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New York Penal Law, § 404, 407: Burglary in third degree.
1 2021-09-19T23:02:20+00:00 Anonymous 1 13 plain 2024-01-18T19:58:52+00:00 Anonymous"§ 404. Burglary in third degree. A person who
- With intent to commit a crime therein, breaks and enters a building, or a room, or any part of a building; or,
- Being in any building, commits a crime therein and breaks out of the same,
"§ 407. Punishment for burglary. Burglary is punishable by imprisonment in a state prison as follows:...
3. Burglary in the third degree, for a term not exceeding ten years." [Amended 1926]
(Note: Burglary in the first and second degree applies only to dwellings not businesses)
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2020-02-25T19:43:29+00:00
Looting (67)
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2024-04-13T17:10:10+00:00
The disorder resulted in damage to at least 300 Harlem businesses, perhaps as many as 450, many of which also had goods stolen. Such attacks on white businesses distinguished the events in 1935 from collective racial violence earlier in the twentieth century although the scale was far smaller than the disorders that would follow. When racial violence broke out in Harlem in 1943, four times as many businesses were targets of violence. The press labeled the theft as looting, a term that distinguished it on the basis of the context of violence and crisis in which it took place. Such theft often involved crowds publicly stealing goods, but those circumstances were not entirely out of the ordinary. Just over one in five (15 of 67) burglaries at other times in 1935 involved smashing street-front doors and windows to steal goods before police responded, although not crowds of participants.
Although press reports and the Mayor's Commission (MCCH) gave prominence to attacks on property in characterizing the disorder as “not a race riot,” they offered only general descriptions of this violence, including fewer detailed incidents than was the case with assaults and none of the quantitative information that would be collected in subsequent racial disorders. However, damaged businesses did figure prominently in press photographs, which highlighted that such damage represented a spectacle — one which also drew crowds to Harlem the day after the disorder to view the damage for themselves. Only sixty-seven looted businesses were identified in the surviving sources, twenty-nine linked to arrests, with nine stores linked to more than one arrest. An additional seventy-two businesses were identified as having had their windows damaged, which would have exposed them to theft. There were almost certainly more looted businesses than those identified in the sources. In the cases of sixteen of those arrested for looting, there was no information on their alleged targets. While some of those stores may be among those identified in other sources, given the limited number of cases where multiple arrests were made for thefts from the same store, most are likely missing from this picture of the looting. (Two looted businesses that appeared in photographs whose location could not be determined were not included in these counts.)
The stores identified in the sources as having stock stolen represented a cross-section of the small businesses in Harlem focused on needs more than luxuries, and on personal items rather than larger items like furniture. Businesses that provided food make up the largest group (24 of 57). Clothing was also a target (19 of 57), while the remaining businesses sold a variety of goods (14 of 57). Missing from this partial list of businesses attacked during the disorder were large stores and several enterprises prominent in the neighborhood: beauty shops and barbers. There were sixteen individuals charged with looting unidentified businesses. Two looted businesses that appeared in photographs whose location cannot be determined were not included in these counts. At other times in 1935, the full range of stores were targets of burglaries.
However, newspaper reports and legal records indicated that in the initial hours of the disorder, store windows were smashed without efforts to steal their contents. After police dispersed the crowd drawn to Kress’ store and set up a cordon on 125th Street protecting it, another clash at the rear of the store on 124th Street around 7:45PM saw windows broken. Around the same time, crowds smashed windows on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue. Although the police present on this block lacked the numbers to protect the windows, in several cases they responded to damage by taking up positions in front of stores. That strategy appeared to have prevented much looting. While many of the large stores were identified as having windows smashed at this time, only the New York Evening Journal reported that thefts also took place. Around 8:45 PM, when police succeeded in pushing the crowds from 125th St on to 7th and 8th Avenues, the smaller businesses on those streets became targets. Windows were broken and isolated looting reported in the blocks of 7th Avenue immediately north of 125th Street. The New York Times and Afro-American reported goods were thrown into the street rather than taken, actions more akin to efforts to damage property, to ransack, than a turn to theft. However, it was not clear how often that happened. Many of these businesses were still open and staffed, but that did little to curtail theft. In some businesses, staff removed goods from windows and shelves but most hid or fled crowds and bombardment with rocks and stones. More effective were the Black storeowners and staff who put signs in their store windows that identified the business as Black-owned. Those signs spared them from looting if not always from having windows broken. Around 10:00 PM, as crowds began to move away from the block of 125th Street containing Kress’ store where police were concentrated, assaults and attacks on stores intensified and spread through Harlem. Further isolated looting occurred on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, and after 10.30PM, in the area of 116th Street to the south.
Around midnight, reporters from the New York Herald Tribune, Daily Mirror, and Afro-American noted a change in the tenor of the disorder reflected in arrests: violence became overshadowed by looting, particularly on Lenox Avenue in the blocks north of 125th Street, and lasted until around 2:00 AM. This more general turn to looting was helped by both earlier damage to windows that offered access to displays and store interiors and the lesser police presence in this area. By that late hour, most undamaged businesses had closed. Iron gates and grills protected the doors and windows of some of those stores. However, those additional obstacles did not prevent looting, an indication of growing violence and limited police presence. At least three businesses in this area were also set on fire after having been looted. Even the return of some business owners, once they learned of the disorder, did little to prevent looting. Several owners reported futile efforts to secure police assistance, which later became the basis of suits for damages they filed against the city. The progression from violence and damage to looting also featured in the later racial disorders in Harlem and Detroit in 1943 and in Detroit in 1967. As Sidney Fine argued was the case in Detroit in 1967, that pattern located looting as a consequence of the violence, not as the defining characteristic of the disorder and as having served to prolong disorder. While the Hearst press and other white publications, and some establishment Black leaders, attributed the looting to "hoodlums," others pointed to the economic situation of Harlem's residents. The Communist Daily Worker offered the starkest statement of that explanation: "It was dire need that turned the window-smashing retaliation against the police and the store-keepers into a 'looting' campaign." It was certainly true that the blocks to the east of Lenox Avenue, where the looting was most extensive, were home to many of Harlem's most desperate and economically deprived residents.
The progression from damage to looting also reflected the involvement of additional groups of men who had not been prominent in the initial violence. In later racial disorders, women would be a much larger presence among those arrested for looting and in images of theft. However, in 1935, while three women are among the sixty individuals arrested for looting, almost as many women were arrested for other offenses: two for breaking windows and another for inciting a crowd. Several newspapers reported that white men also joined the looting, but only two are identified in legal records. One of those men was arrested in circumstances that do not put him in the midst of the disorder: Jean Jacquelin, a thirty-three-year-old Canadian driver with a previous arrest for assault with a knife, arrested at 5:40 AM, after the crowds had left the streets, in possession of clothing stolen from a tailor down the block from his home. Louis Tonick, the second white man arrested, is not linked to a specific business, and lived outside Harlem (one additional white man, Leo Smith, was arrested for breaking windows).
The feature of the looting that drew particular comment in the reports of newspapers and later the MCCH was the extent to which it targeted only white-owned businesses and spared Black-owned businesses. Newspaper stories and the final report of the MCCH allowed that a small number of Black-owned businesses did suffer damage, either before identifying themselves with signs, or after crowds became less discriminating. However, none of the instances of looting identified in the sources involved Black businesses. At the same time, Harlem’s racial landscape was more complex than these reports recognized. Among the “white-owned” businesses targeted were a number of Puerto Rican businesses around 116th Street and Chinese laundries scattered throughout the neighborhood.
Police responded to looting with a greater degree of violence and more arrests than they did to crowds and attacks on stores. In their practices, theft justified firing at suspects, rather than in the air, as police claimed they did in confronting crowds and assaults. Police pursuing suspected looters shot and killed Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson. Sixty of those arrested were alleged to have been looting, identified in the sources either because they were charged with burglary, an offense which involved breaking into a store and entering it to take merchandise or by details of what police officers alleged an individual had done that fit looting but that resulted in other charges. Those arrests far outnumbered those arrested for any other activity during the disorder. Officers generally claimed to have seen an individual stealing goods from a business. In their defense, at least some of those police arrested claimed to have simply been standing with crowds on the street when police approached. In one-third (9 of 27) of the cases where the circumstances are known, the arrest occurred away from the looted store when police apparently stopped and questioned individuals they encountered carrying goods.
Courts also treated charges of looting more severely than other alleged offenses in the disorder. Magistrates held over half (28 of 50) of those who appeared before them for the grand jury compared to only one-third of those charged with assault. The grand jury did redirect a significant number to the Court of Special Sessions, casting them as having taken goods of insufficient value to warrant prosecution for a felony. District attorneys negotiated guilty pleas for lesser offenses with most of those individuals, so that only two prosecutions for looting went to trial. In doing so, they followed the same approach to such cases as was taken at other times in 1935.
As those criminal prosecutions made their way through the legal system, Harlem's white business owners turned to the civil courts seeking compensation from the city for their losses. Those claims were based a nineteenth-century municipal law that held a city or county liable if property was destroyed or injured by a mob or riot. One hundred and six owners brought actions, twenty-six of whom were identified in newspaper stories. The first of those suits heard in the Municipal Court was brought by William Feinstein, the owner of a liquor store on Lenox Avenue. The jury awarded him damages, a verdict which two months later the judge decided to uphold. In the interim, the city also lost a second case in the Municipal Court, for damages to Anna Rosenberg's notion store, which had been set on fire, and seven actions in the Supreme Court, which heard cases for larger damages. -
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2020-02-25T17:01:43+00:00
Looting in the courts (50)
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2024-02-13T15:51:01+00:00
Police arrested sixty individuals for looting, but only fifty appeared in legal records or newspaper stories about legal proceedings. The other ten individuals appeared only in lists of those arrested for burglary published in newspapers, and in the case of six men, in the police blotter of the 32nd Precinct. As they did not appear in the Magistrates Court docket books, they were not charged in court, and none of those sources mentioned what happened to those people in the legal system. There are also an additional nineteen individuals arrested for whom no details of their alleged offense survive, some of whom may have been involved in looting. Of the three Black women police arrested for looting, Elizabeth Tai and Elva Jacobs subsequently appeared in court. While press coverage of later disorders would focus attention on female looters, few publications mentioned them in 1935, noting only the presence of Black women in the crowds at the beginning of the disorder. It is not clear if the relative absence of women reflected their behavior during the disorder or the inattention of police and journalists. Both the white men arrested for looting ultimately had the charges against them dismissed. At least one, Jean Jacquelin, had been arrested in possession of clothing rather than in the act of taking those items from a store.
Prosecutors did not charge six of those who appeared in court with the offense for which they had been arrested, but instead with disorderly conduct. An additional five men and one woman — Joseph Payne, Raymond Taylor, Preston White, Herbert Hunter, Arthur Davis, and Elizabeth Tai — had the charge against them reduced to disorderly conduct after their initial appearance in court (that change was not recorded in the docket book for Davis and Hunter, but the magistrate convicted them, which he could only do if they were charged with disorderly conduct). A smaller proportion of those arrested for looting faced that lesser charge (12 of 50, 20%) than of those arrested for breaking windows (11 of 20, 55%) and assault (8 of 13, 62%) — although given that the basis for the arrest of sixteen of those charged with disorderly conduct (32%) is unknown, that pattern has to be considered uncertain. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge those individuals with looting, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence that associated them with the disorder. The variety of acts encompassed by disorderly conduct fell between being a bystander and a participant in acts of violence and theft, including "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," acting to "annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others," refusing "to move on when ordered by the police," and causing a crowd to collect. Possible scenarios might involve acting in a way that police interpreted as indicating an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior — most likely by being parts of crowds in the vicinity when stores were looting. Magistrates found guilty two thirds (8 of 12) of those charged with disorderly conduct after being arrested for looting (the white man released in the Magistrates Court, Louis Tonick, had been charged with robbery not disorderly conduct).
