This tag was created by Anonymous.
2:30 PM to 3.00 PM
A few minutes later, around 2:45 PM, the store detective and Alfred Eldridge, a Black Crime Prevention Bureau Officer, arrived at the store. Passing Officer Miller outside the entrance, they found Dr. Sayet still treating Hurley and Urban. Eldridge, following the Bureau’s procedure, spoke to Rivera to confirm that he had taken the pocketknife as the store staff alleged. He said he had, and also told Eldridge he was on parole for using slugs in the subway. The officer recorded Rivera’s name and address, as Patrolman Donohue had already done. The next step should have been for Eldridge to leave with Rivera. However, Hurley and Urban said that they wanted the boy arrested and charged with assaulting them. Crime Prevention Bureau officers did not make arrests, so to act on that charge Eldridge would have to turn Rivera over to Patrolmen Donohue. He went to the rear of the Kress store and telephoned his lieutenant to report the changed situation. Outside the store, groups of people gathered, sharing what they had seen or heard about store staff struggling with Rivera. Their concern reflected how feelings against toward white businesses on 125th Street had been running particularly high since the pickets and boycott campaign the previous year, which had effectively been halted by a New York Supreme Court decision that barred picketing in "racial disputes" because of the “substantial danger that race riots and race reprisals might result in this and other communities.”