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• 1 2022-04-09T20:48:27+00:00 James Tartar's investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs 62 plain 2024-02-02T22:39:13+00:00 On April 1, Hays wrote to the MCCH's secretary, Eunice Carter, telling her to have the Hobbs family attend the next hearing, on April 6, and to "have our investigators find out all they can about [the Hobbs case]." Carter assigned the investigation to James Tartar, one of the staff who had sought witnesses to the causes of the disorder the previous week. The thirty-year-old Black former shipping clerk was an investigator for the Department of Public Welfare who lived on the western boundary of Harlem, at 448 West 151st Street. Born in Tennessee, he had lived in North Carolina at the time of the 1920 census, moving later to Ohio, where he worked as a secretary and married in 1924. The family was living in New York City by 1926, and at 759 St. Nicholas Avenue in 1930. As a Black Harlem resident, Tartar reinforced the Black presence on the MCCH and would have received a less hostile reception from residents than the white police detective investigating the shooting. At the same time, his occupation put him among the upper ranks of the Black population, different from most of the witnesses he interviewed.
  
  The records of Tartar's investigation should have been in the files of the MCCH in the records of Mayor La Guardia, but were retained by Arthur Garfield Hays, for whose subcommittee he investigated the shooting, and E. Franklin Frazier, who led the MCCH's research. Several reports by Tartar from his early investigations are filed in the Hays Papers. A narrative summary of his investigation and the case are in the Frazier Papers. Tartar also testified in the MCCH hearing on April 7 about his investigation up to that point. He mentioned details of the investigation in correspondence with Frazier after the MCCH investigation was completed.
  
  In the week leading up to the MCCH hearing on April 7, Tartar interviewed the Hobbs family "as the first source." He recorded statements by Russell and his mother. Notes from undated conversations appear in another document, describing Lloyd's funeral, their belief that Lloyd would not have committed a burglary, and the information Lawyer Hobbs had received from Howard Mallloy and Arthur Moore about what they had witnessed. The funeral took place on April 2; those conversations took place after that date. Tartar was also assigned to do a "Social and Economical History of the Hobbs Family," submitting a page and a half summarizing the family's origins in Virginia and life in New York City.
  
  Tartar contacted the two eyewitnesses identified to him by Lloyd's father, Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore. He met with the men at 213 West 128th Street, the apartment building in which they both lived, and recorded "their story." That document is dated April 5, but Tartar's signature is dated April 4. Both dates provided sufficient time for the MCCH staff to organize the men's presence at the hearing on April 7.
  
  A second strand of the investigation included Tartar gathering information from a variety of law enforcement sources. His records include notes on a series of interviews conducted on April 2. He spoke with ADA Saul Price, who told him he "that the officer had not been exonerated, due to the fact that he was waiting to hear the story from the Hobbs family, particularly Russell Hobbs." An interview with the police department's ballistic expert produced no information as he had not received the bullet that hit Lloyd. Tartar's visit to Harlem Hospital was more successful, as Dr. Steinholz shared the boy's chart, which the investigator copied. Sometime during the week he also visited the 28th Precinct, and recorded the contents of the police blotter, where officers recorded a summary of an arrest. Lieutenant Greenberg read him that material as at that time there was no definite understanding between the Commission and the police department with regards to taking transcripts of confidential police records, he later informed Frazier. That information appears in the records in the Hays Papers; however, there was no record of the interview with Inspector Di Martini that he mentioned in his testimony to the MCCH hearing on April 7. At that time he made a copy of a report by the commander of the 28th Precinct, Captain George Mulholland, "The shooting of prisoner by Patrolman," submitted to Commissioner Valentine on March 30, immediately after the death of Lloyd Hobbs. Tartar's notes did mention the report as being incorporated in his records but it was not in the files in the Hays Papers (a transcription appeared in the transcript of the MCCH hearing on April 20). Tartar was among those who testified at the MCCH's April 6 public hearing, recounting his interview with ADA Price and introducing a copy of the report from the 28th Precinct to Commissioner Valentine so Hays could have details in it contradicted by Russell Hobbs and the three eyewitnesses, Malloy, Moore, and Samuel Pitts.
  
