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James Williams arrested
There is no mention of what caused the officer to arrest Williams. Young told police that he “was seen taking property from the store,” phrasing that suggests someone other than Young witnessed the theft. Young is unlikely to have been directly involved in the arrest. Half an hour earlier he had been in Harlem Hospital, receiving treatment for a wound to his head received when a man assaulted him during the attack on his store.
Williams was one of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one third (9/27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27/60).
Charged with burglary the morning after the disorder, appears in only the list of those arrested published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Globe and Gazette, and in one list published in the New York Evening Journal. Williams was not brought before a Grand Jury until April 10. They transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, according to the District Attorney's case file, a outcome that reflected the low value of the goods he had allegedly stolen. Tried two days later, on April 12, the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded that the judges acquitted him.