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

Detective Charles Foley assaulted

Detective Charles Foley, a thirty-two-year-old white resident of Jackson Heights in Queens, was hit on the left shoulder by a stone, possibly suffering a fracture, shortly after 7 PM, at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street. He was the third officer injured in the disorder, and one of six attacked during the efforts of police to control the crowds around 125th Street prior to 10PM. Like all those officers he was stationed in the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street. The second officer assaulted, Patrolman Michael Kelly, had also been hit by an object behind Kress’ store, where police had followed a crowd drawn to 124th Street by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store.

Like most (6/9) of the officers assaulted, Foley was hit by a missile. However, the clash in which the assault occurred was the only time police and crowds clashed off a major thoroughfare, on a narrower cross street that exposed officers to objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level. So while in other cases there is some possibility police could have been hit by objects thrown at store windows they guarded, Foley was almost certainly the target of the object that injured him.

According to the hospital record of the ambulance call-out, Foley had an injured shoulder. Five newspapers listed this injury (Home News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times). Three other papers listed instead a head injury (New York American (March 20 & 21), Daily Mirror, New York Post), the most common injury resulting from being hit by objects. According to the New York Times, Foley refused medical attention. Given that an ambulance attended him that claim is likely a misstatement of the fact that he was not taken back to Harlem Hospital, but treated at the scene.

No one was arrested for assaulting Foley, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.

 

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