The charge brought against individuals who were prosecuted for looting was burglary. A charge of burglary required breaking into a store, entering it, and taking merchandise — all the elements that made up looting. If police did not have evidence of all three elements, the charge had to be to another offense that carried lesser penalties. After investigation, prosecutors changed the charge against Elva Jacobs from burglary to a lesser offense, unlawful entry. That charge punished entry into a property with the intention to take merchandise, to commit burglary, suggesting police had evidence she had been in a store but not that she had taken merchandise. Seven of those arrested for looting were charged with petit larceny instead of burglary. After the initial arraignment, the charge against an additional man, Henry Goodwin, was changed from burglary to petit larceny. In those cases police likely had evidence an individual had taken merchandise but not that they had broken into and entered a store to take those goods. What form of larceny that evidence supported depended upon the value of the goods allegedly stolen. A charge of petit larceny indicated that the goods were worth less than $100. Police charged the remaining two men with robbery. That offense involved taking property from a person rather than taking merchandise from a store.
Magistrates sent just over half (28 of 50) of those arraigned for looting to the grand jury to be charged with the felony offense of burglary. In ten of those cases, the grand jury saw the alleged offense differently, and voted misdemeanor charges that sent those individuals to the Court of Special Sessions not felony charges that would have sent them to the Court of General Sessions. Magistrates sent nine others arrested for looting to the Court of Special Sessions. There the judges convicted thirteen of the seventeen tried in that court where the outcome is known. Apart from Elva Jacobs, convicted of unlawful entry, all those convictions were for petit larceny.
Individuals arrested for looting made up a substantial majority of those charged with felonies after the disorder. The grand jury indicted just seventeen men, thirteen of whom had been arrested for looting (one case they dismissed and their decision about three others is unknown); three of those indictments were later dismissed by judges in the Court of General Sessions. Eleven of the other defendants agreed to plea bargains and pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges, petit larceny in seven cases, unlawful entry in three cases, and attempted grand larceny in the case of Edward Larry, who had been charged with robbery. A judge directed the acquittal of the final man, Joseph Moore (Arnold Ford, on trial with Moore, agreed to plead guilty to a charge of petit larceny).
Just over half of those arrested for looting received a sentence of one month or longer, a similar proportion as of those arrested for breaking windows and a far greater proportion than of those arrested for riot and assault. However, almost all of those arrested for looting received terms of three months or longer (16 of 18), compared with only a third of those arrested for breaking windows (3 of 9). -
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2021-08-07T18:20:54+00:00
Charles Saunders arrested
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2024-02-12T20:30:49+00:00
Around midnight, as Detective Jeremiah Duross of the 6th Division drove a police car on 7th Avenue, the sound of breaking glass drew his attention to a group of people in front of Ralph Sirico's shoe repair store at 1985 7th Avenue, according to a Probation Department investigation report. The store windows had been damaged earlier, between 11:30 PM and midnight, the superintendent of the apartments above 1985 7th Avenue, Mr. C. T. Berkeley, reported. As the detective pulled his car up next to the store, the crowd in front of it scattered. He jumped out of the car and claimed he saw Charles Saunders, a twenty-four-year-old Black unemployed elevator operator, jump out of the store window and run down the street. Duross gave chase and arrested Saunders, who he claimed had been drinking and had a fresh cut on his hand, which he implied had resulted from breaking glass in the window. While the report stated that the arrest took place at 2:00 AM, that appeared to be an error as the remainder of the narrative referred to events between 11:30 PM and midnight.
Saunders offered a different account than Duross, according to the Probation Department investigation report. He lived nearby, in a furnished room at 1967 7th Avenue, a block south of the store, with his wife Anna Gregory. Around midnight, Saunders left home to buy cigarettes. Walking toward a crowd in front of Sirico's store, he saw shoes and hats being thrown through the broken window on to the street, where people in the crowd were picking them up. Saunders claimed he followed the lead of those around him, and picked up a pair of shoes, cutting his hand on glass on the street in the process, and headed home. At that point Duross arrested him. Saunders denied having been drinking; the detective said Saunders did not have a pair of shoes in his hands when arrested. Berkeley supported Saunders' account to the extent that he said he was not "one of the two men who went through the broken window" of the store. The building superintendent said he could identify those men.
None of stolen goods were recovered, according to the Probation Department investigation report. Nonetheless, Saunders appeared to have been charged with taking all the goods that Sirico reported had been stolen: "18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by him; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces," with a total value he estimated as $66.75. While the District Attorney's case file was missing, the Probation Department investigation report summarized the indictment against Saunders as accusing him of taking merchandise worth $66.95. The Home News and Daily Worker reports less specifically reported Saunders was charged with stealing "several pairs of shoes."
Saunders was included in the lists of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, at which time Magistrate Renaud held him on $1,000 bail to reappear, an outcome recorded in the docket book and reported only in the Home News. When Saunders was brought back to the court on March 22, detectives presented bench warrants that indicated that the grand jury had already indicted him as a result of witnesses presented by District Attorney Dodge as part of his investigation of the disorder. Magistrate Renaud consequently dismissed the charges against Saunders so the detectives could rearrest him, as happened that day with two other men, James Hughes and Isaac Daniels, an appearance reported in the Home News and New York Post. On April 1, Saunders appeared in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty to petit larceny. That plea was at odds with the statement in the report that none of the stolen property had been recovered. A district attorney generally offered such a plea bargain to those indicted for burglary after the disorder found with stolen goods in their possession; those found with nothing in their possession, as the Probation Department investigation report implied Saunders was, generally pled guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful entry.
Immediately prior to Saunders' appearance for sentencing in the Court of General Sessions on April 12, the Probation Department notified the judge of a letter from the Savannah Juvenile Court. Saunders' older sister Vable Greatt had offered to provide a home for him in Savannah, Georgia, and the Juvenile Court Probation Department would assist in his supervision, should the judge place him on probation. After a delay, presumably to confirm those arrangements, Judge Nott gave Saunders a suspended sentence and placed him on "indefinite" probation on the condition he go to Savannah (the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded only the suspended sentence, not the probation). Of the nine other men sentenced in the Court of General Sessions, only Arnold Ford was also placed on probation. Both men remained under supervision for the maximum period of three years, until 1938.
Saunders told a probation officer that he had been born in Dublin, Georgia, the youngest of six children. His mother died when he was five years of age, and around that time he and his family moved to Savannah. After leaving school at age thirteen, Saunders did odd jobs and worked with his father, a carpenter. In 1929, his father remarried, and Saunders decided to go to New York City, where his brother Albert and sister Lola lived. After eighteen months living with Albert at 215 Edgecombe Avenue and working as a porter in a barber's shop at West 135th Street and 7th Avenue, ill health forced him to return to live with his sister in Savannah for six months. Returning to New York City in 1931, Saunders lived with an aunt at 162 West 143rd Street until May 1933, when he met and then moved in with Anna Gregory. The Probation Department investigation report described her as "separated from her husband"; a letter in the file from the Brooklyn Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, to whom the Family Court had referred Gregory in 1922, said her husband had abandoned her, leaving the state with funds provided by his mother. Saunders and Gregory were "known as man and wife," the probation officer reported. In the fluid marriage patterns still practiced in working-class communities such informal relationships were not uncommon but the Probation Department did not recognize them, instead describing Gregory as Saunders' "mistress" and "sweetheart." Dr. Charles Thompson of the Court's Psychiatric Clinic also saw a problem in Gregory being ten years older that Saunders, labeling him as immature for looking to her "for direction." In response to questions by a probation officer, Gregory described Saunders as a good provider and their life as "harmonious."
Gregory worked as a laundress, Saunders in a barber's shop at 142nd Street and 7th Avenue, then part-time for a moving company based at 143rd Street and 7th Avenue, and beginning in September 1934 as an elevator operator at 385 Edgecombe Avenue. After living for two years at 268 West 146th Street, the couple moved to 1967 7th Avenue in December 1934. Two months later, Saunders lost his job after a dispute with the new building superintendent; the management company fired the superintendent soon after and told a probation officer that they saw him, not Saunders, as at fault. That fit with the opinions of Saunders' employers and coworkers, which the probation officer summarized as considering him honest, industrious and dependable; he and Gregory were similarly "well regarded" by their neighbors. The Probation Department investigation report followed Dr. Thompson's examination report in attributing his alleged looting to "mob spirit." Thompson explained that concept as being "in company with several others under the influence of prejudice and aggressiveness," in the case of events in Harlem against "a background of racial antagonism, occasioned largely by the present lack of employment." Saunders' sister Vable Greatt explained his alleged looting, according to a letter from the Savannah Juvenile Court, as probably a result of him becoming "pretty well discouraged in his search for work," a "spiritual condition [that] caused him to fall to the temptation to steal."
While a good reputation and steady employment would have helped make Saunders a candidate for probation, Judge Nott's decision appears to have been largely a response to an offer from his sister and Savannah Juvenile Court Probation Department to supervise him. His sister Vable followed through on that offer, sending funds for Saunders' railway fare to Savannah; the Juvenile Court Probation Department did not do their part. Saunders' probation officer's letters to his Georgia colleagues went unanswered for six months. During this time, the only news the probation officer received of Saunders were reports Saunders himself mailed weekly, using a form and stamps sent to him by the department. Soon after Saunders arrived in Savannah, his sister became very sick, causing him to move in with his brother. In perfunctory answers to the questions on the form, he reported being unemployed, and involved in no education or social activities other than attending weekly services at a Protestant church.
As an alternative to the Juvenile Court, the Probation Department secured the help of the Savannah Family Welfare Society. Their worker's investigation in February 1936 solicited a very different picture of Saunders' life in Savannah from his sister and sister-in-law than he provided in his reports. Both complained he "never stayed home at night," was "drunk most of the time" and had become "lazy and shiftless," not willing to "keep a job when given one." The caseworker did not interview Saunders himself. The Probation Department responded by writing directly to Saunders, warning that his behavior was in violation of the terms of his probation, and the judge could take "disciplinary action" against him unless he improved his conduct and made "diligent efforts to obtain employment." They also requested the Savannah Family Welfare Society let Saunders report to them in person. In August 1936, Mrs. Mamie Belcher, a caseworker, began countersigning Saunders' reports. The Society reported "no further complaints" about his behavior, which the Probation Department took to unambiguously mean Saunders had changed his behavior. In June 1936, Saunders relocated to live again with his sister Vable. It took six more months before he found work, at a box manufacturing company. Nothing else changed in his answers on the report form until after a lapse in reporting in May 1937, when he wrote that he had moved to live with his sister Lois, who had returned from New York City. Only in Saunders' Discharge from Probation did the probation officer mention that this change in circumstances came after his sister Vable was killed in a car accident. By the end of 1937 Saunders had moved back in with his brother and begun working irregularly as a stevedore.
