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• 1 2022-06-16T19:24:46+00:00 Police establish perimeter around Kress' store 88 plain 2024-06-11T22:23:15+00:00 After Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street around 7:00 PM, he called for police reinforcements. A New York Evening Journal story celebrated the response as “the most remarkable 'military' feat in the history of the department.” That portrayal was certainly how the police department would have sought to present the deployment. However, the arrival of additional officers appears to have taken longer than the story allowed, and to have been focused on establishing a perimeter around Kress’ store. The piecemeal arrival of reinforcements made that a protracted process. As police struggled to keep crowds away from Kress' store, those clashes served to disperse crowds along the avenues rather than stopping the violence. Unable to prevent windows being broken in businesses on 125th Street, police had to guard damaged stores, limiting the officers who could be deployed on the avenues. Guards appear to have prevented looting; they did not stop additional windows being broken. After crowds broke through on to 125th Street around 10:30 PM, there are only two further incidents in that area during the remaining disorder, an alleged assault on a woman and a shooting, both at the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Although other incidents whose timing is unknown may have occurred during that time, the evidence suggests that police perimeter held through that period.
  
  The New York Evening Journal story lauding the police response reported “a small army of 700 police was beating back the rioters” on 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues. That number likely reflected the total deployment rather than the force that set up the perimeter around Kress’ store. It was in line with the number Di Martini reported to the police commissioner were in Harlem after midnight and fell between the totals reported by newspapers, with the 1,000 officers mentioned by the Daily Mirror at one extreme, and the 500 officers reported by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune representing the other end of the range. While the officers coming from beyond the local precincts went initially to 125th Street, Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes that the reserve officers from Harlem's precincts went to their stations, on West 123rd Street and West 135th Street. Some of those officers may have been sent directly to other areas of Harlem, particularly those who arrived later in the evening.
  
  The perimeter established by police extended from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier, the only sources that described police deployments. While Inspector Di Martini had summoned the reinforcements, the newspapers credited that deployment to Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, who commanded uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, and would have taken over from Di Martini when he arrived around 9:00 PM. The department’s emergency trucks attracted the most attention in newspaper stories, presented as the anchors of the police cordon. Six emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue in the strategy reported by the New York Times, Daily Mirror, and Pittsburgh Courier. Emergency trucks were more dispersed according to the New York Herald Tribune; two at West 125th and 7th Avenue, one at West 125th and Lenox Avenue, and one at West 127th and 7th Avenue.
  
  The Emergency Services Division had succeeded the police department’s Riot Battalion in 1925. Each truck had a crew of eight officers and, in addition to rescue equipment, carried a Thompson machine gun, three Winchester rifles, and a Remington shotgun, as well as a tear gas gun, for use against "disorderly crowds." The twenty-two trucks in the department in 1935 were dispersed throughout the city. While the two located closest to 125th Street arrived relatively quickly, additional trucks would have taken significantly longer. Squad #6 was based on East 122nd Street, and had been involved in clearing shoppers from Kress’ store earlier. Squad #5, based on Amsterdam Avenue, arrived around 7:15 PM, according to Patrolman Eppler. The New York Evening Journal identified trucks as coming from Kingsbridge in the Bronx and from Coney Island at the southern end of Brooklyn, the latter apparently arriving later: “It slithered perilously over wet streets but arrived in time for its crew to get into action.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle identified another squad from Brooklyn, Squad #16 from Herbert Street, as having crashed returning from Harlem, at 1:00 AM (a time when there was still significant disorder). Thompson did not mention the trucks. Neither did trucks appear in any of the published photographs of the disorder. Some of their crew did, identifiable because the rifles they carried — described as “riot guns” in newspapers stories and photograph captions — caused them to stand out from other police. They did not, however, have a machine gun that needed to be “set up,” as the Afro-American reported: each truck instead carried a single hand-held "Tommy gun." Nor were the trucks equipped with enough of those weapons for all the crew to have one. And there are no reports that they used tear gas. Those weapons prompted several newspapers to use martial language in stories about the squads’ activities. The New York Evening Journal story on the police reinforcements described Harlem as a “seething battleground,” and the police as “beating back the rioters in a savage and organized attack.” An emergency truck from the Bronx “leaped off the machine and tore into a crowd of window smashers” (perhaps at Herbert’s jewelry store at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, where another New York Evening Journal story described a similar scene). The Daily Mirror described emergency trucks as "being sent to the battle zone."
  
