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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 officer from the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, was "struck by a stone thrown by some unknown person while at scene of riot in rear of Kress’ Store" on 124th Street, according to the Medical Attendance record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr. Sayet of Harlem Hospital treated Foley in front of Blumstein's department store, on 125th Street, at 7:30 PM, so the assault likely took place around 7:15 PM. Around the same time, a second officer, Patrolman Michael Kelly, was hit by an object at the rear of the store, where police had followed a crowd drawn to 124th Street around 7:00 PM by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed. Foley was one of the officers listed in a story in the New York Times as injured after "a barrage of missiles fell on the ranks of the police who had caught up with the crowd" after it moved from the front of the store. The street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level.

The Medical Attendance record described Foley's injury as a "possible fracture of left shoulder." Lists in the Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times identified him as having a shoulder injury. Three other papers, the New York American on March 20 and 21, the Daily Mirror, and the New York Post, instead listed a head injury, 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, as Kelly was, 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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