Throughout his time in Savannah, Saunders appears to have remained in contact with Anna Gregory. She came to the Probation Department at the end of 1935 concerned that he had been warned that his sentence could be reviewed if he failed to report regularly and seeking to have him return to the city. When Gregory applied for Home Relief, she described Saunders as her husband, prompting the Emergency Relief Bureau to contact the Probation Department in May 1937, who in turn sought information from Saunders about whether the couple had formally married. In the Discharge from Probation, the probation officer described Saunders as "discontented as he missed New York, and Mrs Gregory, his mistress," information apparently passed on by the Savannah Welfare Society. Their caseworker also reported in January 1938 that Saunders' sister Lois "was anxious to have Charles return with her to New York." The Probation Department wrote to the Society, to Saunders, and to his brother immediately before the end of his probation in April 1938 urging that "his best interests will be served" by remaining in Savannah. They also asked Saunders to advise the department of his plans. He did not reply. There is no evidence of what Saunders chose to do. -
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2021-04-21T19:10:20+00:00
Edward Larry arrested
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2024-01-24T00:26:07+00:00
At 1:00 AM, Patrolman William Clements observed Edward Larry, a twenty-six-year-old Black laborer, traveling in a taxi at West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue. He stopped the taxi, and found that Larry had a box containing eight shirts, with a value of $12. Not satisfied with Larry’s explanation that he had found the shirts on the street at West 129th Street and Lenox Avenue, Clements took him to the 28th Precinct for further questioning. The Magistrates Court affidavit simply described Clements as arresting Larry; the Home News report of Larry's appearance in the Magistrates Court described Clements arresting Larry "as he was about to get into a taxicab with two boxes containing a dozen shirts." The more detailed account in the Probation Department investigation described Clements stopping the cab.
Larry was one of nine men arrested away from the scene of their alleged crime, a group making up one third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60). Although he was the only one arrested in a vehicle, a photograph published in the New York Evening Journal indicated that this was not the only instance in which police stopped vehicles. Larry told police he was returning home to the Salvation Army shelter at 224 West 124th Street, behind Kress' store (some reports listed the address as 218 West 124th Street; the MCCH business survey records that the Salvation Army operated in both buildings). He had lived there for a month, after spending two weeks at the Belmont Hotel on the Bowery, and the previous thirty days in the workhouse serving a sentence for pickpocketing.
At the police station, Morris Towbin saw Larry and identified him as one of a group of men who had threatened him and robbed his haberdashery store at 101 West 125th Street at 10:30 PM the previous evening. Towbin also identified the shirts in Larry's possession as from his store, part of $2,000 of merchandise stolen, $1,000 of fixtures destroyed and $226.89 worth of plate glass windows smashed. Towbin's encounter with Larry was described only in the more detailed account in the Probation Department investigation. The Magistrates Court affidavit recorded only that Towbin had identified the shirts, a standard feature of a charge when an individual had not been seen stealing goods, and that he could "positively identify the defendant as one of the men" who had robbed him. In the police blotter, the charge against Larry was recorded as burglary. That record suggested that Towbin's identification came after his initial booking and after police provided that information to reporters, as the list of those arrested in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, both included Larry among those charged with burglary. Towbin's allegation of force changed the offense to robbery, which is the charge made against Larry in the Harlem Magistrates Court. However, there was no mention of force or robbery in the story covering his court appearance in the Home News or in reports of Towbin's statements as president of Harlem Merchants Association in the Daily News and Home News. Nor did police find a knife in Larry's possession, the weapon with which Towbin said he had been threatened. Larry's criminal record did not suggest he would have used a weapon as none of his convictions involved the use of force.
When Larry was arraigned in Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held him without bail for the grand jury. He was one of only seven of those arrested during the disorder for which magistrates did not set bail. Nine days later, on March 29, the grand jury indicted him for robbery in the first degree. It was likely this was the indictment mentioned in stories in the New York Times, New York Evening Journal, and New York American: while the latter two stories gave no details of the case, the New York Times referred to the unnamed defendant being "charged with burglary in the looting of an East 125th Street store." No one else arrested in the disorder was indicted on March 29. Rather than go to trial, Larry agreed to a plea bargain. On April 5, he appeared in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty to attempted grand larceny in the second degree, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison rather than up to twenty years, the punishment for robbery in the first degree. Ten days later, after an investigation by the Probation Department, Judge Nott sentenced Larry to a term of between fifteen months and thirty months in the state prison. (The 28th Precinct police blotter recorded a different sentence of six months to two years, but the Probation Department investigation and a response to the parole board in the district attorney's case file both record the longer sentence). That was the longest sentence given to anyone arrested in the disorder, a reflection of the charge, and of Larry’s criminal record. He had been convicted three times for picking pockets in New York City in the three years before the disorder, and most significantly, convicted for grand larceny in West Virginia in 1928. New York's Habitual Offender statute, commonly known as the Baumes Act, required that in cases involving individuals with a previous conviction for a felony that a plea bargain be to a felony and set minimum sentences based on the previous felony conviction.
Larry had been born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1909. His mother died when he was three years of age, leaving his father, and later stepmother to raise him. In 1921, a year after leaving school at age eleven to work in a cotton press, Larry left home. In the only response the Probation Department received to the letters they sent inquiring about Larry's history, the Wilmington Public Welfare Commission reported an interview with his half-sister Rose, in which she said he found work in a coal mine in West Virginia. Larry himself told the Probation Department officer G. H. Royal that he first worked briefly for a transportation company, traveling to Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent two months in a fish factory, followed by time on a truck in Far Rockaway, New York, then in a steel mill in Pittsburgh and a coal mine in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Beginning in 1924, aged fifteen, he began working irregularly for carnival companies that traveled the North in the summer and the South in the winter.
In February 1928, carnival work, or perhaps coal mining, brought Larry to Welch, West Virginia, where he was convicted of grand larceny. The court did not respond to the Probation Department's request for details of the case; Larry told them that he and another man were accused of stealing money from a drunken man in a poolroom (given Larry's record, the theft was likely accomplished by pickpocketing). Sentenced to six years in the state prison, Larry said he served four years and eight months, which would have seen him released in June 1932. By May 28, 1933, Larry was in New York City; he also said that earlier that month, while working in a carnival, he married Cora Temple, a dancer, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. In New York City, Larry was arrested for pickpocketing — the criminal record in the district attorney's case file specifying "lush," slicing open the pocket of a drunken individual — and sentenced to thirty days in the workhouse. After his release, he remained in New York City for at least six months, presumably with his wife Cora, but without a home and relying on charity. According to his half sister, Larry returned to Wilmington in December 1933, and found work as a stevedore until July 1934; he told the Probation Department he did not visit until July 1934, and left his wife there while he looked for work.
Almost as soon as Larry arrived back in New York City, on July 29, police arrested him for pickpocketing, again lush, according to the criminal record in the District Attorney's case file. On this occasion, he was sentenced to six months in the Workhouse. Released in January 1935, it was less than a month before officers from the police pickpocket squad arrested him again, and he spent a further 30 days in the Workhouse. In the month between his release and the disorder, he told the Probation Department that he spent a week working on a Salvation Army project in Flushing, Long Island. -
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2021-05-27T20:08:18+00:00
Louis Cobb arrested
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2024-01-28T05:26:59+00:00
Around 1:20 AM, Officer Nathaniel Carter allegedly saw several men leaving William Feinstein's liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue carrying bottles, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit. He arrested one of those men, Louis Cobb, a thirty-eight-year-old Black laborer, with one bottle of gin and two bottles of whiskey in his possession. A crowd of thirty to forty people had attacked the closed store a few minutes earlier, according to witness testimony in the Municipal Court reported in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, breaking down the iron gate protecting it, then smashing the windows, taking bottles of liquor and damaging the storefront. Feinstein put his losses at $627.40 when he sued the city for failing to protect his business. The three bottles allegedly taken by Cobb amounted to just over one percent of that total, $7. Cobb lived only a block north of the store at 473 Lenox Avenue.
Louis Cobb appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court on March 20. However, the affidavit making the complaint against him was not taken until March 25. In the interim, Magistrate Ford held Cobb without bail. An annotation in the docket book dated March 21 records "no bail in absence of record," suggesting police had not been able to produce his criminal record. Magistrates reaffirmed the denial of bail when Cobb appeared repeatedly in court, on March 25, 26 and April 2, when he was finally sent to the grand jury. Those decisions reflected the criminal record eventually produced for him: six charges in New York City since 1920, for burglary, robbery, drug possession, homicide, procuring and possession of a firearm, resulting in two sentences to the state prison at Sing Sing, two terms in the penitentiary, and a sentence in the Workhouse, and two sentences for violating parole. Cobb appeared in the list of those arrested and charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal. There were no newspaper reports of his prosecution.
The grand jury did not indict Cobb; on April 10 they instead transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions to be tried for petit larceny. That decision likely reflected the lack of evidence of him breaking into the store required for a charge of burglary, and the value of the three bottles of liquor Officer Carter allegedly found on him, $7, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit, well below the $100 threshold for a felony charge for larceny. Less than a week later, on April 15, the Magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions convicted Cobb and sentenced him to the Penitentary, an outcome recorded only in the records of the 32nd Precinct.
Born in Georgia in 1897, Louis Cobb had made his way to New York City sometime before January 10, 1920, when a census enumerator found him boarding at 334 53rd Street, in San Juan Hill, the city's major Black neighborhood before the rise of Harlem, and working as a porter. A series of criminal convictions though the 1920s and 1930s offer fragmentary glimpses of Cobb's life in Harlem. Just over two months after the census, his criminal record indicates that police charged Cobb with attempted burglary; he was convicted and sentenced to an indefinite term in the Blackwell Island Penitentiary. He was on parole by February 1921, when police arrested him again for violating the terms of that parole and returned him to the penitentiary. Released again later that year, within a few months Cobb was in court, charged with robbery. Convicted of second-degree assault, the judge sentenced him to five years in Sing Sing, the state prison. The prison admissions register recorded that Cobb was unemployed at the time of the alleged crime, now living in Harlem at 30 West 135th Street; in a subsequent admission register entry he would attribute his "first crime" to being out of work. According to the admissions register, Cobb was eligible for parole in May 1925. He likely was released around this time, as in November 1925 police arrested him again, this time for a drug offense, according to his criminal record. The judge sentenced him to another indefinite term in the Penitentiary, but the conviction violated his parole, so Cobb was returned to Sing Sing Prison to serve out his previous sentence.
Likely released in early 1926, Cobb later that year began living with Martha Nelson, who was about ten years his junior. The couple made their home at 8 West 137th Street, in the heart of Harlem. In 1930, Cobb gave his occupation as longshoreman in the 1930 census, but indicated he had not been employed in 1929. He may have been supporting himself in other ways. In May 1929, his criminal record indicates that a magistrate convicted Cobb as a procurer, supplying prostitutes, and sentenced him to sixty days in the Workhouse. About five months after his release, in December 1929, police again arrested Cobb, for the murder of Bert Moore, a Black store manger, during a robbery of the candy store at 23 West 138th Street that he managed. The New York Amsterdam News and New York Age published very different accounts of the crime, neither of which explain why Cobb's criminal record indicated he was discharged in 1931 and charged instead with gun possession. The robbery of the store was the third in as many weeks. According to the New York Age, in a story accompanied by a photograph of Moore, Cobb was involved in all those robberies; on the first two occasions, he had an accomplice, John Boyle, who was arrested after the second robbery when Moore managed to subdue him with a baseball bat until police arrived. Cobb then returned on his own to rob the store again and shot Moore as he left. A customer in the store at the time identified Cobb. The New York Amsterdam News reported Boyle (whose name they misspelled as Doyle) as acting alone and captured by Moore and three customers, and did not link Cobb to either previous robbery. After the third robbery, the New York Amsterdam News reported less evidence linking Cobb to the murder: Moore gave police a description before he died, based on which officers arrested Cobb on West 138th Street close by the candy store. The story also reported that police found a gun when they searched Cobb's home, but that his wife claimed it belonged to her, leading to her arrest for gun possession. The New York Amsterdam News a week later reported Cobb's arraignment and his wife's arraignment in separate stories. Neither paper published anything further about the case.
