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New York Penal Law, § 405: Unlawfully entering building
1 2021-09-20T15:01:09+00:00 Anonymous 1 4 plain 2024-01-28T19:36:00+00:00 Anonymous"§ 405: Unlawfully entering building. A person who, under circumstances or in a manner not amounting to committing a burglary, enters a building, or any part thereof, with intent to commit a felony or a larceny, or any malicious mischief, is guilty of a misdemeanor."
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2020-02-25T17:01:43+00:00
Looting in the courts (50)
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2024-02-13T15:51:01+00:00
Police arrested sixty individuals for looting, but only fifty appeared in legal records or newspaper stories about legal proceedings. The other ten individuals appeared only in lists of those arrested for burglary published in newspapers, and in the case of six men, in the police blotter of the 32nd Precinct. As they did not appear in the Magistrates Court docket books, they were not charged in court, and none of those sources mentioned what happened to those people in the legal system. There are also an additional nineteen individuals arrested for whom no details of their alleged offense survive, some of whom may have been involved in looting. Of the three Black women police arrested for looting, Elizabeth Tai and Elva Jacobs subsequently appeared in court. While press coverage of later disorders would focus attention on female looters, few publications mentioned them in 1935, noting only the presence of Black women in the crowds at the beginning of the disorder. It is not clear if the relative absence of women reflected their behavior during the disorder or the inattention of police and journalists. Both the white men arrested for looting ultimately had the charges against them dismissed. At least one, Jean Jacquelin, had been arrested in possession of clothing rather than in the act of taking those items from a store.
Prosecutors did not charge six of those who appeared in court with the offense for which they had been arrested, but instead with disorderly conduct. An additional five men and one woman — Joseph Payne, Raymond Taylor, Preston White, Herbert Hunter, Arthur Davis, and Elizabeth Tai — had the charge against them reduced to disorderly conduct after their initial appearance in court (that change was not recorded in the docket book for Davis and Hunter, but the magistrate convicted them, which he could only do if they were charged with disorderly conduct). A smaller proportion of those arrested for looting faced that lesser charge (12 of 50, 20%) than of those arrested for breaking windows (11 of 20, 55%) and assault (8 of 13, 62%) — although given that the basis for the arrest of sixteen of those charged with disorderly conduct (32%) is unknown, that pattern has to be considered uncertain. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge those individuals with looting, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence that associated them with the disorder. The variety of acts encompassed by disorderly conduct fell between being a bystander and a participant in acts of violence and theft, including "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," acting to "annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others," refusing "to move on when ordered by the police," and causing a crowd to collect. Possible scenarios might involve acting in a way that police interpreted as indicating an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior — most likely by being parts of crowds in the vicinity when stores were looting. Magistrates found guilty two thirds (8 of 12) of those charged with disorderly conduct after being arrested for looting (the white man released in the Magistrates Court, Louis Tonick, had been charged with robbery not disorderly conduct).
The charge brought against individuals who were prosecuted for looting was burglary. A charge of burglary required breaking into a store, entering it, and taking merchandise — all the elements that made up looting. If police did not have evidence of all three elements, the charge had to be to another offense that carried lesser penalties. After investigation, prosecutors changed the charge against Elva Jacobs from burglary to a lesser offense, unlawful entry. That charge punished entry into a property with the intention to take merchandise, to commit burglary, suggesting police had evidence she had been in a store but not that she had taken merchandise. Seven of those arrested for looting were charged with petit larceny instead of burglary. After the initial arraignment, the charge against an additional man, Henry Goodwin, was changed from burglary to petit larceny. In those cases police likely had evidence an individual had taken merchandise but not that they had broken into and entered a store to take those goods. What form of larceny that evidence supported depended upon the value of the goods allegedly stolen. A charge of petit larceny indicated that the goods were worth less than $100. Police charged the remaining two men with robbery. That offense involved taking property from a person rather than taking merchandise from a store.
Magistrates sent just over half (28 of 50) of those arraigned for looting to the grand jury to be charged with the felony offense of burglary. In ten of those cases, the grand jury saw the alleged offense differently, and voted misdemeanor charges that sent those individuals to the Court of Special Sessions not felony charges that would have sent them to the Court of General Sessions. Magistrates sent nine others arrested for looting to the Court of Special Sessions. There the judges convicted thirteen of the seventeen tried in that court where the outcome is known. Apart from Elva Jacobs, convicted of unlawful entry, all those convictions were for petit larceny.