  The other evidence of the presence of emergency trucks placed them in less warlike roles. Newspaper photographs show their crew among the officers who guarded damaged stores. A patrolman with a riot gun stands in front of Herbert’s jewelry store on northeast corner of 125th and 7th Avenue in a photograph published in the Burlington Free Press. Stories in the New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune described police with riot guns guarding the store (the Daily News, New York American, and Home News described the officers simply as patrolmen). Another patrolman with a riot gun was photographed on the corner across 7th Avenue from the jewelry store. The image published in the New York Evening Journal is narrowly focused on the officer, whereas another version of that image published in the Daily Mirror shows a Black man walking past him, and the image published in the Daily News shows several Black men and women walking by on the sidewalk, evidence of the continued presence of people around 125th Street. Two additional patrolmen, one visibly carrying a rifle, stand in front of Sherloff’s jewelry store, just a few buildings north of the intersection, in an AP photograph published in the Los Angeles Times. Taken together, the images suggest that the crew of at least one Emergency Truck guarded stores at the intersection. Captain Rothengast, Patrolman Moran, and Patrolman Eppler told the MCCH that they also guarded other stores on 125th Street, including Kress’ store. A photograph published in the Daily News shows a patrolman talking through a broken window with a man inside a store on 125th Street. Again, Black men and women are visible in the background on the sidewalk in the background, their presence indicating that police had not closed the streets.
  
  The police perimeter appears to have focused on keeping crowds off 125th Street, not individuals and small groups. In addition to those visible in photographs, Captain Rothengast described seeing "groups of people in 125th Street – no more than 250" when he arrived at Kress’ store around 8:30 PM. A story in the Home News also reported that “In an effort to keep traffic moving, police permitted pedestrians to walk through 125th St. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were crowded.” Patrolmen Moran and Eppler testified that at least some of those people approached police guarding Kress' store asking about the boy beaten in the store, encounters also described by a reporter for the Afro-American. Allowing individuals to walk along 125th Street was not incident-free: around 8:30 PM, a white man was allegedly beaten in front of Kress’ store, with police arresting James Smitten for committing the assault. About twenty minutes later, police arrested Frank Wells for breaking a window in the Willow Cafeteria. Just before 10:00 PM, Detective Roge was hit by a rock in front of Kress’ store and another patrolman injured at 124th Street and 7th Avenue. At the same time, Louise Thompson described larger groups being pushed back by police. She told a MCCH hearing she saw "one policeman throw his billy into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down” at the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, a scene similar to that captured by a photograph published in the Daily News. There is no evidence of where that photograph was taken, but a second photograph of police dispersing a group of Black men and women, the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder, was taken at 125th Street and 7th Avenue according to the caption. It shows the island that that divided the north and south lanes on the roadway, which contained trees and were surrounded by the barriers like those visible in the photograph. A group of men and women are scattering in response to a uniformed patrolman moving toward them. One man is bent over; the caption describes him as falling down. He may also have been pushed down or hit by the patrolman; another man obstructs the view of what has happened between the two men. (One version of the caption claimed that the photographer was hit by a rock soon after taking the image, which might explain why the patrolman was trying to move the crowd.)
  
  One of the Black men killed during the disorder, Andrew Lyons, sustained a fractured skull "during the thick of a melee at 125th street and Seventh avenue," according to the New York Amsterdam News, or a block further west at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue according to the Times Union. Police clubs may have been responsible for those injuries, but the doctors who treated Lyons recorded that had been too groggy to tell his roommate or anyone else how he had been injured. No sources mentioned police firing revolvers or rifles to try to disperse the crowds.
  
  On at least two occasions large crowds appear to have broken through the police perimeter. Louise Thompson told a MCCH hearing that around 9:00 PM a crowd broke through on to 125th Street. The Home News also reported that incident. Store windows were broken, Young's hat store looted, and two white men and a white police detective allegedly assaulted around that time. A second crowd broke through around 10:30 PM, resulting in more windows being broken and a white man allegedly being assaulted, and police arresting four Black men.
  