In April 1930, the census recorded that Cobb was in the Tombs Prison; a magistrate had ordered him held without bail on the murder charge. However, at some point before early 1931 he was released; beginning in February, he worked as a laborer for a coal company, according to the Sing Sing Prison admission register. In April, police arrested him for possession of a revolver; the prison admission register recorded the date of that crime as December 13, 1929, when Cobb was arrested for Moore's murder. Police must have found a way to link Cobb to the gun found in his home that day, but not to Moore's murder; it did not seem that Martha had changed her story, as Cobb still listed her as his wife in the prison admission register. Convicted of gun possession, Cobb was sentenced to seven years in Sing Sing Prison.
Paroled in 1939, rather than returning to Harlem, Cobb settled in Albany, New York, and found work as a presser. He identified himself as single, and his mother, rather than Martha Nelson, as his next of kin, in the Clinton Prison admission ledger in 1939. In July that year police arrested Cobb for burglary, charging him with stealing a $15 radio, a coat, and a vest. The admission ledger recorded that he asserted his innocence, saying he took the property from a friend not knowing it was stolen. Nonetheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to a term of ten to twenty years. The 1940 census recorded him as an inmate of Clinton Prison. He was not eligible for parole until 1948.
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1
2021-09-06T19:34:04+00:00
Elizabeth Tai arrested
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2024-02-13T19:45:02+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Detective Phillips of the 28th Precinct arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black resident of 1654 3rd Avenue, for allegedly stealing groceries from a store at 340 Lenox Avenue. She may have reached into an already broken window, as a story in the Home News specified that Tai's alleged offense occurred "after the windows had been smashed." The store's address was mentioned only in that story. Both the story in the Home News and one in the Daily Worker reported that Tai had allegedly taken groceries. At the same time, Detective Phillips also arrested Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking groceries from the store. The arrests likely occurred around 12:30 AM.
Tai appeared in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal. The 28th Precinct police blotter also recorded the charge against Tai as burglary, with the note "Burglarised store during riot." Her home was some way from Harlem, on the east side of Central Park between 92nd and 93rd Streets.
Tai was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with Arthur Davis and another individual arrested by Detective Phillips, Herbert Hunter, also charged with burglary and arrested with them, according to the Home News. However, that story did not directly state that Hunter was charged with looting the same store. Magistrate Renaud remanded all three to appear again in court (he sent two others arrested by Phillips who appeared at the same time charged with malicious mischief, Charles Wright and William Norris, to the Court of Special Sessions). The docket book recorded only Phillips' name and precinct; the stories in the Home News and Daily Worker identified him as a detective.
When Tai appeared in court again, on March 22, the docket book recorded that the charge had been reduced to disorderly conduct, the original charge crossed out. The "court" reduced the charge, according to the Home News, doing the same in the cases of Davis and Hunter. Had the police presented evidence Tai had stolen merchandise, she would have been charged with either burglary or larceny; had they presented evidence that she had broken windows, the charge would have been malicious mischief. The charge of disorderly conduct suggested that she may only have been part of a crowd near the store. Magistrate Renaud found Tai guilty, an outcome reported in the stories in the Daily Worker, Daily News, and New York Evening Journal as well as the Home News. He also found Davis and Hunter guilty. Tai was one of only three women charged with looting in the disorder.
Renaud sentenced Tai to pay a fine of $25 or serve five days in the Workhouse, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, as he did Davis. The magistrate gave Hunter a longer sentence of ten days without the alternative of a fine. Tai was unable to pay the fine, according to the Home News, so was sent to the Workhouse, a sentence also recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter and stories in the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker.
Tai was the name recorded in the docket book, and in the lists published in Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. It was recorded differently in other sources less reliable than the legal record: as Tae in the Home News and 28th Precinct police blotter, as Pae in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, and as Cay in the Daily Worker. If it was recorded correctly by the court clerk, Tai was a common last name among Chinese living overseas, suggesting that Elizabeth was married to a Chinese man. Given it was an unusual last name for a resident of Harlem, the arrested woman may be the Elizabeth Tai who died in Harlem Hospital on April 20, 1945. She had been born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1905, and was a widow at the time of her death, with her husband's name transcribed as "Hawley Tai." That Elizabeth Tai had been a domestic worker, who lived at 124 West 135th Street at the time of her death. -
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2020-02-25T16:51:47+00:00
Cases in the grand jury (46)
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2024-01-26T23:17:13+00:00
The cases of forty-five of those arrested during the disorder were presented to the grand jury. Typically, those cases would have been referred by magistrates, but District Attorney William Dodge also presented evidence from his own investigation of the disorder. As a result, the grand jury voted charges against fourteen men before a magistrate had made a decision on their case. Those men can be identified because a magistrate had to discharge them so they could be rearrested on the charges voted by the grand jury, an outcome recorded in the court docket books. In addition, the grand jury twice heard evidence against Patrolman John McInerney, who shot and killed Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black boy. All the members of the grand jury were white men. (ILD lawyers who appeared at the MCCH hearings claimed there had not been a Black grand juror in the last twenty years.)
Only two of forty-one cases (and McInerney twice) were dismissed by the grand jury (the outcome is unknown in four cases). However, it voted indictments for felony charges in only seventeen cases. In the remaining twenty-two cases, the grand jury instead voted informations for misdemeanor charges. A misdemeanor charge was not what prosecutors sought when they sent a case to the grand jury. Individuals could be sent for trial on misdemeanor charges direct from the magistrates court; twenty of those arrested in the disorder were dealt with in that way. In not charging twenty-two individuals referred to them with a felony, the grand jury determined that police had not gathered evidence to support the initial charge. But rather than dismiss the charges entirely and release those individuals, they instead reduced the charges, sending them to the Court of Special Sessions for prosecution as nonetheless involved in the disorder.
While the grand jury ultimately did not indict any of those charged with riot in the Magistrates court, it did initially vote felony charges in the first cases brought before it as part of District Attorney Dodge's investigation, including the cases of Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators. However, the next day Dodge had to amend the charges to a misdemeanor, unlawful assembly. New York law specified two felony forms of riot, one that did not apply to those men involving acts focused on public officers and the enforcement of the law, individuals armed with weapons or disguised, and one involving "acts of force and violence." In the case of Miller and the Young Liberators, there was no evidence that they called for violence. Following that decision, all but one of the other nine cases of riot brought to the grand jury with a known outcome resulted in the same misdemeanor charges. Those cases were referred by magistrates, and the grand jury hearings occurred after the end of Dodge's investigation. Six of the others charged later — Leon Mauraine, James Pringle, David Smith, John Kennedy Jones, Bernard Smith, and Leroy Brown — allegedly called for windows to be broken, which would seem to fit the felony definition. However, the statute required that the offender "directs, advises, encourages or solicits" that violence, a direct connection lacking in those cases. Instead, the charges referred only to subsequent attacks on businesses in the vicinity. The misdemeanor of unlawful assembly, by contrast, required only that an offender "threaten" an act. Claude Jones and William Ford allegedly called for attacks on police, but the charges against them made no reference to acts of violence against police, circumstances that appeared to fit the threats referred to in the definition of unlawful assembly better than the acts in the definition of riot. In the final case, John King allegedly refused to move on when ordered to by a police officer, circumstances that section 2093 of the statute defined as a misdemeanor form of riot and unlawful assembly. Magistrate Renaud appears to have made a mistake in not sending King directly to the Court of Special Sessions.
In the cases of ten of the twenty-four individuals arrested for looting, the grand jury voted misdemeanor charges instead of the felony of burglary charged in the Magistrates courts. All of those cases were heard after the end of Dodge's investigation; the grand jury voted indictments charging felonies in all of the cases of those arrested for looting presented as part of the district attorney's investigation, eleven of the fourteen indictments. That preponderance might indicate that prosecutors pushed for more serious charges to deliver results for the investigation, or simply that the cases where the evidence was strongest were the first to be heard. The grand jury heard twenty cases after the first week of legal proceedings, from March 29, and voted misdemeanor charges in all but one. A charge of burglary required breaking into a store, entering it, and taking merchandise; a lesser charge resulted from the absence of evidence of one or more of those elements. Two possible misdemeanor charges were brought against individuals arrested for looting in the Magistrates courts, unlawful entry, which involved entering property but only the intent to commit a crime, and petit larceny, which involved taking items without breaking and entering a property. As those arrested for looting invariably allegedly had items in their possession, it is likely that petit larceny was the charge voted by the grand jury. In the case of Louis Cobb, the charge of petit larceny was recorded in the district attorney's case file. A police officer had seen him leaving a liquor store with several bottles of spirits, but there was no evidence that he had broken into the store. Lawrence Humphrey and Leroy Gillard were arrested in similar circumstances, after police officers saw them leaving stores carrying items taken from inside. The absence of evidence of breaking and entering is clearer in the cases of the seven other men the grand jury charged with misdemeanors. Police arrested them at locations other than the stores they had allegedly looted, including Daughty Shavos, arrested at his home the evening after the disorder.
Another man arrested for looting the evening after the disorder, Clifford Mitchell, was one of the two men whose cases the grand jury dismissed. While there was no mention of how police came to make the arrest, items found in Mitchell's home that Louis Levy identified as coming from his store were identified in the legal record as evidence against him. The dismissal of the charges likely means that Levy's identification was called into question. The second case dismissed by the grand jury involved Bernard Smith, charged with riot. Given that an additional charge of breaking windows had been reduced to disorderly conduct, and punished by a sentence of only five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25, it seems likely that police did not have compelling evidence to support their allegation that Smith had been responsible for crowds breaking windows.
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2020-10-22T01:47:08+00:00
John Vivien arrested
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2024-02-09T20:28:14+00:00
Around 11:00 PM, Detective Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct claimed he saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the smashed window of Regal Shoes and take a pair of shoes from the display. Edward Wittleder, the assistant manager, had closed the store, on the corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10:00 PM, before it was damaged, according to his Magistrate's Court affidavit. However, he would have known that it was likely to be attacked. By that time store windows had been smashed the length of the block of 125th Street to the west, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Police trying to clear people from the street had pushed them toward the intersection on which Regal Shoes sat, creating large crowds, as well as concentrating officers and riot control trucks there. After 10:00 PM, small groups had begun to attack businesses north and south of the intersection on 7th Avenue and further east on 125th Street. When Naton (and Officer Redmond, according to the criminal record) arrested Vivien, he claimed he found shoes which Wittleder identified as coming from the store in Vivien's possession. They had a value of $5.50, according to the affidavit. (Naton made two other arrests around this time, of John King, thirty minutes earlier, at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, and of James Pringle fifteen minutes later, two blocks south on 7th Avenue at West 123rd Street).
Vivien lived at 483 Manhattan Avenue, two blocks west of Regal Shoes, near the corner of West 120th Street, on margins of the Black neighborhood. He was listed among those arrested and charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and New York Evening Journal, his name misspelled Vivian. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, where Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on bail of $1,000. It was not Vivien's first time in court; he had been arrested for robbery in 1929, a charge dismissed by a magistrate according to his criminal record. The Home News reported those proceedings, also misspelling his name Vivian. The remainder of his prosecution was recorded only in legal records and police records. Vivien appeared before the grand jury on April 4, according to his district attorney's case file, who sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him. That outcome indicated a lack of evidence that he had broken into the store, a requirement for a charge of burglary. The charge Vivien instead faced was likely petit larceny, a misdemeanor, as the value of the items he had taken was well below the $100 required for a charge of felony theft. The judges in that court convicted him on April 10 and suspended his sentence, an outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter. -
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2020-10-20T22:27:18+00:00
James Williams arrested
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2024-01-27T17:57:10+00:00
Around 2:00 AM, police arrested James Williams, a twenty-eight-year-old West Indian cook, at Lenox Avenue and West 118th Street. He allegedly had in his possession a “quantity of hardware” taken from Herman Young’s hardware store at 346 Lenox Ave, ten blocks to north, an hour earlier. It was not clear how Williams was carrying the collection of four pots of different sizes, two pans, a pitcher, two pails, a bread box, and a cloth lamp. Young identified those goods as his property. With a combined value of $12.55, they represented only a small portion of the $500 of hardware reported stolen from his store. Williams may have been going to his home. For the last two years, he had lived a block further south and west at 153 West 117th Street. Williams was one of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one-third (9 of 29) of the arrests for which that information is known (29 of 60).