Individuals arrested for looting made up a substantial majority of those charged with felonies after the disorder. The grand jury indicted just seventeen men, thirteen of whom had been arrested for looting (one case they dismissed and their decision about three others is unknown); three of those indictments were later dismissed by judges in the Court of General Sessions. Eleven of the other defendants agreed to plea bargains and pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges, petit larceny in seven cases, unlawful entry in three cases, and attempted grand larceny in the case of Edward Larry, who had been charged with robbery. A judge directed the acquittal of the final man, Joseph Moore (Arnold Ford, on trial with Moore, agreed to plead guilty to a charge of petit larceny).
Just over half of those arrested for looting received a sentence of one month or longer, a similar proportion as of those arrested for breaking windows and a far greater proportion than of those arrested for riot and assault. However, almost all of those arrested for looting received terms of three months or longer (16 of 18), compared with only a third of those arrested for breaking windows (3 of 9). -
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2021-08-07T18:20:54+00:00
Charles Saunders arrested
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2024-02-12T20:30:49+00:00
Around midnight, as Detective Jeremiah Duross of the 6th Division drove a police car on 7th Avenue, the sound of breaking glass drew his attention to a group of people in front of Ralph Sirico's shoe repair store at 1985 7th Avenue, according to a Probation Department investigation report. The store windows had been damaged earlier, between 11:30 PM and midnight, the superintendent of the apartments above 1985 7th Avenue, Mr. C. T. Berkeley, reported. As the detective pulled his car up next to the store, the crowd in front of it scattered. He jumped out of the car and claimed he saw Charles Saunders, a twenty-four-year-old Black unemployed elevator operator, jump out of the store window and run down the street. Duross gave chase and arrested Saunders, who he claimed had been drinking and had a fresh cut on his hand, which he implied had resulted from breaking glass in the window. While the report stated that the arrest took place at 2:00 AM, that appeared to be an error as the remainder of the narrative referred to events between 11:30 PM and midnight.
Saunders offered a different account than Duross, according to the Probation Department investigation report. He lived nearby, in a furnished room at 1967 7th Avenue, a block south of the store, with his wife Anna Gregory. Around midnight, Saunders left home to buy cigarettes. Walking toward a crowd in front of Sirico's store, he saw shoes and hats being thrown through the broken window on to the street, where people in the crowd were picking them up. Saunders claimed he followed the lead of those around him, and picked up a pair of shoes, cutting his hand on glass on the street in the process, and headed home. At that point Duross arrested him. Saunders denied having been drinking; the detective said Saunders did not have a pair of shoes in his hands when arrested. Berkeley supported Saunders' account to the extent that he said he was not "one of the two men who went through the broken window" of the store. The building superintendent said he could identify those men.
None of stolen goods were recovered, according to the Probation Department investigation report. Nonetheless, Saunders appeared to have been charged with taking all the goods that Sirico reported had been stolen: "18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by him; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces," with a total value he estimated as $66.75. While the District Attorney's case file was missing, the Probation Department investigation report summarized the indictment against Saunders as accusing him of taking merchandise worth $66.95. The Home News and Daily Worker reports less specifically reported Saunders was charged with stealing "several pairs of shoes."
Saunders was included in the lists of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, at which time Magistrate Renaud held him on $1,000 bail to reappear, an outcome recorded in the docket book and reported only in the Home News. When Saunders was brought back to the court on March 22, detectives presented bench warrants that indicated that the grand jury had already indicted him as a result of witnesses presented by District Attorney Dodge as part of his investigation of the disorder. Magistrate Renaud consequently dismissed the charges against Saunders so the detectives could rearrest him, as happened that day with two other men, James Hughes and Isaac Daniels, an appearance reported in the Home News and New York Post. On April 1, Saunders appeared in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty to petit larceny. That plea was at odds with the statement in the report that none of the stolen property had been recovered. A district attorney generally offered such a plea bargain to those indicted for burglary after the disorder found with stolen goods in their possession; those found with nothing in their possession, as the Probation Department investigation report implied Saunders was, generally pled guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful entry.