  Most of the incidents on 125th Street before 10:30 PM did not result in arrests, likely because police were heavily outnumbered by crowds and constrained by the responsibility of guarding stores. Only at Kress’ store it seems were enough officers stationed to make arrests: there arrests were made not just around 10:30 PM but also just before 10:00 PM and at 8:30 PM. There are no arrests among those with known times in the period between the arrest of the picketers in front of Kress’ store at 6:45 PM and arrests on 125th Street between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM. There are approximately a dozen arrests made at unknown times and places that might have occurred during this time, but it is more likely that police were too outnumbered to make arrests, as Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes. While an arrest for breaking windows was made just before 9:00 PM, police made no arrests for the assaults and broken windows reported when a crowd broke through soon after.
  
  The police perimeter appears to have held after 10:30 PM. Sometime before then, no later than 10:00 PM, and likely as early as between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM, groups had moved on from 125th Street to attack businesses on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue, and later, Lenox Avenue. In response, police began to disperse across Harlem, driving along those streets in radio cars and taking up positions on street corners and guarding damaged stores. Exactly when the first police were sent beyond 125th Street is not clear. The first arrest made away from 125th Street, on West 127th Street between St. Nicholas and 8th Avenues around 9:00 PM, appears to have been made by a patrolman on his way to 125th Street rather than being deployed elsewhere in Harlem. The arrest of Leroy Brown around 9:45 PM on 7th Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets is clearer evidence of a spreading police presence.
  
  With the MCCH giving limited attention to this period of the disorder, witnesses who testified at their hearings did not provide the details they do of the earlier police response. Newspaper reporters and photographers were on 125th Street during this time, so would have seen some of these events and been able to obtain information from police. Inspector Di Martini spoke with a group of reporters, including one from the Afro-American during this time. At the same time, those reporters would have had a limited view. The block was too long for those at one intersection to see the details of what was happening at the other intersection, or even for those at Kress' store to clearly see the nearby intersection with 8th Avenue. At the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue the Afro-American's reporter saw only "little knots of people on the corner"; "once he walked on, however, he found high police officials and the first detail of 500 extra policemen rushed to the area" and "a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues." It is unsurprising then that newspaper stories offer only general and fragmented accounts of this period of the disorder. Information on specific events comes from legal records, which are limited largely to the period around 10:00 PM when police made arrests, and narrowly focused on the actions of a single arresting officer.
   
• 1 2020-02-25T19:43:17+00:00 Police response 80 plain 2024-06-11T22:28:42+00:00 The police response to events inside Kress’ store slowly escalated, initially involving several patrolmen on post near the store, then reserves in radio cars, mounted officers, and an emergency truck, led by increasingly senior officers, Sergeant Bauer, then Inspector Di Martini (who commanded four precincts that made up the 6th Division). After Kress' store closed, a small group of officers remained to guard the front and rear entrances. Approximately fifteen officers were present on 125th Street in front of the store when Daniel Miller and then Harry Gordon attempted to speak. The arrests of those men followed police practice of singling out the leaders of a crowd, but came at the cost of reducing the number of officers guarding the store. When the crowd moved to the rear of the store, those officers called for help. Inspector Di Martini returned, and called for further reinforcements, likely in response to attacks on stores on 125th Street. Additional emergency trucks were sent, either three or four, as well as radio cars, uniformed officers, and plainclothes detectives. Estimates of the total number of police ranged from 500 to 1,000 men. Around 9:00 PM, Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, commander of uniformed officers in Manhattan, took charge. The arriving police forces concentrated first on establishing a perimeter around 125th Street. Later, officers were dispersed throughout neighborhood, with radio cars patrolling the avenues, and Emergency trucks likely dispatched to outbreaks of violence. Stories in the New York World-Telegram, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, Norfolk Journal and Guide, Afro-American, and the MCCH report, described police as struggling to contain small groups that reformed soon after police scattered them. Nonetheless, police deployed in Harlem made at least 128 arrests. Officers also killed at least two Black men, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson. In the process, at least nine patrolmen and detectives suffered injuries.
  
