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1. 1 2024-03-04T02:58:42+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf New York Police Department Photographs, 1915-1940s (New York City Municipal Archives). Stephen Robertson 3 plain 2024-03-04T03:00:26+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf

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• 1 2020-02-25T17:59:47+00:00 James Thompson killed & Detective Nicholas Campo shot 63 plain 2024-05-31T03:08:07+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.
• 1 2023-08-24T15:29:57+00:00 5:30 AM to 6:00 AM 14 plain 2024-05-31T03:05:21+00:00
  
  Around 5:30 AM, two detectives in another radio car patrolling Harlem streets heard breaking glass in a damaged grocery store near the southeast corner of 8th Avenue and West 127th Street. Pulling over to investigate, Detectives Nicholas Campo and Theodore Beckler drew their pistols and entered the branch of the A&P grocery chain at 2364 8th Avenue. There were several large holes in the windows and no merchandise left in the window displays in the police crime scene photographs of the store taken later. However, as was the case with many other businesses, the shelves inside the store were untouched. The noise had been made by James Thompson, who lived across 8th Avenue from the store in 301 West 127th Street. According to his landlady, the nineteen-year-old Black man had been on the streets during the disorder and he and another man had come home with “canned goods” which she was certain they had stolen. Thompson appeared to have decided to return to the streets for more food as morning approached. To get to the shelves inside, he had to break glass in one of the entrance doors.
  
  Thompson must have heard the officers approaching, as he was in the storeroom in the rear when they entered. As Campo and Beckler moved through the store, Thompson burst out of the storeroom and ran for the entrance. He collided with Campo, causing the detective’s pistol to fire a bullet that hit two fingers on his own left hand. When Thompson got out on to the street, he ran across 8th Avenue toward his home. 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. A third bullet passed through the trousers of a man walking with Dondoro without injuring him. Campo and Beckler caught up with Thompson in front of 301 West 127th Street and arrested him. They must have called for an ambulance to take him to Harlem Hospital rather than driving him there themselves, as the patrolmen who shot Lloyd Hobbs had done, as Thompson was not admitted until 6:30 AM. He died three hours later. While he was the last of those killed in the disorder to receive their fatal injuries, James Thompson was the first to die. He was not, however, the last man police arrested.
  
  Around ten minutes later, one block to the north, Officer Di Maio arrested a twenty-eight-year-old white chauffeur named Jean Jacquelin. The patrolman was likely in the area due to the shooting of James Thompson. Jacquelin was allegedly carrying two ladies' coats and two pairs of trousers, which is likely what led Di Maio to stop him. Unusually, he lived on West 128th Street midway between 8th and 7th Avenues, an area almost entirely populated by Black residents. Men arrested in similar circumstances earlier in the disorder were suspected of being in possession of items they had taken from businesses. The clothing Jacquelin was carrying was later identified as coming from Morris Sankin’s tailor’s store at the opposite end of West 128th Street near 7th Avenue.
  
  The arrest of a white man was an anomalous incident on which to end the disorder. The 128 individuals arrested during the disorder included only ten white men. Four of those were Communists who had been arrested in front of Kress’ store at the very beginning of the disorder. As the legal response and the city’s investigation of the disorder began, that group of white men would occupy a prominent place in accounts of what had happened in Harlem.