Immediately prior to Saunders' appearance for sentencing in the Court of General Sessions on April 12, the Probation Department notified the judge of a letter from the Savannah Juvenile Court. Saunders' older sister Vable Greatt had offered to provide a home for him in Savannah, Georgia, and the Juvenile Court Probation Department would assist in his supervision, should the judge place him on probation. After a delay, presumably to confirm those arrangements, Judge Nott gave Saunders a suspended sentence and placed him on "indefinite" probation on the condition he go to Savannah (the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded only the suspended sentence, not the probation). Of the nine other men sentenced in the Court of General Sessions, only Arnold Ford was also placed on probation. Both men remained under supervision for the maximum period of three years, until 1938.
Saunders told a probation officer that he had been born in Dublin, Georgia, the youngest of six children. His mother died when he was five years of age, and around that time he and his family moved to Savannah. After leaving school at age thirteen, Saunders did odd jobs and worked with his father, a carpenter. In 1929, his father remarried, and Saunders decided to go to New York City, where his brother Albert and sister Lola lived. After eighteen months living with Albert at 215 Edgecombe Avenue and working as a porter in a barber's shop at West 135th Street and 7th Avenue, ill health forced him to return to live with his sister in Savannah for six months. Returning to New York City in 1931, Saunders lived with an aunt at 162 West 143rd Street until May 1933, when he met and then moved in with Anna Gregory. The Probation Department investigation report described her as "separated from her husband"; a letter in the file from the Brooklyn Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, to whom the Family Court had referred Gregory in 1922, said her husband had abandoned her, leaving the state with funds provided by his mother. Saunders and Gregory were "known as man and wife," the probation officer reported. In the fluid marriage patterns still practiced in working-class communities such informal relationships were not uncommon but the Probation Department did not recognize them, instead describing Gregory as Saunders' "mistress" and "sweetheart." Dr. Charles Thompson of the Court's Psychiatric Clinic also saw a problem in Gregory being ten years older that Saunders, labeling him as immature for looking to her "for direction." In response to questions by a probation officer, Gregory described Saunders as a good provider and their life as "harmonious."
Gregory worked as a laundress, Saunders in a barber's shop at 142nd Street and 7th Avenue, then part-time for a moving company based at 143rd Street and 7th Avenue, and beginning in September 1934 as an elevator operator at 385 Edgecombe Avenue. After living for two years at 268 West 146th Street, the couple moved to 1967 7th Avenue in December 1934. Two months later, Saunders lost his job after a dispute with the new building superintendent; the management company fired the superintendent soon after and told a probation officer that they saw him, not Saunders, as at fault. That fit with the opinions of Saunders' employers and coworkers, which the probation officer summarized as considering him honest, industrious and dependable; he and Gregory were similarly "well regarded" by their neighbors. The Probation Department investigation report followed Dr. Thompson's examination report in attributing his alleged looting to "mob spirit." Thompson explained that concept as being "in company with several others under the influence of prejudice and aggressiveness," in the case of events in Harlem against "a background of racial antagonism, occasioned largely by the present lack of employment." Saunders' sister Vable Greatt explained his alleged looting, according to a letter from the Savannah Juvenile Court, as probably a result of him becoming "pretty well discouraged in his search for work," a "spiritual condition [that] caused him to fall to the temptation to steal."
While a good reputation and steady employment would have helped make Saunders a candidate for probation, Judge Nott's decision appears to have been largely a response to an offer from his sister and Savannah Juvenile Court Probation Department to supervise him. His sister Vable followed through on that offer, sending funds for Saunders' railway fare to Savannah; the Juvenile Court Probation Department did not do their part. Saunders' probation officer's letters to his Georgia colleagues went unanswered for six months. During this time, the only news the probation officer received of Saunders were reports Saunders himself mailed weekly, using a form and stamps sent to him by the department. Soon after Saunders arrived in Savannah, his sister became very sick, causing him to move in with his brother. In perfunctory answers to the questions on the form, he reported being unemployed, and involved in no education or social activities other than attending weekly services at a Protestant church.