  Police officers already present on West 125th Street were the first to respond to events inside Kress’ store. Patrolman Donahue and his partner Patrolmen Keel saw three men struggling with Lino Rivera. At least one other officer, a Black officer named Miller, joined those two men. Keel and Miller must have remained outside the store, perhaps trying to move on the crowds that Donahue reporting seeing in line with police practice at the time, as neither are mentioned as having been involved inside Kress’ store. While Donahue left at 3:30 PM via the front entrance after he released Rivera, the store manager found only Miller on West 125th Street when he sought help sometime before 4:00 PM. Looking for police on post was how New Yorkers had traditionally sought their assistance. Miller must have left for the 4:00 PM shift change, as he was not mentioned again. Patrolman Timothy Shannon likely replaced Miller on West 125th Street, as he was in the store at 4:00 PM.
  
  After twenty minutes in the store, Patrolman Shannon called for help, in the form of radio cars. In 1935, the Radio Motor Patrol, which worked sectors of 15–20 blocks, served as police reserves. Each car carried two officers. They were not yet equipped with two-way radios, so three cars were typically dispatched to each call to ensure that at least one responded. Shannon did not specify how many officers responded to his call. They clearly had little impact in dispersing the customers, as within minutes of their arrival Smith, the store manager, was telephoning the police for more help. A call to Police Headquarters was the means of seeking police assistance being promoted in the 1930s. Police responded by sending a sergeant to take control of the scene. According to the store manager, Sergeant Bauer soon told him that he did not know what to do. The manager then telephoned again, asking for enough officers to clear the store so he could close it. Additional officers were sent; the New York American reported that "About 40 radio patrolmen and detectives — the first major force to arrive — stamped into the store and cleared it" (although the story mistakenly claimed those officers cleared the store later, after it had been stormed by crowds from the street). The New York Herald Tribune reported three radio cars and an emergency truck arrived to help clear the store, which would have amounted to fourteen additional police. The Emergency Services Division had succeeded the police department’s Riot Battalion in 1925, with twenty-two trucks distributed around the city in 1935. Each truck had a crew of eight officers, equipped with a Thompson machine gun, three Winchester rifles, and a Remington shotgun, as well as a tear gas gun, for use against "disorderly crowds." Such incidents represented a very small part of the work of those squads, only 1.49% (100 of 6725) of the cases in which the squads were involved in 1935 according to the department's Annual Report. One arrest was made as the store was cleared, of Margaret Mitchell by Detective Johnson, confirming the presence of officers in plainclothes. Detectives in radio cars also served as reserves at this time.
  
  Kress' store had been cleared and closed by the time Inspector Di Martini arrived at 5:40 PM. Although he told a MCCH hearing that he saw no “indications of further trouble" and left at 6:00 PM, the inspector did station "Sergeant Bauer, two foot policeman, one mounted policeman in the rear to prevent a riot.” Additional officers remained in front of the store, likely the "15 patrolmen, six mounted police and uniformed men of five radio cars" that the New York Evening Journal reported were present when Di Martini returned around 7:15 PM. Those officers focused on preventing a crowd from forming in in front of the store, moving along any who stopped, likely using their nightsticks. Although outnumbered by the crowds, the police followed their practice of arresting those they perceived to be leaders in an attempt to disperse the crowd. In this case, they arrested two white men who tried to speak to the crowds gathered on 125th Street and then two white men and a Black man who picketed in front of the store. Those arrests also brought police reinforcements. By the time Inspector Di Martini returned, some of the people police had pushed off 125th Street onto 8th Avenue had moved to 124th Street and attacked the rear of Kress' store. Two officers were injured as police dispersed that crowd. As police worked to keep 125th Street clear, mounted patrolmen played a prominent role, riding on sidewalks to clear crowds. While their efforts and those of officers patrolling the street swinging nightsticks kept the crowds moving, they did not prevent windows being broken in stores the length of the block between 8th and 7th Avenues. Only when reinforcements from other precincts began arriving around 8:00 PM were police able to start establishing a perimeter around 125th Street.
  
