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Arthur Garfield Hays to William Dodge, April 11, 1935, "Harlem, Mayor's Commission on Conditions in," Box 26, Folder 1, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers (Princeton University)
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The MCCH investigation of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs continues
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James Tartar, the MCCH's investigator, described two charges as the focus of the MCCH's effort to "get the facts" about the shooting:
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.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
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 hecking, 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 eye-witnesses 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 eye-witnesses 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 eye-witness, 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." -
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Patrolman John McInerney in the grand jury (April 10)
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On April 8, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore and Samuel Pitts went to the DA's office. ADA Price questioned them. Two days later he presented the case to a Grand Jury entirely made up of white men, who decided not to indict Patrolman McInerney. Brief mentions of the decision in the white press featured McInerney's account that he had seen Lloyd Hobbs looting, and had shot him after he refused to halt. Additional justifications appeared in several stories. McInerney saw Hobbs "carrying some of the loot" in the New York Times. McInerney uttered not one but "several commands to stop," the New York Post reported. The New York Times added that he "fired as some of the rioters were hurling stones at him, not intending to kill him.” "He intended to frighten the boy, not kill him,” according to the Home News. Only the Afro-American mentioned any of the evidence against McInerney. “Several eye-witnesses disputed the officer’s assertion that he called on the youth to halt,” a story published over two weeks after the verdict noted. One of those eye-witnesses, Howard Malloy, later told Hays and then a MCCH hearing, that what he described as his arrests for "whiskey and misdemeanor" were brought up in the grand jury to try to disqualify him as a witness. No other details of the closed hearing were made public.
Arthur Garfield Hays learned of the grand jury's decision from those newspaper stories. On April 11 he wrote to District Attorney Dodge asking if the men who had testified at the MCCH hearing were called before the grand jury and for the identity of the other witnesses. Hays granted that he had heard "only one side of this case," and presented himself as anxious to have other witnesses appear in a MCCH hearing to publicly present all the evidence "so that if there was any justification for the shooting, the public may know it." His phrasing indicated that he been persuaded by the eye-witnesses' testimony that the shooting was not justified. Dodge replied the next day that "the District Attorney's office called every witness who knew anything with reference to this case against McInerney." The list he provided included the three eye-witnesses, Russell Hobbs and his family, Louis Eisenberg, Patrolman Watterson, McInerney's partner, Detective McCormick, the stenographer, Detective O'Brien, and the medical examiner, Dr. Halpern. Patrolman McInerney had also waived his immunity and offered to appear. The grand jury declined to hear from him.
In addition to Eisenberg, three of the grand jury witnesses identified in Dodge's letter had not testified in a MCCH hearing, Patrolmen McInerney and Watterson and Detective O'Brien. Having them give their evidence in public, as Hays' letter indicated was the MCCH's next step, was possible now as the end of the legal proceedings freed them from Dodge's restriction on police testifying. As Hays extended the MCCH investigation, Detective O'Brien closed the police investigation, recording that patrolman McInerney had been exonerated.
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Preparation for the Public Hearing on April 20
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No Secretary's report by Eunice Carter providing an overview of the work of the MCCH staff was found for any week after March 30-April 5. The investigative work being done has to be reconstructed from correspondence in the Records of Mayor La Guardia and the Hays Papers, and from reports by James Tartar, the lead investigator for the subcommittee, which are also spread across those two collections.
Roberts announced April 20 as the date of the hearing at the MCCH meeting on April 12. The sources contained no mention of why the interval before the next hearing was two weeks rather than one week as had been the case with the previous hearing. Hays was absent from both the April 12 meeting and the April 19 meeting, so may have been out of town or otherwise committed on April 13.
After learning that the killing of Lloyd Hobbs had been presented to the grand jury on April 10, and dismissed, Hays exchanged letters with District Attorney Dodge about what evidence had been presented. The three eye-witnesses who had testified in the hearing on April 6 had clearly persuaded Hays that the shooting was not justified, as he committed to having the police witnesses testify in a public hearing now that the legal proceeding over and Dodge's instructions about what police officers could say in a public hearing did not prevent that testimony.
McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, and the detective who investigated the shooting, John O'Brien, both appear on a list of eleven police officers in the Hays Papers. That list appears to be officers from which the MCCH wanted to hear testimony and was likely prepared before the April 20 hearing. Tick marks appear next to the four officers who appeared in that hearing, Watterson and O'Brien, Detective McCormick, the stenographer who recorded a statement by Lloyd Hobbs at Harlem Hospital, and Patrolman Kaminsky, who testified about the death of August Miller. Two officers on the list had already appeared at a public hearing: Patrolman Donahue, who had released Lino Rivera, and Patrolman Eppler, who had arrested Frank Wells, but been unable to testify about that case. The other police officers on the list did not testify in a public hearing. Patrolman Murphy was identified as a witness in the death of Andrew Lyons, and Patrolman MacKenzie, as a witness in the cases of Cornelius, Ford and Jones. Detective Johnson, was the officer who arrested Margaret Mitchell in the Kress store, according to a note from Lieutenant Battle in the Hays papers. There was no annotation about the cases about which the remaining two officers, Patrolmen Havilini and Kinstrey, had evidence.
