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• 1 2023-06-14T14:48:34+00:00 Patrolman John McInerney in the grand jury (June 10) 42 plain 2023-12-16T20:09:38+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."