There was no mention of what caused the officer to arrest Williams. Young told police that he “was seen taking property from the store,” phrasing that suggests someone other than Young witnessed the theft. Young was unlikely to have been directly involved in the arrest. Half an hour earlier, he had been in Harlem Hospital receiving treatment for a wound to his head received when a man assaulted him during the attack on his store. Williams may be the individual in a photograph of man arrested for looting published in the New York Evening Journal carrying a large bin from which pots and pans are sticking out (the caption did not name the man).
Charged with burglary the morning after the disorder, Williams appeared in only the list of those arrested published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in one list published in the New York Evening Journal. He was one of only eighteen of those arrested in the disorder represented by a lawyer, in his case John Lewis, a member of the Harlem Lawyers Association. The Harlem Magistrates Court Docket Book recorded him as being remanded to appear again on March 22. He was not brought before a grand jury until April 10. They transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, according to the district attorney's case file. That decision indicated they had not charged Williams with burglary, a felony that required evidence of breaking and entering. Instead, the charge would have been larceny given the evidence provided by the goods allegedly found in his possession. Those items had a value of less than $100 so would only have support the misdemeanor charge of petit larceny. Two days later, on April 12, the judges acquitted Williams, according to the 28th Precinct pfolice blotter. The likeliest explanation for that verdict would be that the jury had not been convinced that the items Williams was carrying had come from Young's store. -
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2021-09-06T19:20:25+00:00
Arthur Davis arrested
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2024-02-13T19:44:29+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Detective Phillips of the 28th Precinct arrested Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black resident of 42 West 126th Street, for allegedly stealing groceries from a grocery store at 340 Lenox Avenue. Davis may not have broken the store windows, as a story in the Home News specified that Davis' alleged offense occurred "after the windows had been smashed." The store's address was mentioned only in that story. Both the Home News and the Daily Worker reported the Davis had allegedly taken groceries. At the same time, Detective Phillips also arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black women, for allegedly taking groceries from the store. The arrests likely occurred around 12:30 AM.
Davis appeared in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal. The 28th Precinct police blotter also recorded the charge against Davis as burglary, with the note "Burglarised store during riot."
Davis was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with Tai and another individual arrested by Detective Phillips, Herbert Hunter, also charged with burglary, and arrested with them according to the Home News. However, that story did not directly state that Hunter was charged with looting the same store. Magistrate Renaud remanded all three to appear again in court. (He sent two others arrested by Phillips who appeared at the same time charged with malicious mischief, Charles Wright and William Norris, to the Court of Special Sessions). The docket book recorded only Phillips' name and precinct; the stories in the Home News and Daily Worker identified him as a detective. Both the docket book and 28th Precinct police blotter gave Davis' age as thirty-six years; both lists and all the newspaper stories gave his age as thirty-two-years.
When Davis appeared in court again, on March 22, the docket book recorded no change in the charge against him, but a story in the Home News reported that "the Court" had reduced the charge from burglary to disorderly conduct, as it had for both Tai and Hunter. In Tai's case, the docket book did record that the charge had been reduced to disorderly conduct. Had the police presented evidence Davis had stolen merchandise, he would have been charged with either burglary or larceny; had they presented evidence that he had broken windows, the charge would have been malicious mischief. The charge of disorderly conduct suggested he may only have been part of a crowd near the store. Magistrate Renaud found Davis guilty, an outcome reported in the stories in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal as well as the Home News. He also found Tai and Hunter guilty.
Renaud sentenced Davis to pay a fine of $25 or serve five days in the Workhouse, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, the same sentence he gave Tai. He gave Hunter a longer sentence of ten days without the alternative of a fine. Davis was unable to pay the fine, according to the Home News, so was sent to the Workhouse. The sentence also recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter and stories in the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. -
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2021-04-13T17:45:18+00:00
John Henry arrested
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2024-01-27T18:15:49+00:00
Patrolman Astel of the 28th Precinct arrested John Henry, a sixteen-year-old Black student, together with Oscar Leacock, a twenty-year-old Brazilian laborer, around 2:15 AM, at Lenox Avenue and 126th Street. There is no mention of what prompted Officer Astel to stop the men; the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street had been the site of attacks on stores for around two hours before he stopped Henry and Leacock. He reported that he found on them "a quantity of jewelry," which when questioned they admitted taking from Benjamin Zelvin's store at 372 Lenox Avenue. The officer then had the men take him to the store, which was only three blocks north, where they found all the windows broken — and perhaps boarded up, as a Home News story about one of the men's court appearances reported that they "pushed away one of the boards" in order to take "several articles of merchandise." Zelvin had locked his jewelry store at 372 Lenox Avenue around 11:30 PM and did not return from his home in Brooklyn until opening time the next day. Given that there was extensive disorder in Harlem by the time Zelvin left, he may have boarded up the store as well as locking it.
Henry and Leacock were two of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one-third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60).
Henry lived at 313 West 118th Street, near 8th Avenue. Leacock lived at the opposite end of the same street, at 39 West 118th Street, near 5th Avenue. Henry was one of the youngest people arrested during the disorder; James Hayes was also sixteen years of age (two seventeen-year-old men were also arrested, one of whom, Robert Tanner, was the only other identified as a student). There is no indication how he and Leacock came to be together on March 19.
Zelvin later identified the jewelry found on the men as coming from his store. In the charge against Henry and Leacock, the value of the jewelry was initially typed as $100, but then struck out and $75 handwritten in its place. The grand jury reduced the felony burglary charge against the men to a misdemeanor, a decision that likely reflected the lack of evidence that the men had broken into the store that a charge of burglary required. Given that they had been arrested with merchandise in their possession, the grand jury likely charged them with petit larceny; a felony larceny charge was not an option as the jewelry they had allegedly taken was worth less than $100. Zelvin appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 21 to charge one additional man, a thirty-one-year-old Black man named Henry Goodwin, with burglary. That charge was reduced to petit larceny, suggesting he too had only allegedly taken jewelry worth less than $100.
There was no newspaper coverage of the looting; Henry and Leacock appeared only in the most comprehensive lists of those arrested, published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. The details came from the district attorney's case file; as the grand jury sent the cases to the Court of Special Sessions, the only information was from the Magistrate Court affidavit. Although arrested together, the men appeared in the Harlem Magistrate Court at different times, Leacock on March 20 with most of those arrested during the disorder, and Henry not until the next day. Despite Patrolman Astel's report that the men had confessed at the time of their arrest, they pled not guilty in court. Both men appeared in court again on March 22, when the Magistrate sent them to the grand jury charged with burglary, an outcome reported in the Home News. It was not until April 2 that the grand jury heard their cases, sending them to the Court of Special Sessions, not the Court of General Sessions. The 28th Precinct police blotter is the only source for the outcome of those trials, that the judges convicted both men. On April 17, they sent Henry to the House of Refuge, a juvenile reformatory on Randalls Island (which would close less than a month later, on May 11). The next day the judges gave Leacock a suspended sentence. -
1
2020-10-22T02:13:07+00:00
Robert Tanner arrested
32
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2024-02-01T00:36:09+00:00
Around 3:00 AM, Officer Charles Necas of the 28th Precinct saw Robert Tanner, a seventeen-year-old Black student, put his hand in the broken window of Jack Garmise's cigar shop at 1916 7th Avenue and take a pipe, according to his Magistrates Court affidavit. Necas then arrested Tanner. The store window had been broken a little over an hour earlier by a milk can thrown by a member of a group that had gathered in front of the store. Police nearby arrested two men allegedly involved in the attack and subsequent looting, Thomas Jackson and Raymond Easley. Most of the $100 of pipes, clocks, watches, razors, and other goods that Garmise reported stolen had likely been taken before Tanner allegedly reached through the window. While it did not appear that police officers guarded the damaged store, as they did on West 125th Street, it was in a likely location for police to be stationed: on the corner of West 116th Street, the business district south of West 125th Street, and Harlem's busiest avenue. Tanner lived on West 116th Street only three buildings west of 7th Avenue, at 218 West 116th Street. He was likely one of the many Harlem residents drawn to the streets by the disorder and may have been on the street for some time before allegedly taking advantage of the damage others had done. Giles Jackson was injured by "falling glass" around the same time near the intersection so other businesses may have been attacked.
Tanner was one of only two of those arrested identified as a student, along with John Henry, and one of only four under eighteen years of age. His name was in the lists of those arrested for burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. When he was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrate Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on $1,000 bail, according to the Magistrates Court docket book. The Home News published the only story that mentioned Tanner's arraignment. It grouped him with Thomas Jackson, one of the men arrested for the earlier attack on Garmise's shop, who the docket book indicated had been arraigned shortly before Tanner. The story mistakenly reversed the timing of the men's alleged crimes described in the legal records and reported that Tanner smashed a side window an hour before Jackson broke the front window. A grand jury indicted Tanner on a charge of burglary on March 22. Three days later the New York Sun reported that he appeared in the Court of General Sessions, but unlike the other men who appeared with him, Tanner had not accepted a plea bargain and the judge continued his bail. When Tanner appeared again in the court, he pled not guilty. By April 4, he had agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny. That plea went unreported in the press but was noted in the district attorney's case file and the 28th Precinct police blotter. The district attorney offered that plea bargain to most of those indicted for burglary. The blotter provided the only evidence of his sentence to the New York City Reformatory, the result of being a youthful first offender.
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1
2020-10-22T02:08:11+00:00
Horace Fowler arrested
31
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2024-01-26T18:11:26+00:00
Around 1:30 AM, Detective George Booker arrested Horace Fowler, a thirty-two-year-old Black laborer who lived at 362 Lenox Avenue, after he allegedly saw Fowler break the window of Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue, reach inside, and take several articles of clothing. Fowler did admit stealing the clothing in his possession when Booker arrested him, a man's suit and a lady's coat, according to the Probation Department investigation, but denied "breaking the window or knowing how it was broken." In the Magistrate's Court affidavit, Booker describes Fowler breaking the window with a club. The Probation Department investigation reports Booker as saying that he saw Fowler break the window "by throwing a missile through it." If Fowler smashed the window to gain entry, he had committed burglary; if he did not, he had only committed theft.
Fowler told the Probation Department officer that "he mingled with the crowds on the streets of Harlem following the disturbances and that when he observed the looting taking place, he stole the articles indiscriminately." The probation officer's notes suggest the theft was not entirely at random: "fell in with mob - needed a suit." As Detective Booker would have been in plainclothes, Fowler may have been unaware that there were police in the vicinity of the store. Fowler was certainly not the only person to steal goods from the store, and unlikely one of the first. Peet put his total losses during the disorder at $452.25 of secondhand suits, coats, and pants, and an addition $133 of suits, overcoats, women's coats, and dresses belonging to customers, according to the Probation Department investigation. The items found in Fowler's possession had a value of only $25. It is not clear how much of the other clothing was stolen before Fowler's arrest. It could not all have been in the display windows, so people must have entered the store, which required that the windows be broken. If Fowler had to break a window, that looting was unlikely to have happened before his arrest. However, Peet's store was located only two blocks south of West 125th Street, so crowds would have been on this section of 7th Avenue for several hours by 1:30 AM, making it unlikely that the windows remained intact that long. It is more likely that Fowler did not have to break the window and was following in the wake of other looters.