As an alternative to the Juvenile Court, the Probation Department secured the help of the Savannah Family Welfare Society. Their worker's investigation in February 1936 solicited a very different picture of Saunders' life in Savannah from his sister and sister-in-law than he provided in his reports. Both complained he "never stayed home at night," was "drunk most of the time" and had become "lazy and shiftless," not willing to "keep a job when given one." The caseworker did not interview Saunders himself. The Probation Department responded by writing directly to Saunders, warning that his behavior was in violation of the terms of his probation, and the judge could take "disciplinary action" against him unless he improved his conduct and made "diligent efforts to obtain employment." They also requested the Savannah Family Welfare Society let Saunders report to them in person. In August 1936, Mrs. Mamie Belcher, a caseworker, began countersigning Saunders' reports. The Society reported "no further complaints" about his behavior, which the Probation Department took to unambiguously mean Saunders had changed his behavior. In June 1936, Saunders relocated to live again with his sister Vable. It took six more months before he found work, at a box manufacturing company. Nothing else changed in his answers on the report form until after a lapse in reporting in May 1937, when he wrote that he had moved to live with his sister Lois, who had returned from New York City. Only in Saunders' Discharge from Probation did the probation officer mention that this change in circumstances came after his sister Vable was killed in a car accident. By the end of 1937 Saunders had moved back in with his brother and begun working irregularly as a stevedore.
Throughout his time in Savannah, Saunders appears to have remained in contact with Anna Gregory. She came to the Probation Department at the end of 1935 concerned that he had been warned that his sentence could be reviewed if he failed to report regularly and seeking to have him return to the city. When Gregory applied for Home Relief, she described Saunders as her husband, prompting the Emergency Relief Bureau to contact the Probation Department in May 1937, who in turn sought information from Saunders about whether the couple had formally married. In the Discharge from Probation, the probation officer described Saunders as "discontented as he missed New York, and Mrs Gregory, his mistress," information apparently passed on by the Savannah Welfare Society. Their caseworker also reported in January 1938 that Saunders' sister Lois "was anxious to have Charles return with her to New York." The Probation Department wrote to the Society, to Saunders, and to his brother immediately before the end of his probation in April 1938 urging that "his best interests will be served" by remaining in Savannah. They also asked Saunders to advise the department of his plans. He did not reply. There is no evidence of what Saunders chose to do. -
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2021-08-07T18:24:58+00:00
Ralph Sirico's shoe repair shop looted
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2024-05-29T20:59:31+00:00
Around midnight, as Detective Jeremiah Duross of the 6th Division drove a police car on 7th Avenue, the sound of breaking glass drew his attention to a group of people in front of Ralph Sirico's shoe repair store 1985 7th Avenue. As the detective pulled his car up next to the store, the crowd in front of it scattered. He leapt out of the car and claimed he saw Charles Saunders, a twenty-four-year-old Black unemployed elevator operator, jump out of the store window and run down the street. Duross gave chase and arrested Saunders, who he alleged had been drinking and had a fresh cut on his hand, which he implied had resulted from breaking glass in the window. While the Probation Department investigation report stated that the arrest took place at 2:00 AM, that appeared to be an error as the remainder of the narrative referred to events around midnight. A short time earlier, between 11:30 PM and midnight, the superintendent of the apartments above Sirico's store reported that the shoe repair shop window had been smashed. Around that time, there were attacks on nearby businesses at 1953 7th Avenue and likely at 1974 7th Avenue, as well as an assault on a white man named William Burkhard.
Saunders offered a different account than Duross, according to the Probation Department investigation report. He lived nearby, in a furnished room at 1967 7th Avenue a block south of the store, with Anna Gregory. Around midnight, Saunders left home to buy cigarettes. Walking toward a crowd in front of Sirico's store, he saw shoes and hats being thrown through the broken window on to the street, where people in the crowd were picking them up. While there are few accounts of goods being thrown into the street, there are descriptions of merchandise spread over sidewalks and streets, suggesting that some of those who attacked goods destroyed or distributed goods in this manner rather than taking them themselves. Saunders claimed he followed the lead of those around him, and picked up a pair of shoes, cutting his hand on glass on the street in the process, and headed home. At that point Duross arrested him. Saunders denied having been drinking; the detective said Saunders did not have a pair of shoes in his hands when arrested. Berkeley supported Saunders' account to the extent that he said he was not "one of the two men who went through the broken window" of the store. The building superintendent said he could identify those men.
