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Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson arrested
Although all the press accounts of the incident report that the four men shot at police, there is some doubt about the incident as no guns were found on them when they were arrested. Charged only with disorderly conduct, the three arrested men were tried and acquitted in the Magistrates Court – hardly lending credence to their involvement in shooting at police.
The press reports contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the WT reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the WT and BDE did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the HN, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions, explaining both the charges brought against them and their acquittal, and giving it some more credibility than other accounts.
Alston’s fall attracted more attention than the shooting. Again the HN offers the most detail, noting that the leap that Alston had attempted was a distance of seven feet (the NYP said 6 feet), and that after he landed on the ledge he managed to crawl through the window into an apartment and hid under a bed. His escape bid failed as the occupants of the apartment called police. The HN report also makes clear that Alston did not appear seriously injured at the time of his arrest, making sense of the photographs of him being led away by police. It was at the 135th police station that he collapsed and was found to have a fractured skull, the serious injury noted in less detailed stories and in lists of the injured. (the NYJ the only other to report these details, although it mistakenly reported that the group arrested numbered three not four. The NYP did report that Alston hid under a bed.)
The NYDN photo does appear to show Alston holding his head. The caption published with the photo drew attention to the “clubbed gun” held by the uniformed officer leading Alston a patrol wagon (does this imply the belief that the officer had hit Alston with the gun butt?). It concludes starkly, “He’s dying.”
The photo credited to the International Photo agency, perhaps taken with the camera visible in the foreground of the NYDN photo a few seconds earlier, also clearly shows Alston clutching his head, with marks on his trousers and jacket that may be evidence of his fall. The officer’s clubbed gun is also again visible, together with the night stick of his partner.
Visible to the right of this group are three black men obscured in the NYDN photo, which shows only white men. Given the location of this arrest in the heart of Harlem, at 5AM, the only whites likely to be present would be police detectives in plainclothes and reporters. The photographs are some of the few taken beyond the area around 125th Street. By the time of Alston’s arrest the disorder was over, allowing white pressmen to travel more freely in Harlem than they had earlier, when crowds had attacked them.
The captions accompanying the published cropped versions of the photo in the NJG and WT misidentify Alston as a suspected looter.
The Am, AW, HT, NYJ and NYP include Alston in their lists of the injured, describing the nature of his injuries with no reference to the circumstances in which he suffered them.