore.
  
  The audience for the results of the MCCCH's continued investigation was clearly not simply the public. Hays informed the hearing on May 18 that Commissioner Valentine had told him the police department was still investigating the case, a reference to exchange of letters between the men on May 2 and May 3. Hays' letter made clear that even before the new witnesses testified, he felt that the "large number of witnesses" who had testified proved that Hobbs had not been looting notwithstanding the grand jury's response to their evidence. During the hearing, Williams raised that efforts were being made "to get this case to go to the Grand Jury" again, which likely included ILD lawyers. Hays responded that the case was "now being taken up with the District Attorney."
• 1 2023-06-14T14:48:34+00:00 Patrolman John McInerney in the grand jury (June 10) 42 plain 2023-12-16T20:09:38+00:00 Just over a week after the last public hearing of the MCCH's Subcommittee on Crime, on May 22, their investigator, James Tartar, was notified that Inspector Di Martini planned to resubmit the case to the district attorney for consideration for presentation to the grand jury. He attended the subsequent conference, and by his own account, "after much argument," "convinced the District Attorney that the new witnesses would testify to new facts and that they should be heard." Tartar also accompanied Detective O'Brien to serve subpoenas on the four witnesses whose testimony was heard on May 18, an indication that the new legal proceeding was instigated by the MCCH. On March 28, ADA Saul Price heard testimony from Marshall Pfifer, Joseph Hughes, Warren Wright, and John Bennett, the latter evidently recovered from the illness that kept him from the MCCH hearing. There were no records of Bennett's testimony. Price then decided to resubmit the case to the grand jury.
  
  The New York Amsterdam News reported the pending hearing in its June 7 edition, information that likely came from someone in the MCCH. The story attributed the resubmission of the case to testimony at the May 18 hearing and listed four "facts brought out by the Commission" that it evidently understood as the arguments that would be made in the hearing:

  (1) That McInerney did not list any stolen articles when he made a record of the youth's arrest at the 123d street station following the shooting
  (2) That a number of objects, allegedly stolen, were shown to the Grand Jury on April 4, although police officers were unable to account for their presence during the March 19 and April 4 period.
  (3) That tests, made at the suggestion of Attorney Arthur Garfield Hays of the Mayor's Commission, failed to show Hobbs' fingerprints on the stolen articles
  (4) That Detective John J. O'Brien, assigned to investigate the shooting, made no attempt to look into the boy's background, but concentrated his efforts on proving Lloyd Hobbs a thief. He did not call on the boy's family until after Lloyd's death on Harlem Hospital on March 30.

  In addition to the four new eyewitnesses, Russell Hobbs and his parents, Patrolman Watterson, and Detective O'Brien again testified. Patrolman McInerney too again sought to appear, resulting in the hearing being postponed from June 7 until June 10 as he was on vacation. The witnesses "testified to practically the same as they had before," according to James Tartar. The MCCH investigator himself also testified. He told the grand jury that McInerney had not handed in the allegedly stolen items until April 8 and that police records indicated that "no loot had been found on the person of Lloyd Hobbs." The latter statement had been contradicted on May 18 by O'Brien's claim that the horn and socket set were listed in the arrest record, and likely was again on June 10. Arthur Garfield Hays "took an active part" in the hearing, according to the New York Age, although on what basis he could have done so is not clear. Again, the grand jury decided it did not need to hear from McInerney, although on this occasion they "deliberated for fully thirty minutes," Tartar reported. And again, they dismissed the case against the patrolman.
  
  Tartar clearly spoke to journalists from the the New York Age and the Afro-American about his testimony, as it featured in the stories that those Black newspapers published about the grand jury decision. (Despite reporting the pending hearing, the New York Amsterdam News did not publish a story about its outcome.) What "registered with the grand jury," according to the Afro-American, was "the officer's claim and the evidence of the loot." While Black journalists expressed frustration with the decision — the headline in the New York Age read, "Grand Jury Refuses to Indict Policeman Who Fatally Shot Youth in Riot," while the Afro-American's headline read "2 Grand Juries Won't Indict Cop Who Killed Boy" — it went unreported in the white press.
  
  With the end of the legal proceedings, the only remaining means of holding McInerney accountable was a police department hearing. Tartar reported that he urged Inspector Di Martini to hold such an investigation after the grand jury decision. In fact, such a hearing had already been planned, in the aftermath of the decision of the first grand jury. Hays had asked Commissioner Valentine that the police department "make an investigation," to which he had responded that the case would be "thoroughly investigated and appropriate action taken." Hays had written in the Report of the Subcommittee on May 29, before the second grand jury, that a hearing was pending. It appeared to have been delayed because the officer assigned to conduct it, Deputy Inspector McGrath, was away from the city until May 23, according to a phone message left for Arthur Garfield Hays on May 17. Tartar was likely responsible for Black journalists reporting that a police hearing was a possibility rather than pending. McInerney "may still, however, face departmental action," the New York Age reported. The Afro-American reporter was both more explicit that a "police department trial was being pushed" rather than being considered at the initiative of the police department, and dismissive of its value: "this gives no hopes to Mr and Mrs Lawyer Hobbs...that the case will pass the investigating stages."
• 1 2023-06-26T18:35:23+00:00 MCCH Meeting (April 30, 1935) 10 plain 2023-11-08T04:15:47+00:00 The only source for the MCCH meeting on April 30 are the minutes. Much of what was recorded of Hays' report for the subcommittee on crime concerned a request that the MCCH appoint a committee to investigate the recent arrest and trial of Charles Romney, which had been brought to the MCCH's attention at their meeting the previous week.
  
  The meeting must also have discussed the cases of Thomas Aiken and Lloyd Hobbs and the failure of staff from the Kress store to testify, as the MCCH voted that letters be sent about those topics. With the grand jury already having dismissed the case against Patrolman McInerney for killing Hobbs, the letter in that case could only ask that the police department bring disciplinary charges against McInerney, the only action still possible with the evidence gathered by the MCCH. (In the Aiken case, the letter asked for the evidence to be presented to a grand jury as well as a police department hearing.) In the case of the Kress store, as the MCCH's efforts had "failed to secure the full co-operation" of the staff, they voted to go above their heads and write to the company's management. They asked that the store manager, Jackson Smith, be instructed to appear at the May 4th hearing.
  
  The other item of business relevant to the investigation of the events of the disorder was a letter from E. Franklin Frazier accepting the position leading the MCCH survey of conditions in Harlem. The MCCH decided to have Frazier present his plans at their next meeting, marking the beginning of shift in their focus from the disorder to the neighborhood.