  Several hundred police officers from surrounding precincts arrived on 125th Street around Kress' store, with Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, who commanded uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, taking charge around 9:00 PM. The six emergency trucks were given the most attention in newspaper accounts. They were stationed at several intersections to anchor the police cordon, with members of their crews, identifiable by the rifles — "riot guns" — they carried photographed guarding damaged stores around the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. The need to guard businesses continued to limit how many police could be deployed to control crowds, as police continued to focus on preventing large groups from forming or moving onto the block of 125th Street containing Kress' store, with mounted patrolmen and nightsticks again prominent. They did let individuals and small groups walk along the sidewalk. Further damage to store windows in this area was limited by the increased numbers of police, with additional windows broken seemingly only on two occasions when crowds broke through the police cordon, around 9:00 PM and again around 10:30 PM. Police made at least four arrests on that second occasion, but none are recorded around the time of the earlier incident. It could be that there were still insufficient police to make arrests at 9:00 PM, or that those arrested are among those for which there is no information on timing. Sometime between those two clashes, groups began to move away from 125th Street and direct their attacks at businesses and white individuals they encountered on 8th, 7th, and later Lenox Avenues. In response, police began to be deployed beyond 125th Street.
  
  Rather than concentrating on a specific location, the crowds beyond 125th Street came together in smaller groups, scattering when police appeared and reforming when they departed. They ranged over an area too large for police to guard with any sort of cordon. Instead, police responded to calls, patrolled the streets in radio cars, and took up positions at some locations. Unlike earlier in the disorder, they encountered looting, which officers regarded as a serious enough offense to warrant shooting at alleged offenders. Police fatally shot two Black men allegedly caught looting, and likely shot and wounded several others. They also made more arrests during this period of the disorder than earlier, with almost half of the arrests with information on timing occurring between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM. However, the gunfire and arrests did not prevent widespread damage and looting. More than one hundred business owners cited a lack of police protection when they sued the city for failing to protect their property from the disorder. By 4:00 AM, Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe claimed the streets were quiet. There were three incidents an hour later involving radio cars patrolling 8th and Lenox Avenues, including the fatal shooting of James Thompson.
  
  While police reserves from outside Harlem were sent home, a large force of police was on Harlem's streets on March 20, and additional police were present in the neighborhood for several more weeks, including numbers of detectives in plainclothes.

  Events

• 1 2022-05-23T17:58:35+00:00 8:00 PM to 8:30 PM 34 plain 2024-06-11T22:43:33+00:00
  
  At 8:00 PM, people crowded both the corners of 8th and 7th Avenues and the sidewalks of 125th Street between them — except in front of the Kress store, where police continued to move on anyone who attempted to stop. When Louise Thompson returned to 125th Street and 8th Avenue at that time she found the situation that the reporter for the Afro-American had watched develop in the preceding half an hour, people on all four corners, not just the side of 8th Avenue closest to the Kress store. Walking along 125th Street to 7th Avenue, she found the four corners of that intersection similarly occupied.
  
  The other change Thompson noticed as she walked to 7th Avenue was that by 8:00 PM “most of the windows [were] broken on 125th Street." Carlton Moss described the same sight when he arrived at 125th Street and 7th Avenue from uptown; store window after store window broken on 125th Street. Among the damaged stores were likely Myladys shop, the W. T. Grant department store, and the McCrory and Woolworths 5 & 10 cent stores on the south side of the street, and the Conrad Schmidt Music Shop, Adler Shoes, Scheer Clothing, Howard Suits, Minks Haberdashery, Savon Clothes store, and General Stationery & Supplies store on the north side. Broken windows meant holes in the large store windows, not that they had been entirely smashed; only after being hit multiple times would all the glass in the large display windows break and the merchandise inside them be accessible to looters. That danger is a likely topic of conversation between the patrolman and the store manager photographed on 125th Street, possibly around this time. While much of the glass remained in the display window, there was a hole large enough to allow them to speak. However, the only damage to the Kress store on 125th Street was the one window broken around 6:15 PM, thanks to the police deployed there to keep crowds from gathering.
  