Fowler appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, charged with burglary. He appears in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, a list published in the New York Evening Journal, and a story in the Home News that included brief summaries of the charges made in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on $1,000 bail. The criminal record provided by the Police Department in the district attorney’s case file showed no arrests, but the Probation Department found a conviction for disorderly conduct, for loitering in the subway, for which Fowler served five days in the Workhouse in 1930. Indicted on April 5, Fowler agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny on April 8. After being investigated by the Probation Department, he returned to the Court of General Sessions on April 22, where Judge Wallace sentenced him to three months in the Workhouse, according to both the 28th Precinct police blotter and the Probation Department case file.
Born in Cooleemee, North Carolina, Fowler had lived in New York City since around 1930. At the time of the 1920 census he was still living with his mother, stepfather, and their seven children in Jerusalem, North Carolina, working as a card hand in a cotton mill (his name misrecorded as Horris). Fowler appears to have left home soon after, working around North Carolina before relocating to Philadelphia around 1924. He told a Probation officer he worked as a porter in two different bakeries and the Baltimore and Ohio station restaurant, details that could not be confirmed in the time available for the investigation.
When Fowler arrived in New York City sometime in 1930, he found work as an assistant janitor in a series of apartment buildings — but likely not immediately. His arrest for loitering in the subway was in February 1930; he also mentioned an unconfirmed arrest for vagrancy in Baltimore a month earlier, when he had traveled from Philadelphia looking for work. In both cases he appears to have been seeking shelter. Work as a janitor came with onsite accommodation, first at 1955 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, then 144 West 144th Street in Harlem, and finally, from October 1931 to January 1933, back in the Bronx at 1756 Taylor Avenue, according to the information he gave the probation officer. Sometime in 1932, Fowler also began working part-time as a porter at a drug store at 1758 East Tremont Avenue, close to the apartment building where he worked. In January 1933 he suffered a hernia which prevented him from working as a janitor. He subsequently rented a room in the apartment of Walter Stevenson and his family at 362 Lenox Avenue, while continuing to work at the drug store almost seven miles away. The owner told the probation officer he would be glad to give Fowler a job on his release, as he considered him “a reliable, industrious and honest person.” His industry extended to his leisure time, much of which he spent attending adult education classes at P.S. 89.
At some point after his release in 1935, Fowler left New York City and returned to Philadelphia. In 1940, a census enumerator found him living in a Salvation Army Men’s Hostel. He had been unemployed for over two months, and reported only four weeks of work in 1939. When Fowler registered for the draft two years later, in 1942, he was still living in Philadelphia, and without a job.
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1
2021-04-13T17:45:34+00:00
Oscar Leacock arrested
31
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2024-02-09T15:35:29+00:00
Officer Astel of the 25th Precinct arrested Oscar Leacock, a twenty-year-old Brazilian laborer, together with John Henry, a sixteen-year-old Black student, at Lenox Avenue and 126th Street around 2:15 AM. There was no mention of what prompted Astel to stop the men. By this time the crowds that had been on the street attacking businesses or watching the disorder had thinned and more police were stationed on the corners of Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street. Astel reported that he found that the men had "a quantity of jewelry," which when questioned they admitted taking from Benjamin Zelvin's store at 372 Lenox Avenue. The officer then had the men take him to the store three blocks to the north. They found all the windows broken. Zelvin had closed the business around 11:00 PM but remained there until police he had called to protect the store arrived at 11:30 PM. Those officers had evidently not remained at the jewelry store. Zelvin did not return from his home in Brooklyn until opening time that morning.
Leacock and Henry were two of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60).
Leacock lived at 39 West 118th Street near 5th Avenue. Henry lived at the opposite end of the same street, at 313 West 118th Street, near 8th Avenue. Henry was the youngest person arrested during the disorder. There was no indication of how he and Henry came to be together on March 19. Leacock lived in an area that housed a mix of Black and Spanish-speaking residents. In the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book he was recorded as Black; in his examination in the court he gave his birthplace as Brazil, making him one of the very few among those arrested who was not identified as born in the United States or the West Indies (the transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded his birthplace as the United States, but also misspelled his name as Ossor Leasode).
Zelvin later identified the jewelry police allegedly found on the men as having come from his store. In the charge against Leacock and Henry, the value of the jewelry was initially typed as $100, but then struck out and $75 handwritten in its place. The grand jury reduced the felony burglary charge against the men to a misdemeanor. Their decision indicated the lack of evidence that the men had broken into the store that a charge of burglary required. Given that they had been arrested with merchandise in their possession, the grand jury likely instead charged them with petit larceny; a felony larceny charge was not an option as the jewelry they had allegedly taken was worth less than $100. Zelvin appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 21 to charge one additional man with burglary, a thirty-one-year-old Black man named Henry Goodwin. That charge was also reduced to petit larceny, indicating the same lack of evidence he had broken into the store and that he too had allegedly taken jewelry worth less than $100.
There were no details of Leacock's alleged offense published in the press. Leacock and Henry appeared among those charged with burglary only in the two most comprehensive lists of those arrested, published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. The details were in the Magistrate Court affidavit contained in Leacock's district attorney's case file. Although arrested together, the men appeared in the Harlem Magistrate Court at different times. Leacock was arraigned on March 20 with most of those arrested during the disorder. Henry was not arraigned until the next day. Despite Officer Astel's report that the men had confessed at the time of their arrest, they pled not guilty in court. Leacock was one of only eighteen of those arrested in the disorder represented by a lawyer, in his case H. Hirsch of 9 Sylvan Place. No information could be found on the lawyer. Both men appeared again on March 22, when the magistrate sent them to the grand jury. It was not until April 2 that the grand jury heard their case and sent both men to the Court of Special Sessions. The 28th Precinct police blotter was the only source that recorded that the judges in that court found both men guilty, Leacock on April 18 and Henry on April 17. The judges suspended Leacock's sentence, but sent Henry to the House of Refuge, a juvenile reformatory on Randalls Island (which would close less than a month later, on May 11). -
1
2021-04-16T19:59:19+00:00
Leroy Gillard arrested
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2024-01-28T00:02:02+00:00
Patrolman Irwin Young alleged that around 10:10 PM, he "saw the window of [Morris Sankin's tailor's] store being broken" and then saw a forty-six-year-old unemployed Black man named Leroy Gillard go into the store through the broken window and emerge with two suits of clothing, each valued at $25. The phrasing of the affidavit implied that Gillard did not break the window, so there may have been others there at the time who escaped arrest. Certainly more clothing was stolen, to the value of $800, than Gillard allegedly had in his possession. The affidavit left those possibilities open by including the stock phrasing that Gillard's alleged crime was committed "while acting in concert with a number of others not yet arrested."
Sankin's store was set back from 7th Avenue in a single story structure located between the rear of the five-story building on the corner of West 128th Street and 7th Avenue and the first of a block of eight three-story brownstone apartment buildings that stretched for roughly a quarter of the block. Gillard may not have come to the store from 7th Avenue as he lived at 208 West 128th Street, just four buildings west of the store. Officer Young was likely on the corner of 7th Avenue and West 128th Street, as police tended to take up positions at intersections. Young had been one of the officers in front of Kress' store four hours earlier, during which time he was allegedly assaulted by Harry Gordon as he arrested him for trying to speak to the crowd.
Leroy Gillard appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, immediately before Jean Jacquelin, a twenty-eight-year-old white chauffeur arrested near the end of the disorder, at 5:40 AM, allegedly in possession of two ladies' coats, valued at $20 each, and two pairs of trousers, valued at $5 each, identified by Morris Sankin as also coming from his store. As Sankin had not returned to his store until 8:00 AM that morning, its contents would have been accessible through the broken window throughout the disorder. Jacquelin had been arrested away from the store, at the 8th Avenue end of West 128th Street, and like Gillard, lived on the same block as the store. A story in the Home News reported that the two men stole all $800 of clothing taken from Sankin's store rather than the items worth $100 allegedly found on them.
Gillard appeared in more newspapers than most of those arrested for looting. That is likely because police arrested him early in the disorder, so would have been able to provide his name to reporters for several hours. The New York Herald Tribune singled out Gillard as "the first arrest for alleged looting" during the disorder and described the arrest as taking place inside the store (and misspelled his last name as Gilliard as all the newspapers but the Home News did). As well as appearing in the Home News story, the list of those arrested and charged with burglary published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide and the list published by the New York Evening Journal, he was included in a list in an earlier edition of the New York Evening Journal (which mistakenly listed the charge against him as disorderly conduct), a list in the New York American, and a list in the Daily News (which mistakenly identified him as a white man in one edition).
The magistrate sent both Gillard and Jacquelin to the grand jury. On April 5, the grand jury determined that Gillard should only be charged with a misdemeanor, not felony burglary and sent him to the Court of Special Sessions. The grand jury disposed of Jacquelin's case in the same way. Those decisions indicated a lack of evidence that the men had broken into the store, a requirement for a charge of burglary. The charge voted by the grand jury was therefore likely larceny for taking the clothing; as those items were valued at less than $100, the men could only be charged with petit larceny. According to the 28th Precinct police blotter, on April 11 the judges dismissed the charges against Jacquelin. It took almost two more weeks before Gillard was tried, on April 23. The judges then convicted him and sentenced him to the Workhouse for three months.
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1
2021-05-24T21:29:44+00:00
Julian Rogers arrested
27
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2024-01-27T22:37:45+00:00
Around 11:20 PM, Patrolman Nador Herrman allegedly saw Julian Rogers, a thirty-seven-year-old Black auto washer, kick in a display window in William Gindin's shoe store at 333 Lenox Avenue. Rogers then took three odd women's shoes worth $1 each and put them under his jacket. Herrman arrested Rogers about 100 feet from the store, and recovered the shoes, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit. Gindin had closed his store around 9:45 PM. Around 10:30 PM, crowds gathered on Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street and began to smash store windows, and a group of men looted Towbin's haberdashery at Lenox Avenue and West 125th Street. By the time Rogers allegedly stole from Gindin's store, the other display window had already been smashed and "a large quantity of merchandise stolen," the patrolman told the probation officer investigating the case. Just over an hour later, another officer arrested John Kennedy Jones, alleging he had been part of a large group that threw objects that smashed more of the store windows. Gindin claimed $1,273.89 in damages, well above the median reported claim of $733, as part of a group of twenty white business owners who sued the city for failing to protect their stores identified by the New York Sun.
Rogers was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with burglary. Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury and set bail at $1,000. He appeared in the lists of those arrested published in Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. None of Rogers' other appearances in court were reported in the press. After being indicted by the grand jury on April 5, the district attorney's case file indicated that he agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny and appeared in the Court of General Sessions to do so on April 16. Returned to court for sentencing on April 25, Rogers received a suspended sentence from Judge Allen, recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter. A consideration in that decision may have been the probation officer's conclusion that there was "no evidence that [Rogers] was a member of any group which participated in the riot"; instead, "he was swayed by the behavior of the mob and that when he saw a general invasion of stores, he resorted to the same practice." Unusually, the Probation Department file indicated that Rogers was not placed on probation, as was generally the case for those given a suspended sentence.
The Probation Department's investigation gathered few details of Rogers' life. He did not provide the information they required for their analysis of his history and personality. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, around 1898, Rogers claimed no recollection of his parents as he had been raised by various relatives since he was infant; nor could he give the probation officer the name of the school he attended. When Rogers was sixteen years old, he left the uncle with whom he had been living, and traveled around the country. In 1917 he said he enlisted in the US Army, but was diagnosed with syphilis and discharged after six months. Around 1926, he arrived in New York City. During his nine years in the city, Rogers claimed to have lived in various furnished rooms and lodging houses, but gave no specific addresses. He likely spent at least some of the time homeless, as he was at the time of the disorder. For two months before his arrest, he slept in a garage at 332 East 122nd Street, without the owner being aware. For around a year, Rogers had worked roughly one day a week washing cars at the same garage.
