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James Tartar, "Investigator's Interview of Mrs Sarah Rhue," April 20, 1935, "Thompson Case," Subject Files, Box 167, Folder 5 (Roll 76), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
1 2023-06-22T02:16:01+00:00 Anonymous 1 3 plain 2023-10-26T16:03:11+00:00 AnonymousThis page has tags:
- 1 2023-07-05T20:55:35+00:00 Anonymous Investigations of the events of the disorder Anonymous 34 plain 2024-01-27T03:28:43+00:00 Anonymous
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2020-02-25T17:59:47+00:00
James Thompson killed & Detective Nicholas Campo shot
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2023-12-08T04:20:15+00:00
Around 5:30 AM James Thompson, a nineteen-year old Black man, was shot and killed by Detectives Nicholas Campo and Theodore Beckler.
The officers claimed that while driving on 8th Avenue they heard breaking glass in a damaged grocery store at 2364 8th Avenue near the southeast corner of West 127th Street. Police crime scene photographs of the store taken later showed that there were several large holes in the windows and no merchandise left in their displays. However, like many other businesses, the shelves inside the store were untouched. To get inside, Thompson smashed the glass in one of the entrance doors, making the noise that the detectives heard. Investigating, they entered the store, a branch of the A & P chain. Press reports offered a variety of different accounts of what happened next. The New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post reported a gun battle between the officers and Thompson, during which he was shot in the chest and Detective Campo in the hand. The New York Evening Journal sensationally reported an even larger gunfight in which "other rioters" returned the officer's shots. The New York World-Telegram reported a struggle between Thompson and Campo during which Thompson was shot; the officer then dropped his gun, causing it to go off and a bullet to hit his fingers. The New York Amsterdam News reported, several days later, that the officer’s gun went off accidentally, hitting Thompson.
The arrest report and police blotter made no mention of Thompson having a gun or struggling with the officers. Instead, as Campo and Beckler moved through the store, Thompson burst out of the rear storeroom and ran for entrance. He collided with Campo, causing the detective’s pistol to fire and the bullet to hit two fingers on his left hand. When Thompson got out on to the street, he ran across 8th Avenue toward his home at 301 West 127th Street. As the two detectives followed, they both shot at him; Campo fired twice, Beckler five times. Only one of those bullets hit Thompson, but it struck him in the chest, perforating his liver. One of the other shots hit Stanley Dondoro, a white man walking along the west side of 8th Avenue, in his left leg. A resident of Hoboken, New Jersey, Dondoro was likely on his way to work in one of Harlem’s businesses. The Home News and New York Post added the detail that a third bullet had passed through the trousers of a man with Dondoro without injuring him. Campo and Beckler caught up with Thompson in front of the building where he lived and arrested him. A note at the end of the hospital admission records indicated that Thompson died at Harlem Hospital at 9:30 AM, four hours after the shooting, a time of death that led to him being listed as the only fatality of the disorder in newspapers published on March 20. Campo appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American.
Police investigated the shooting after the disorder, according to the records gathered by the MCCH. A police blotter record of Captain Mulholland’s investigation identified the detectives as responsible for shooting Dondoro, specifying that Campo had shot twice at Thompson and his partner Detective Beckler had shot three times, as well as twice in the air, a warning to stop that was a common police practice. One of the bullets struck Thompson in the chest, killing him. The blotter also recorded Captain Mulholland’s conclusion that Campo sustained his injury “in proper performance of police duty and no negligence on the part of the aforesaid detective contributed thereto." Campo and Becker also appear not to have been disciplined or charged for killing Thompson. Asked in reference to the killing of Thompson and other Black men killed during the disorder in a hearing of the MCCH, “Has anyone been arrested, charged with using deadly weapons with which these men were killed?", Captain Rothengast replied, "Some of the detectives were exonerated."
Although the New York World-Telegram story reported Thompson as saying at the hospital that “he was hungry," “that others were stealing, anyway,” and that he was “long out of work,” there was no record of an admission in the report of the police investigation. James Tartar, an investigator for the MCCH, did interview Thompson’s aunt, Sarah Rhue, on April 20. She reported hearing from Thompson’s landlady that he had brought home canned goods during the disorder, with the implication that he had been looting prior to the shooting. However, she also reported that he worked at a barber’s shop, contradicting the statement that he was out of work in the admission reported in the New York World-Telegram.