  Hays announced plans to continue hearing evidence about the killing of Lloyd Hobbs at his subcommittee's next public hearing, in two weeks. However, those plans were overtaken by grand jury hearing on April 10, which led Hays to focus on having witnesses who appeared before the grand jury testify in a public hearing. The only further investigation Tartar did before the April 20 hearing was to interview the owners of the businesses on the same block as the automobile supply store, and draw a sketch of the storefronts on the block, to obtain information on when their windows were broken and what losses they suffered. Both those documents are dated April 20, the day of the MCCH hearing. The information they contained provided some support for testimony that the automobile supply store's windows were broken before Hobbs arrived, by Malloy and Moore on April 20 (and by another eyewitness, Marshall Pfifer, on May 18).
  
  After the hearing on April 20, Tartar made further attempts to identify eyewitnesses and "to get information concerning the whereabouts of the stolen items." An interview with ADA Price confirmed that McInerney brought the horn and socket set to the DA's office on April 1st, while a visit to the property clerk's office at police headquarters revealed that those items were not delivered there until April 8, 1935. That meant that the patrolman had those items in his possession for nineteen days after the shooting. There are no records of those investigations in Hays' files; Tartar mentioned them in his narrative summary. Hays relied on Tartar's investigation when he questioned Detective O'Brien about where the horn and socket set had been when the officer produced them at the MCCH public hearing on May 18.
  
  Three additional eyewitnesses also testified in the MCCH hearing on May 18. Tartar reported that they had been found as a result of a survey of the neighborhood, implying that he had found them. However, at the hearing, Clarence Wilson testified that he had obtained the addresses of two witnesses from Lawyer Hobbs at the request of a member of the MCCH. One did not respond when called on, but Wilson encountered another man who was an eyewitness, Marshall Pfifer, when looking for John Bennett, the second witness. Bennett was too sick to attend the hearing, so Wilson recounted what he had seen. Warren Wright, the third man, provided no details of how he had been found.
  
  The evidence heard at the May 18 hearing was presented to the grand jury on June 10. Tartar claimed a prominent role in ADA Saul Price's decision to re-examine the case in the narrative of his investigation. After being notified by inspector Di Martini that he was resubmitting the case to the district attorney, Tartar attended the conference in the district attorney's office about the case and and by his own account, "after much argument," "convinced the District Attorney that the new witnesses would testify to new facts and that they should be heard." Tartar also accompanied Detective O'Brien to serve subpoenas on the four witnesses whose testimony was heard on May 18, an arrangement set up by Hays. After hearing from Bennett, Hughes, Pfifer, and Wright, Price agreed to take the case to the grand jury again. Tartar himself also testified in the grand jury hearing. He told the grand jury that McInerney had not handed in the allegedly stolen items until April 8 and that police records indicated that "no loot had been found on the person of Lloyd Hobbs." Tartar clearly spoke to journalists from the New York Age and the Afro-American about his testimony, as it featured in the stories that those Black newspapers published about the grand jury decision.
  
  Tartar recounted that he urged Inspector Di Martini to hold such an investigation after the grand jury decision. In fact, such a hearing had already been planned, in the aftermath of the decision of the first grand jury. Tartar, with E. Franklin Frazier, attended the hearing when it took place, on June 14. The account in his narrative summary was the only source of information on the hearing, which went unreported in the press.
• 1 2023-06-14T14:48:34+00:00 Patrolman John McInerney in the grand jury (June 10) 43 plain 2024-01-26T23:24:41+00:00 Just over a week after the last public hearing of the MCCH's Subcommittee on Crime, on May 22, their investigator, James Tartar, was notified that Inspector Di Martini planned to resubmit the case to the district attorney for consideration for presentation to the grand jury. He attended the subsequent conference, and by his own account, "after much argument," "convinced the District Attorney that the new witnesses would testify to new facts and that they should be heard." Tartar also accompanied Detective O'Brien to serve subpoenas on the four witnesses whose testimony was heard on May 18, an indication that the new legal proceeding was instigated by the MCCH. On March 28, ADA Saul Price heard testimony from Marshall Pfifer, Joseph Hughes, Warren Wright, and John Bennett, the latter evidently recovered from the illness that kept him from the MCCH hearing. There were no records of Bennett's testimony. Price then decided to resubmit the case to the grand jury.
  