  Windows being broken along 125th Street were likely part of what Inspector Di Martini was referring to when he said that while standing in front of the Kress store he “noticed the crowds becoming excited” around 8:00 PM. Police had been allowing people to walk along 125th Street, as Thompson had, to keep the crowds moving rather than becoming a “mass demonstration.” With the numbers of people on the sidewalk grown large, and officers numbering in the hundreds arriving on the scene, police began to push people back to 8th and 7th Avenues. Senior police officers explained to reporters that they were establishing a cordon to protect both the Kress store and the other damaged businesses on 125th Street. At 8th Avenue, James Ford, a white Communist Party leader, saw the police “driving the people back to 8th Ave from Kress store.” Arriving around 8:00 PM, he watched mounted police riding on the sidewalk and patrolmen using their clubs, causing “resentment” among the crowd. Ford also heard “crashes of glass” as some of those at that end of 125th Street reacted by breaking more windows, including perhaps on 8th Avenue near the corner, where Andy's florist and the vacant storefronts at 2314, 2320, and 2324 8th Avenue, all of which had windows broken.
  
  At the intersection with 7th Avenue, police were making similar attempts to keep groups of people from 125th Street. Among the small groups Louise Thompson encountered, “there were people who were infuriated,” about rumors that a boy was dead, which some compared to lynching, but also about conditions on 125th Street, that the stores “didn’t employ negroes” and charged high prices for inferior goods. She also saw “a few people” with copies of the leaflet distributed by the Young Liberators. Carlton Moss too heard rumors about a boy being killed from people at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, as well as cries to “Run dem white folks outa Harlem” — leading him to put two white friends who were with him, a man and a woman, into a taxi so they could leave Harlem. When Charles Romney returned from warning his wife to stay off the streets, he found the crowd growing, and patrolmen and mounted police on the sidewalk trying to move them. On the southwest corner, Thompson encountered Black patrolmen among the officers “pushing the people back,” and “saw one patrolman throw his billy [club] into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down.” With police batons swinging, this could have been when Andrew Lyons, a thirty-seven-year-old Black man, received the head injury which would later kill him. Like Ford, Thompson and Moss also heard breaking glass; Thompson “occasionally…heard a few rocks breaking windows,” whereas Moss heard lots of crashing glass. He also heard someone claiming, “We got Childs — Bastards don’t ‘llow Niggahs in dare, we got ‘em,” referring to the white-owned restaurant at 272 West 125th Street, on the opposite end of the block near 8th Avenue. Louise Thompson attributed the windows being broken in stores to resentment at police tactics and the refusal to allow people to gather and seek information at the Kress store.
  
  The crews of the emergency trucks, the police riot squad, were deployed at the intersection with 7th Avenue, likely indicating that there were more people and more windows being broken there than at 8th Avenue. With at least two trucks, and perhaps as many as six in the area, there would have been ten or more patrolmen armed with rifles, shotguns, or Thompson machine guns (tommy guns) among the police. Many of the Black residents coming to 125th Street in response to the rumors spreading through Harlem would have come via 7th Avenue as it was the major traffic route through Harlem, carrying two lanes of traffic in each direction, separated by an island planted with trees. The homes in the blocks surrounding 7th Avenue, especially north of 125th Street, were occupied almost exclusively by Black residents. By contrast, 8th Avenue was a narrower street, with only one lane of traffic each way, an elevated railroad track running above the middle of the street, and fewer Black residents to its west, thanks to St. Nicholas Park and the presence of white neighborhoods. (There was a stop on the elevated train line at 8th Avenue and 125th that would have brought people — whereas the subway stop was a block east of 7th Avenue, at Lenox Avenue.)
  
  The islands in the center of 7th Avenue contributed to how many people could gather at the intersection with 125th Street, providing a place for some of those an Afro-American reporter observed “overflowing” the corners to go. One such group appeared in a widely reprinted image taken by a Daily News photographer. The concrete barriers on either side of the island are visible in the photograph, as is a tree, and a caption identified the location as 125th Street and 7th Avenue. A patrolman is moving toward the Black men and women in the island, indicating that police efforts to move people away from 125th Street extended to the island. A rock hit the white photographer, twenty-eight-year-old Everett Breuer, in the head after he took the image, so the officer may have been responding to objects being thrown at nearby businesses. One man close to the patrolman is bent over; the caption described him as falling down. He may also have been pushed down or hit by the patrolman; another man obstructs the view of what has happened between the patrolman and the man. Two women are among the four other people in the image; women continued to be the significant presence among those responding to rumors about what had happened in the Kress store that they had been from the moment Rivera had been grabbed.
  