None of stolen goods were recovered, according to the Probation Department investigation report. Nonetheless, Saunders appears to have been charged with taking all the goods that Sirico said had been stolen: "18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by him; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces," with a total value he estimated as $66.75. While the district attorney's case file is missing, the Probation Department investigation report summarizes the indictment against Saunders as accusing him of taking merchandise worth $66.75. The two newspaper reports of the case are less specific, with both the Home News and Daily Worker reporting the charge as stealing "several pairs of shoes." On April 1, Saunders pled guilty to petit larceny. In other cases after the disorder in which defendants did not have goods in their possession when arrested, a district attorney generally offered a plea bargain for a different charge, unlawful entry. On April 30, Judge Nott gave him a suspended sentence and placed him on "indefinite" probation on the condition he go to Savannah to live with his sister.
Sirico had insurance that paid the cost of replacing his store windows. The business was included in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935. Sirico was still operating the store when he registered for the draft in April 1942, giving his first name as Raffaele. He had arrived in New York City in 1919. Sirico appeared likely to have been in business in Harlem by the time of the 1930 census, when the census enumerator recorded that he worked in a shop. At that time he lived at 293 East 155th Street in the Bronx, with his wife and four children aged between eight years and fifteen months. -
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2021-09-01T12:00:29+00:00
Elva Jacobs arrested
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2024-01-24T00:52:14+00:00
Sometime in the disorder, Officer L. W. Adamie of the 46th Precinct arrested Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, and charged her with burglary for allegedly having "broken a store window at 1 W. 137th St. and taken groceries," according to a story in the Home News. At a subsequent court appearance, the prosecutor reduced the charge against Jacobs to unlawful entry, an offense used when there was not evidence that she had taken any merchandise. However, that charge did not fit with the allegation that Jacobs had broken a window, as the charge in that circumstance would have been malicious mischief. Most likely, Adamie had allegedly seen or found her in the grocery store. Like almost all of those arrested for looting on the eastern boundary of Harlem north of 130th Street, Jacobs lived relatively near the store. Her home was at 56 West 142nd Street, between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenues, five blocks north of the store, which was just off 5th Avenue.
The only information on the circumstances of the arrest was the statement in the Home News, reporting Jacobs' arraignment in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. It is possible that Adamie arrested a second person for looting the store, and that Jacobs had been part of a larger group. Adamie was recorded in the docket book as the officer who arrested Courtney Marsh, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man who appeared in court immediately after Jacobs, facing the same charge of burglary. Like her, he lived north of the store, but further away, at 263 West 152nd Street. Based on other cases recorded in the docket book, the charge of burglary indicated that Marsh was also arrested for looting the grocery store, but he was not mentioned in the Home News story on the arraignments in the court, nor did he appear in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide in which Jacobs appeared (neither of them are in the list published in the New York Evening Journal). Given that absence, and without a complainant recorded in the docket book to confirm a link between the two, Marsh was not included among those arrested during the disorder.
Magistrate Ford remanded Jacobs in custody. When she returned to court the next day, Ford set her bail at $1,500 according to the docket book. Two days later, on March 23, Jacobs was back in court. This was likely when the charge against her was reduced from burglary to unlawful entry; in the docket book, the original charge is crossed out and "Red. to unl. entry" written in its place, in a different handwriting than the original charge. The same handwriting records that on this date Ford sent her to the Court of Special Sessions, which adjudicated misdemeanors such as unlawful entry, reducing her bail to $50. It took a month before Jacobs was tried in the that court. On May 3, the magistrates convicted her, suspended her sentence, and put her on probation, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records. (The prosecution of Marsh followed the same process until March 23, when Magistrate Ford discharged him rather than sending him for trial as he did Jacobs.) -
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2021-04-27T19:22:05+00:00
Amie Taylor arrested
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2024-01-11T23:53:59+00:00
Officer Harmon of the 18th Division arrested Amie Taylor, a twenty-one-year-old Black butcher, near Mario Pravia's candy store at 1953 7th Avenue around 11:30 PM. Harmon and at least one other police officer, Detective Harry Wolf of the 28th Precinct, reported seeing Taylor throw a stone at the store window and take merchandise from the window display. Wolf appeared as a witness on the Magistrates Court affidavit and an arresting officer with Harmon on Taylor's criminal record. Taylor was also not alone. "About 5 others" threw stones at the store and took merchandise at the same time, while Pravia and his wife watched from inside, but police managed to arrest only Taylor. Harmon allegedly found eighteen packets of chewing gum, valued at three cents each, in his possession. The Home News reported that a total of $200 of merchandise was taken from the store.