A document dated April 13 in the Records of Mayor La Guardia suggests that a visit to the MCCH by Mrs Nora Ford, the mother of William Ford, may have been responsible for Patrolman Mackenzie appearing on the list of police witnesses. She came to "lodge a complaint against the police department" related to his arrest by Mackenzie for breaking windows in the Kress store. The document recorded no details of her complaint, nor do any of the records if Ford's arrest and prosecution mention any complaint. There are no records of an investigation of the complaint by the MCCH.
Hays did respond to one other complaint, from Gerald Hamilton on behalf of an unnamed Black woman who had been assaulted by an Italian baker during a dispute over him giving her a counterfeit coin who the magistrate refused to punish. Hays requested that the woman come to the hearing on April 20.
It appeared that those two complaints were not the only cases of "police brutality" about which the MCCH learned at this time. Villard reported to the MCCH meeting on April 19 that there were "far too many cases" to hold hearings on them all. Neither Nora Ford's complaint nor the one submitted by Hamilton would be part of the hearing on April 20, and were likely among those the subcommittee planned to investigate in some other way (later specified as having lawyers from the Harlem Lawyers' Association investigate). The MCCH had its investigator, James Tartar, gather information about the cases it had identified after the previous hearing.
Tartar's reports record that in this two week period he interviewed the storekeepers on the block where Lloyd Hobbs was shot, gathered records from the 23rd Precinct about the cases of Thomas Aiken and Edward Laurie, and interviewed Aiken and the aunt of James Thompson, the other Black man known to have been killed by police during the disorder. The interview with Aiken was dated April 19, and the other reports were dated April 20, so may not have been complete before the hearing on that date. Some copies were annotated "Memo to Mr Hays" and dated May 1, suggesting that Eunice Carter compiled them for Hays after the hearing on April 20. In that case, he may not have had this material for the hearing.
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Investigations (April 6-April 19)
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While twenty witnesses had testified at the public hearing on April 6, their testimony did not complete the investigation of the events of March 19 as MCCH members had planned. As a result of Dodge's instructions limiting police testimony, Patrolman McInerney and his partner Patrolman Watterson had not testifed about the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs. The absence of staff from the Kress store prevented wrapping up testimony about what had happened in the store. In addition, there had been no time to hear testimony on the cases of police brutality about which the MCCH had begun gathering information. With so many of the witnesses asked to attend the April 6 not heard, the next planned hearing that Hays had announced to the MCCH meeting might have been expected to be held the next week, on April 13. However, it did not take place until a week later, on April 20. Dodge’s injunction against police involved in legal proceedings testifying might have been one reason for the delay, which would have allowed the legal process to be completed. Hays may also have not been available to chair the hearing until April 20. He did not attend the MCCH meetings on April 12 and April 19.
Whatever plans Hays had for continuing the investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs, they were disrupted when he read in the press that the District Attorney had presented the case to the grand jury on April 10. They decided not to indict Patrolman McInerney. Having listened to the testimony of the eye-witnesses, Hays clearly found that decision surprising. He immediately wrote to the District Attorney asking if those witnesses had testified before the grand jury and who else had given evidence. He told the District Attorney he was anxious to have any other witnesses appear in a MCCH hearing to publicly present all the evidence "so that if there was any justification for the shooting, the public may know it." Dodge replied the next day that "the District Attorney's office called every witness who knew anything with reference to this case against McInerney." That list included all those who had testified in the public hearing. Those that had not appeared were Louis Eisenberg, the owner of the store had allegedly looted, Detective O’Brien, who had conducted the police investigation of the shooting, and McInerney and his partner Patrolman Watterson. The MCCH could now hear the testimony of the three police officers as the grand jury's decision meant that the District Attorney’s restriction on officers involved in legal proceedings testifying no longer applied to them.
Tartar also continued to gather information about the killing of Lloyd Hobbs, as well as three other cases about which the MCCH still had to hear testimony. He interviewed the storekeepers on the block where Lloyd Hobbs was shot, gathered records from the 23rd Precinct about the cases of Thomas Aiken and Edward Laurie, and interviewed Aiken and the aunt of James Thompson, the other Black man known to have been killed by police during the disorder.
Adding to the backlog of witnesses, the MCCH learned of additional incidents of police brutality. By the time the MCCH met on April 19 the subcommittee had decided “there were far too many” cases for all of them to be investigated in public hearings, Villard reported. “Some other investigations” would be made of the other cases. (They later approached the Harlem Lawyers Association to take on that task). For the public hearings, the focus remained the cases that the MCCH had begun investigating the previous week.