  Groups of people were also on the corners of 125th Street on the eastern side of 7th Avenue by this time. Around 8:30 PM, some of those people began throwing rocks at windows of stores on the eastern side of 7th Avenue, the first reported attacks on businesses beyond the block containing the Kress store. Herbert’s Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the northeast corner of 7th Avenue seems to have been the initial target. As Carlton Moss watched, people threw rocks at the white-owned store’s windows.
• 1 2020-03-11T21:46:38+00:00 Patrolman Charles Robbins assaulted 22 plain 2024-06-11T22:40:16+00:00 Patrolman Charles Robbins, a member of the 6th Emergency Squad (a riot squad), was "struck over head with an iron bar by some unknown person,” according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr. Russell of Harlem Hospital treated Robbins at 124th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10:15 PM, indicating that that assault took place sometime earlier, around 10:00 PM. The location of the assault was the "scene of the riot," in the Medical Attendance record, likely where Robbins was treated. By 10:00 PM, police had established a perimeter around the block of 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues on which Kress' store was located. As a result crowds trying to get to the Kress store were stuck on those corners, leading some to leave in frustration and instead go up or down 7th Avenue. Emergency trucks were part of the police perimeter. While newspaper stories differed over precisely where the vehicles were stationed, both the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune located at least one truck on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. (The New York Times put the others on 124th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 126th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, and at 130th Street and Lenox Avenue, while the New York Herald Tribune had them at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, and 7th Avenue and 127th Street.)
  
  
  
  Robbins was included in lists of the injured published in the press. Four of those lists provided details of the circumstances in which he was injured. The Home News and the New York American on March 20 described the injury as caused by an iron bar, following the Medical Attendance record. The New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which listed the injured policemen separately, included the detail that Robbins had been hit by a brick. An iron bar was not a typical weapon during the disorder; bricks, however, were frequently used as weapons. The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American (on March 21), and Daily News all listed Robbins among the injured without details of the circumstances. His injury was listed as a “possible fractured skull,” but the Medical Attendance record described Robbins' injury as only a "laceration of scalp." Nonetheless, it noted that Robbins was "removed" to Harlem Hospital for further treatment, which may be why newspapers identified him as having suffered a more serious injury.
  
  No one was arrested for assaulting Robbins, as was the case in seven of the nine alleged assaults on police.
• 1 2020-03-11T21:50:13+00:00 Patrolman Harry Whittington assaulted 15 plain 2024-06-11T22:33:39+00:00 Just after midnight, Patrolman Harry Whittington, a thirty-five-year-old white member of Emergency Squad 9 (a riot squad) was hit by a rock on 8th Avenue. The Daily Mirror provided the most details of the assault. The story reported that the attack came as the emergency truck on which Whittington rode passed West 123rd Street. Only Whittington and one other officer were reported as being assaulted after crowds moved away from 125th Street around 10:00 PM. The other seven reported assaults on police occurred in the initial disorder around Kress’ store.  
  
  
  
  After 10:00 PM, when the crowd moved away from 125th Street, police used patrolling radio cars and emergency trucks to respond to violence and to try to control crowds. Cars and buses driven by whites were also targets of rocks thrown by black crowds throughout the disorder. However, those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less traveled 8th Avenue. The one other police vehicle reported as being hit by rocks, a car driven by Detective Frank Lenahan, was also attacked on “a riotous section of Eighth Avenue” at an unspecified time. The windows of the car were smashed, but Lenahan was not injured. Whittington did not have windows to shield him from missiles. Most of the members of an emergency squad traveled on the outside of the vehicle.
  
  As well as the detail that Whittington was assaulted while riding on an emergency truck, the Daily Mirror described the attack as a “sniping,” a sensational term used to heighten the threat associated with the violence.
  
  Whittington appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York American (on March 20 & 21), Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post, as well as the story published in the Daily Mirror. Although the New York American and the New York Herald Tribune reported he was treated at Harlem Hospital, he did not appear in either the list of admissions or the ambulance call-outs. The Home News and New York Evening Journal described his injuries simply as lacerations; the other lists specified a head injury.