The police records and newspaper for some reason all mistakenly identified the address of the grocery store as 2365 8th Avenue. However, a large bank building was at that address with no other businesses. The A & P grocery store was included in the MCCH business survey at 2364 8th Avenue and was visible in the Tax Department photograph of that address taken between 1939 and 1941. In addition, the NYPD crime scene photograph, taken soon enough after the shooting to show the damage to the store and debris still on the street, showed a distinctive raised stoop entrance to the upstairs apartments that was also visible in the Tax Department photograph of 2364 8th Avenue. -
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2023-06-24T20:59:42+00:00
Preparation for the public hearing on April 20
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No secretary's report by Eunice Carter providing an overview of the work of the MCCH staff was found for any week after March 30-April 5. The investigative work being done has to be reconstructed from correspondence in the records of Mayor La Guardia and the Hays Papers, and from reports by James Tartar, the lead investigator for the subcommittee, which are also spread across those two collections.
Roberts announced April 20 as the date of the hearing at the MCCH meeting on April 12. The sources contained no mention of why the interval before the next hearing was two weeks rather than one week as had been the case with the previous hearing. Hays was absent from both the April 12 meeting and the April 19 meeting, so may have been out of town or otherwise committed on April 13.
After learning that the killing of Lloyd Hobbs had been presented to the grand jury on April 10, and dismissed, Hays exchanged letters with District Attorney Dodge about what evidence had been presented. The three eyewitnesses who had testified in the hearing on April 6 had clearly persuaded Hays that the shooting was not justified, as he committed to having the police witnesses testify in a public hearing now that the legal proceeding over and Dodge's instructions about what police officers could say in a public hearing did not prevent that testimony.
McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, and the detective who investigated the shooting, John O'Brien, both appear on a list of eleven police officers in the Hays Papers. That list appears to be officers from which the MCCH wanted to hear testimony and was likely prepared before the April 20 hearing. Tick marks appear next to the four officers who appeared in that hearing, Watterson and O'Brien, Detective McCormick, the stenographer who recorded a statement by Lloyd Hobbs at Harlem Hospital, and Patrolman Kaminsky, who testified about the death of August Miller. Two officers on the list had already appeared at a public hearing: Patrolman Donahue, who had released Lino Rivera, and Patrolman Eppler, who had arrested Frank Wells, but had been unable to testify about that case. The other police officers on the list did not testify in a public hearing. Patrolman Murphy was identified as a witness in the death of Andrew Lyons, and Patrolman MacKenzie, as a witness in the cases of Cornelius, Ford, and Jones. Detective Johnson was the officer who arrested Margaret Mitchell in the Kress store, according to a note from Lieutenant Battle in the Hays papers. There was no annotation about the cases about which the remaining two officers, Patrolmen Havilini and Kinstrey, had evidence.
A document dated April 13 in the records of Mayor La Guardia suggests that a visit to the MCCH by Mrs. Nora Ford, the mother of William Ford, may have been responsible for Patrolman Mackenzie appearing on the list of police witnesses. She came to "lodge a complaint against the police department" related to his arrest by Mackenzie for breaking windows in the Kress store. The document recorded no details of her complaint, nor do any of the records of Ford's arrest and prosecution mention any complaint. There are no records of an investigation of the complaint by the MCCH.
Hays did respond to one other complaint, from Gerald Hamilton on behalf of an unnamed Black woman who had been assaulted by an Italian baker during a dispute over him giving her a counterfeit coin whom the magistrate refused to punish. Hays requested that the woman come to the hearing on April 20.
It appeared that those two complaints were not the only cases of "police brutality" about which the MCCH learned at this time. Villard reported to the MCCH meeting on April 19 that there were "far too many cases" to hold hearings on them all. Neither Nora Ford's complaint nor the one submitted by Hamilton would be part of the hearing on April 20, and were likely among those the subcommittee planned to investigate in some other way (later specified as having lawyers from the Harlem Lawyers' Association investigate). The MCCH had its investigator, James Tartar, gather information about the cases it had identified after the previous hearing.
Tartar's reports record that in this two-week period he interviewed the storekeepers on the block where Lloyd Hobbs was shot, gathered records from the 23rd Precinct about the cases of Thomas Aiken and Edward Laurie, and interviewed Aiken and the aunt of James Thompson, the other Black man known to have been killed by police during the disorder. The interview with Aiken was dated April 19, and the other reports were dated April 20, so may not have been complete before the hearing on that date. Some copies were annotated "Memo to Mr Hays" and dated May 1, suggesting that Eunice Carter compiled them for Hays after the hearing on April 20. In that case, he may not have had this material for the hearing.