Almost a year before the disorder, police arrested Rogers for failing to leave a street corner when directed to by an officer. Convicted in the Magistrates Court, he received a suspended sentence. The probation officer reported that Rogers spent considerable time on street corners, congregating with "neighborhood idlers," and "engag[ing] in petty gambling, with chance acquaintances."
The decision not to place Rogers on probation could have resulted from difficulty of supervising a man without a job, home, or family in the city. There was also a possibility that Rogers deliberately withheld information to keep the white authorities at arms length. The probation officer investigating him could not decide: "he is either unable or unwilling to give definite information concerning his antecedents, and the facts of his domestic life are unobtainable,...and his means of subsistence, for the most part, is open to question."
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1
2021-09-01T12:00:29+00:00
Elva Jacobs arrested
26
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2024-01-24T00:52:14+00:00
Sometime in the disorder, Officer L. W. Adamie of the 46th Precinct arrested Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, and charged her with burglary for allegedly having "broken a store window at 1 W. 137th St. and taken groceries," according to a story in the Home News. At a subsequent court appearance, the prosecutor reduced the charge against Jacobs to unlawful entry, an offense used when there was not evidence that she had taken any merchandise. However, that charge did not fit with the allegation that Jacobs had broken a window, as the charge in that circumstance would have been malicious mischief. Most likely, Adamie had allegedly seen or found her in the grocery store. Like almost all of those arrested for looting on the eastern boundary of Harlem north of 130th Street, Jacobs lived relatively near the store. Her home was at 56 West 142nd Street, between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenues, five blocks north of the store, which was just off 5th Avenue.
The only information on the circumstances of the arrest was the statement in the Home News, reporting Jacobs' arraignment in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. It is possible that Adamie arrested a second person for looting the store, and that Jacobs had been part of a larger group. Adamie was recorded in the docket book as the officer who arrested Courtney Marsh, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man who appeared in court immediately after Jacobs, facing the same charge of burglary. Like her, he lived north of the store, but further away, at 263 West 152nd Street. Based on other cases recorded in the docket book, the charge of burglary indicated that Marsh was also arrested for looting the grocery store, but he was not mentioned in the Home News story on the arraignments in the court, nor did he appear in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide in which Jacobs appeared (neither of them are in the list published in the New York Evening Journal). Given that absence, and without a complainant recorded in the docket book to confirm a link between the two, Marsh was not included among those arrested during the disorder.
Magistrate Ford remanded Jacobs in custody. When she returned to court the next day, Ford set her bail at $1,500 according to the docket book. Two days later, on March 23, Jacobs was back in court. This was likely when the charge against her was reduced from burglary to unlawful entry; in the docket book, the original charge is crossed out and "Red. to unl. entry" written in its place, in a different handwriting than the original charge. The same handwriting records that on this date Ford sent her to the Court of Special Sessions, which adjudicated misdemeanors such as unlawful entry, reducing her bail to $50. It took a month before Jacobs was tried in the that court. On May 3, the magistrates convicted her, suspended her sentence, and put her on probation, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records. (The prosecution of Marsh followed the same process until March 23, when Magistrate Ford discharged him rather than sending him for trial as he did Jacobs.) -
1
2021-04-19T19:49:20+00:00
Clifford Mitchell arrested
25
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2024-02-10T21:33:48+00:00
At 5:40 PM a day after the disorder, March 21, Detective Mark Redmond arrested Clifford Mitchell, a forty-six-year-old Black laborer, in 363 Lenox Avenue. He allegedly found "wearing apparel" worth "about $20" in Mitchell's possession, goods identified by Louis Levy as having been stolen from his dry goods store at 374 Lenox Avenue. There is no mention in the affidavit of why Redmond went to that address, or why Mitchell was there. Mitchell lived across the street, in an apartment in 362 Lenox Avenue, the building next to the one in which Levy's store was located. It would seem more likely that he was arrested at that address, rather than at 363 Lenox Ave, with the clerk mistakenly recording the building number. The other man charged with looting Levy's store, Daughty Shavos, was arrested at his home ten blocks to the south, at 40 West 119th Street around an hour later by another detective. There was also no mention of how police found him.
A note on the Magistrate's Court affidavit recorded the value of the goods found on the men as $50; the typewritten narrative on the form noted that the goods found on Mitchell were worth "around $20," so those found on Shavos would have been worth around $30.
Mitchell and Shavos are two of only nine men identified in the sources as having been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, a group making up one third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60).
Mitchell and Shavos were charged with burglary in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 22, the last individuals arrested during the disorder to be arraigned in that court. The magistrate sent both to the grand jury, which on April 4 dismissed the charges against Mitchell and sent Shavos to the Court of Special Sessions to be charged with a misdemeanor. That outcome indicated that the grand jury had declined to charge Shavos with burglary, a felony, likely because of a lack of evidence he had broken into the store. Given that goods had been found in his possession, the charge against him would have been petit larceny, a misdemeanor, as the goods allegedly found in his possession had a value less than $100. There is no evidence of the outcome of that prosecution. Shavos' criminal record included an arrest as a disorderly person in Jersey City in June 1932, with no recorded disposition, while Mitchell had no record. While his record could conceivably have influenced how Shavos was treated, it would not explain the charges against Mitchell being dismissed. That outcome likely indicated a problem linking the clothing allegedly found with Mitchell either to him or to Levy's store.
The only newspaper coverage of the looting are stories in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, Daily Mirror, and Daily News reporting Mitchell and Shavos' appearance in the Magistrates Court. The stories in the Home News and Daily Mirror identified Levy and the store; the other two stories simply noted that the men had been held for the grand jury. -
1
2021-08-18T21:11:39+00:00
James Hayes arrested
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2024-01-27T16:35:57+00:00
Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested James Hayes, a sixteen-year-old Black youth, for allegedly taking a baseball bat from the window of a store at 2334 8th Avenue, according to a report of his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News. The name of the store is provided by the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded the complainant against Hayes as Wilbur Montgomery, living at 951 Woodycrest Avenue. Montgomery is identified in the 1933 City Directory as the manager of Danbury Shoes. He is also the complainant against another man arrested by Detective Balkin, likely at the same time, David Terry. There are no details of the circumstances of Terry's arrest, but the charge against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, malicious mischief, was made against those arrested in the disorder who had allegedly broken windows. The nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, only a few buildings from Kress' store, saw some of the earliest crowds and violence of the disorder, and a concentration of police, who sought to clear West 125th Street by pushing people on to the avenue. Windows were also broken in stores either side of Danbury Shoes, the branch of the Liggett drug store chain on the corner of West 125th Street, and a seafood restaurant at 2338 8th Avenue.
James Hayes is named among those charged with burglary in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, where the charge was recorded as petit larceny, not burglary. That charge did not require evidence that Hayes had entered the store to take the bat, as a charge of burglary did. While the 28th Precinct police plotter, which misspelled his name as Hazel, included a note that he "Broke store window," the different charge in court indicates that that information had been reassessed by the time of his arraignment. The Home News story reporting the court proceeding mentioned only that "he is said to have stolen a baseball bat from a store window." Magistrate Renaud transferred Hayes to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on $500 bail. The 28th Precinct police blotter is the only source for the outcome of that proceeding: a conviction and suspended sentence on April 1.
The Home News story gave Hayes' age as seventeen years, while the blotter and the list in the New York Evening Journal gave his age as sixteen years (the list published in the Black newspapers did not include age or home address). The age in the Magistrates Court docket book is difficult to decipher, appearing to be "10," but is likely a hastily written "16." Hayes was one of the youngest arrested during the disorder, together with John Henry, also aged sixteen years. Hayes lived at 476 West 141st Street, on Black Harlem's northwest boundary, further from the location of his arrest than most of those caught in the disorder, who typically lived south of 125th Street or near Lenox Avenue south of 135th Street.
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1
2021-08-31T19:14:13+00:00
Albert Bass arrested
23
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2024-01-11T22:42:57+00:00
Some time during the disorder, Officer Ferry of the 28th Precinct arrested Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man. He likely made the arrest in the vicinity of Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue. Salvatore Marrone, with his address recorded as 2044 7th Avenue, was the complainant against Bass in the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book. The windows of the market were smashed during the disorder and merchandise taken. Channing Tobias, who lived in an apartment above the market, reported hearing both smashing glass and gunshots between midnight and 1:00 AM, sounds that indicated both attacks on the business and the presence of police. It was likely that Bass was arrested during that period, perhaps around 12:30 AM when Fred Campbell also saw stores being attacked and police trying to disperse crowds in this area.
Just what Bass allegedly did was uncertain. Both the list published in the New York Evening Journal and the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against him as burglary, with the blotter noting that he allegedly "In concert with others burglarized stores." However when Bass was arraigned in the Magistrate's Court he was charged with disorderly conduct. That charge suggested that police did not have evidence that he had broken windows, which would have seen him charged with malicious mischief, or that he had taken merchandise, which would have been the basis for the charge of burglary. Instead, the charge of disorderly conduct indicated that police had encountered Bass been on the street in the area of the looted store. That was not surprising as he lived only half a block west of the market, at 238 West 122nd Street. He likely had come to 7th Avenue to investigate the noise and disorder.
Magistrate Renaud held Bass in custody until March 26. When he returned, the magistrated convicted him and fined him $25 or, if he did not pay the fine, sentenced him to five days in the workhouse, according to the docket book. The docket book and the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded that he paid the fine of $25.
Bass was one of a small number of those listed as arrested in the New York Evening Journal not also present in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. The 28th Precinct police blotter misspelled his name as Boss; both the New York Evening Journal and the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book recorded his name as Bass. -
1
2021-04-27T19:22:05+00:00
Amie Taylor arrested
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2024-01-11T23:53:59+00:00
Officer Harmon of the 18th Division arrested Amie Taylor, a twenty-one-year-old Black butcher, near Mario Pravia's candy store at 1953 7th Avenue around 11:30 PM. Harmon and at least one other police officer, Detective Harry Wolf of the 28th Precinct, reported seeing Taylor throw a stone at the store window and take merchandise from the window display. Wolf appeared as a witness on the Magistrates Court affidavit and an arresting officer with Harmon on Taylor's criminal record. Taylor was also not alone. "About 5 others" threw stones at the store and took merchandise at the same time, while Pravia and his wife watched from inside, but police managed to arrest only Taylor. Harmon allegedly found eighteen packets of chewing gum, valued at three cents each, in his possession. The Home News reported that a total of $200 of merchandise was taken from the store.
The New York Evening Journal identified a different officer as making the arrest, Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan, in a vignette within the paper’s narrative of the disorder:
No other sources support that account. The story's framing of the incident in relation to the force used by police did direct attention to the unremarked upon means by which police made arrests. The New York Evening Journal was one of several white newspapers that claimed that police showed restraint in responding to the disorder, and did not shoot at crowds until the after midnight, when looting became widespread. If police drew their revolvers but did not fire them in this "terrific battle," they likely used the gun butts as clubs, as they are in several photographs taken during the disorder.Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan, in charge of all Manhattan detectives, figured in another incident in which police were forced to draw their revolvers, although no shot was fired. While speeding to the trouble zone, Ryan saw a group of men looting a store at 1952 Seventh ave. The detective chief, with his chauffeur, swung into action and attempted to round up the thieves. there was a terrific battle, but Ryan emerged from it with Amie Taylor, 21, as his prisoner.