  The New York Amsterdam News reported the pending hearing in its June 7 edition, information that likely came from someone in the MCCH. The story attributed the resubmission of the case to testimony at the May 18 hearing and listed four "facts brought out by the Commission" that it evidently understood as the arguments that would be made in the hearing:

  (1) That McInerney did not list any stolen articles when he made a record of the youth's arrest at the 123d street station following the shooting
  (2) That a number of objects, allegedly stolen, were shown to the Grand Jury on April 4, although police officers were unable to account for their presence during the March 19 and April 4 period.
  (3) That tests, made at the suggestion of Attorney Arthur Garfield Hays of the Mayor's Commission, failed to show Hobbs' fingerprints on the stolen articles
  (4) That Detective John J. O'Brien, assigned to investigate the shooting, made no attempt to look into the boy's background, but concentrated his efforts on proving Lloyd Hobbs a thief. He did not call on the boy's family until after Lloyd's death on Harlem Hospital on March 30.

  In addition to the four new eyewitnesses, Russell Hobbs and his parents, Patrolman Watterson, and Detective O'Brien again testified. Patrolman McInerney too again sought to appear, resulting in the hearing being postponed from June 7 until June 10 as he was on vacation. The witnesses "testified to practically the same as they had before," according to James Tartar. The MCCH investigator himself also testified. He told the grand jury that McInerney had not handed in the allegedly stolen items until April 8 and that police records indicated that "no loot had been found on the person of Lloyd Hobbs." The latter statement had been contradicted on May 18 by O'Brien's claim that the horn and socket set were listed in the arrest record, and likely was again on June 10. Arthur Garfield Hays "took an active part" in the hearing, according to the New York Age, although on what basis he could have done so is not clear. Again, the grand jury decided it did not need to hear from McInerney, although on this occasion they "deliberated for fully thirty minutes," Tartar reported. And again, they dismissed the case against the patrolman.
  
  Tartar clearly spoke to journalists from the the New York Age and the Afro-American about his testimony, as it featured in the stories that those Black newspapers published about the grand jury decision. (Despite reporting the pending hearing, the New York Amsterdam News did not publish a story about its outcome.) What "registered with the grand jury," according to the Afro-American, was "the officer's claim and the evidence of the loot." While Black journalists expressed frustration with the decision — the headline in the New York Age read, "Grand Jury Refuses to Indict Policeman Who Fatally Shot Youth in Riot," while the Afro-American's headline read "2 Grand Juries Won't Indict Cop Who Killed Boy" — it went unreported in the white press.
  
  With the end of the legal proceedings, the only remaining means of holding McInerney accountable was a police department hearing. Tartar reported that he urged Inspector Di Martini to hold such an investigation after the grand jury decision. In fact, such a hearing had already been planned, in the aftermath of the decision of the first grand jury. Hays had asked Commissioner Valentine that the police department "make an investigation," to which he had responded that the case would be "thoroughly investigated and appropriate action taken." Hays had written in the Report of the Subcommittee on May 29, before the second grand jury, that a hearing was pending. It appeared to have been delayed because the officer assigned to conduct it, Deputy Inspector McGrath, was away from the city until May 23, according to a phone message left for Arthur Garfield Hays on May 17. Tartar was likely responsible for Black journalists reporting that a police hearing was a possibility rather than pending. McInerney "may still, however, face departmental action," the New York Age reported. The Afro-American reporter was both more explicit that a "police department trial was being pushed" rather than being considered at the initiative of the police department, and dismissive of its value: "this gives no hopes to Mr and Mrs Lawyer Hobbs...that the case will pass the investigating stages."