Crowds had moved down 7th Avenue from West 125th Street around 10 PM. This event was the first this far south on the avenue. Taylor may have come from the opposite direction. He lived south of the store, at 1800 7th Avenue, next to Central Park, in an area home to Black, white, and Spanish speaking residents. Taylor's first name caused confusion about his identity. In the 28th Precinct police blotter, the name is "Annie," and he is identified as female, information likely responsible for Annie also being used in the list of those arrested in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal. While the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book identifies Taylor as male, the clerk recorded the name as Annie on his examination, and on the back of the Magistrates Court affidavit, where it is struck out and Amie written underneath.
When Taylor appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with burglary, Magistrate Renaud remanded him to appear again on March 22. Reporters from the Home News, New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker were in court when Taylor appeared again; the Daily Worker somehow misreported his name as Annie. Renaud sent Taylor to the grand jury, who on April 3 transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, which as it adjudicated misdemeanors, means they must have reduced the charge from burglary to an offense such as unlawful entry or petit larceny. Two weeks later, on April 17, the judges acquitted Taylor, according to the police blotter. Given the low value of what Taylor allegedly stole — a total of 54c — it would not have been surprising to see him receive a minor punishment; but to acquit him the judges would have had to find fault with the evidence against him provided by Officer Harmon and Detective Wolf. The sources are silent on what alternative account of events Taylor offered, but others arrested in the disorder claimed to have been bystanders mistakenly grabbed by police trying to pick offenders out of crowds. It could also be that prosecutors could not prove that the chewing gum found on Taylor had been taken from the store; it was a common enough item, in a large but not inexplicable quantity, that he could have obtained it legitimately elsewhere. -
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2021-08-22T20:58:43+00:00
Thomas Babbitt arrested
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2024-02-02T22:49:58+00:00
Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested Thomas Babbitt, a forty-two-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking two cases of soap from the window of the Thomas Cut Rate Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, on the northeast corner of West 127th Street. Babbitt is not alleged to have smashed the window. A Home News report of his appearance in the Magistrates Court described Babbitt as having "stolen two cases of soap from a drug store window"; the 28th Precinct police blotter focused on the means he allegedly used, that he "Put hand though Window. Stole merchandise." Balkin also appears in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book as the officer who arrested James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store two blocks to the south, near 125th Street, some time during the disorder. Babbitt lived at 321 West 136th Street, a block west of 8th Avenue, so may have been drawn to the noise and crowds on the avenue in the early evening of March 19. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues.
Babbitt is among those listed as being charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny, not burglary. That change was likely made because of a lack of evidence he had broken into the store and entered it to steal merchandise, and because the allegedly stolen merchandise had a value of less than $100, the requirement for a felony grand larceny charge. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, holding him on bail of $500. His trial and conviction occurred sooner than was the case with most of those arrested in the disorder sent to that court. On March 22, Babbitt was sentenced to ten days in the Workhouse, an outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter.
The man arrested during the disorder may be the Thomas Babbitt, who a census enumerator found at 108 West 133rd Street on April 8, 1940. That man was the same age, and had been in Harlem in 1935. Born in Massachusetts, he was working on a farm in Williamsburg, South Carolina in 1917 when he registered for the draft. After serving in France in World War One, he was transported back to Hoboken, New Jersey in 1919, after which he appears to have made his home in New York City. In 1940, he listed his occupation as a junk dealer. -
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2021-12-12T03:19:41+00:00
David Terry arrested
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2024-02-13T19:07:03+00:00
Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested David Terry, a twenty-four-year-old homeless Black man. Wilbur Montgomery, living at 951 Woodycrest Avenue, recorded as the complainant against Terry in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, was identified in the 1933 City Directory as the manager of Danbury Hats, at 2334 8th Avenue. The nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, only a few buildings from Kress' store, saw some of the earliest crowds and violence of the disorder, and a concentration of police, who sought to clear West 125th Street by pushing people on to the avenue. Windows were also broken in stores on either side of Danbury Hats, the branch of the Liggett drug store chain on the corner of West 125th Street, and a seafood restaurant at 2338 8th Avenue. Montgomery was also the complainant against another man arrested by Detective Balkin, likely at the same time, James Hayes.
There were no details of the circumstances of Terry's arrest, but the charge against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, malicious mischief, was made against those arrested in the disorder who had allegedly broken windows. Hayes had allegedly taken a baseball bat from the hat store, according to a story about his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News, which gave only the address of the store. Police appeared to have initially charged Hayes with breaking a window as well as taking the bat. He appeared in the 28th Precinct police blotter, his name misrecorded as Hazel, with the note "Broke store window, burglarized store." In line with that entry, Hayes was among those charged with burglary in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hayes appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge was recorded as petit larceny, not burglary. That charge did not require evidence of breaking in and entering a store as burglary did, indicating a reassessment of the information in the blotter by the time of his arraignment. Given that the arrests came in response to attempts to take merchandise, they likely occurred after 11:00 PM, when businesses in the area had already been damaged, when incidents of looting became more frequent
Instead, it appeared that it was Terry who police alleged had broken the hat store windows, as he was charged in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud held Terry in custody so his case could be investigated. When he was returned to court on March 26, the charge against him was reduced to disorderly conduct, the previous charge crossed out in the docket book, "Red. to" written above it, and the new charge stamped in its place. That change likely indicates a lack of evidence that Terry had broken windows. Instead, he would have been among those on the street around the store when the window was broken. Police may have mistaken him for the person who broke the window or have arrested him to get him off the street as part of their efforts to restore order. It was that reduced charge of disorderly conduct that appeared as the charge against Terry in lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. A different charge recorded against him in the 28th Precinct police blotter, inciting a riot, appeared to have frequently been used by police as the initial charge against those arrested during the disorder, and was often replaced by other charges in the Magistrates Court. Disorderly conduct was a charge that magistrates had the power to adjudicate. Magistrate Ford convicted Terry and fined him $500 or five days in the Workhouse. Terry served the time in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter.
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2021-08-31T16:32:04+00:00
Oscar Austin arrested
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2024-01-28T21:49:00+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, an officer from the 28th Precinct arrested Oscar Austin, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man (the clerk's handwriting in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book is too messy to decipher the officer's name). The arrest likely occurred near the Romanoff Drug Store at 375 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of West 129th Street. J. Romanoff of 375 Lenox Avenue was recorded as the complainant when Austin was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court.
Just what Austin allegedly did is uncertain. He appeared among those listed as being arrested for burglary, the charge used in cases of alleged looting, in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against him as attempted burglary, suggesting that he was not arrested with any merchandise in his possession. In the Magistrate's Court, Austin was charged with disorderly conduct. Such a change suggests that police did not have evidence that he had either broken windows or taken any merchandise. Instead, a charge of disorderly conduct suggested he had been in the crowds around the store when it was looted and clashed in some way with police. However, Magistrate Renaud acquitted Austin, an outcome also recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter. Renaud's verdict indicated Austin was a spectator, perhaps arrested as part of police efforts to disperse crowds on the street. The Romanoff Drug store was located in the midst of the area of Lenox Avenue that saw multiple arrests and reports of looting and violence, likely after midnight, noise and disorder that could have drawn Austin to the street. He lived relatively close to the store, at 204 West 128th Street, just west of 7th Avenue.
J. Romanoff was also the complainant in the cases of two twenty-four-year-old Black men, Jacob Bonaparte and Sam Nicholas arrested by the same police officer, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. Their prosecution followed the same pattern as that of Austin, ending in acquittal. Bonaparte lived even closer to the store than Austin, at 123 West 128th Street, midway down the block between Lenox and 7th Avenues, while Nicholas lived further away, on West 124th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. -
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2021-08-20T19:16:43+00:00
Lamter Jackson arrested
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2024-02-12T20:11:59+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Officer Jackson of the 32nd Precinct arrested Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a rock that shattered the window of a store selling unclaimed laundry at 1 West 131st Street and then taking a bag of laundry from the store. The only source of details of the event was the report of Jackson's appearance in the Magistrates' Court published by the Home News. Officer Jackson was identified as the arresting officer in Magistrates Court docket book. Lamter Jackson lived at 78 West 135th Street. There were multiple lootings and assaults on the stretch of Lenox Avenue between his home and the laundry store, noise and crowds which could have brought Jackson on to the streets. Several other men arrested in this area — Lawrence Humphrey, Carl Jones, Raymond Taylor, and Preston White, likewise lived in the blocks of 135th–132nd Streets between Lenox and 5th Avenues.
Jackson was listed among those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. Both those lists flip his name, identifying him as Jackson Lamter; the Home News and the docket book recorded him as Lamter Jackson. He appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny, not burglary. That charge did not require the evidence of breaking in and entering a store to take merchandise that burglary did. Magistrate Ford sent Jackson to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on $100 bail. For some reason, just over two months passed before Jackson's trial took place. On May 27, the magistrates convicted him and sent him to the Workhouse for thirty days, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records. -
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2021-09-06T19:34:21+00:00
Herbert Hunter arrested
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2024-02-13T19:46:16+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Detective Phillips of the 28th Precinct arrested Herbert Hunter, an eighteen-year-old Black resident of 56 West 126th Street. At the same time Phillips arrested Elizabeth Tai and Arthur Davis for taking groceries from a store at 340 Lenox Avenue, according to a story in the Home News. However, that story did not directly state that Hunter was charged with looting the same store, so that was not identified here as the location he alleged looted. The arrests likely occurred around 12:30 AM. Hunter was not included in the lists of those arrested published in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, and Norfolk Journal and Guide and in the New York Evening Journal. It is not clear why he was omitted.
The 28th Precinct police blotter also recorded the charge against Hunter as burglary, with the note "Burglarised store during riot." The Daily Worker more precisely described his alleged offense as "stealing groceries." Hunter did not appear in the lists of those arrested published in the press.
Hunter was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with Elizabeth Tai and Arthur Davis, all charged with burglary. Magistrate Renaud remanded all three to appear again in court (he sent two others arrested by Phillips who appeared at the same time charged with malicious mischief, Charles Wright and William Norris, to the Court of Special Sessions). The docket book recorded only Phillips' name and precinct; the story in the Daily Worker identified him as a detective.
When Hunter appeared in court again, on March 22, the docket book recorded no change in the charge against him, but a story in the Home News reported that "the Court" had reduced the charge from burglary to disorderly conduct, as happened to both Tai and Davis. In Tai's case, the docket book did record that the charge had been reduced to disorderly conduct. Had the police presented evidence Hunter had stolen merchandise, he would have been charged with either burglary or larceny; had they presented evidence that he had broken windows, the charge would have been malicious mischief. The charge of disorderly conduct suggested that he may only have been part of a crowd near the store. Magistrate Renaud found Hunter guilty, an outcome reported in the stories in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal as well as the Home News and Daily Worker. He also found Tai and Davis guilty.
Renaud sentenced Hunter to serve ten days in the Workhouse, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, 28th Precinct police blotter and stories in the Home News, Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. Renaud gave Tai and Davis a lesser sentence, a fine of $25 or five days in the Workhouse. Unable to pay the fine, according to a story in the Home News, both were sent to the Workhouse. -
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2022-11-14T00:27:47+00:00
Arrested for looting & Charged with burglary (38)
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2024-02-24T14:32:15+00:00
"§ 404. Burglary in third degree. A person who
- With intent to commit a crime therein, breaks and enters a building, or a room, or any part of a building; or,
- Being in any building, commits a crime therein and breaks out of the same,
This page references:
- 1 2021-09-19T23:29:30+00:00 Consolidated Laws of the State of New York, Vol. 4. Penal law to real property law. Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1909. 10 plain 2024-02-24T14:43:35+00:00
- 1 2021-09-20T01:52:11+00:00 Laws of New York, 1926 (New York - 149th Legislature), 758-759. 3 plain 2024-02-24T14:53:08+00:00