The New York Evening Journal identified a different officer as making the arrest, Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan, in a vignette within the paper’s narrative of the disorder:
No other sources support that account. The story's framing of the incident in relation to the force used by police did direct attention to the unremarked upon means by which police made arrests. The New York Evening Journal was one of several white newspapers that claimed that police showed restraint in responding to the disorder, and did not shoot at crowds until the after midnight, when looting became widespread. If police drew their revolvers but did not fire them in this "terrific battle," they likely used the gun butts as clubs, as they are in several photographs taken during the disorder.Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan, in charge of all Manhattan detectives, figured in another incident in which police were forced to draw their revolvers, although no shot was fired. While speeding to the trouble zone, Ryan saw a group of men looting a store at 1952 Seventh ave. The detective chief, with his chauffeur, swung into action and attempted to round up the thieves. there was a terrific battle, but Ryan emerged from it with Amie Taylor, 21, as his prisoner.
Crowds had moved down 7th Avenue from West 125th Street around 10 PM. This event was the first this far south on the avenue. Taylor may have come from the opposite direction. He lived south of the store, at 1800 7th Avenue, next to Central Park, in an area home to Black, white, and Spanish speaking residents. Taylor's first name caused confusion about his identity. In the 28th Precinct police blotter, the name is "Annie," and he is identified as female, information likely responsible for Annie also being used in the list of those arrested in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal. While the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book identifies Taylor as male, the clerk recorded the name as Annie on his examination, and on the back of the Magistrates Court affidavit, where it is struck out and Amie written underneath.
When Taylor appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with burglary, Magistrate Renaud remanded him to appear again on March 22. Reporters from the Home News, New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker were in court when Taylor appeared again; the Daily Worker somehow misreported his name as Annie. Renaud sent Taylor to the grand jury, who on April 3 transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, which as it adjudicated misdemeanors, means they must have reduced the charge from burglary to an offense such as unlawful entry or petit larceny. Two weeks later, on April 17, the judges acquitted Taylor, according to the police blotter. Given the low value of what Taylor allegedly stole — a total of 54c — it would not have been surprising to see him receive a minor punishment; but to acquit him the judges would have had to find fault with the evidence against him provided by Officer Harmon and Detective Wolf. The sources are silent on what alternative account of events Taylor offered, but others arrested in the disorder claimed to have been bystanders mistakenly grabbed by police trying to pick offenders out of crowds. It could also be that prosecutors could not prove that the chewing gum found on Taylor had been taken from the store; it was a common enough item, in a large but not inexplicable quantity, that he could have obtained it legitimately elsewhere. -
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2022-12-03T20:38:55+00:00
In court on March 23
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2024-05-31T19:01:18+00:00
While none of those arrested in the disorder faced trial on Saturday, the six convicted of disorderly conduct by Magistrate Renaud on March 20 returned to the Harlem court for sentencing. While the hearing was widely reported in the city’s newspapers, the details hardly warranted that attention. Only the New York Evening Journal story made that clear in commenting that those who appeared were “minor offenders in the outbreak." At the same time, District Attorney Dodge continued to assert that Communists had been responsible for the disorder and could provoke further violence, affirming to reporters his commitment to having the grand jury investigate those who advocated the overthrow of government by force and violence. So even as the legal outcomes indicated the limited extent to which the police response had encompassed the violence of the disorder, Dodge's preoccupations ensured that the grand jury investigation would not address the missing details of what had happened.
Margaret Mitchell, the one woman in the group, drew the most attention, with her reaction in Kress’ store to Rivera being taken away by staff presented by the press as having had a role in starting the disorder. Those stories continued to confuse her with a woman on 125th Street who screamed that Rivera had been killed some time after Mitchell’s arrest. In court she said “sorry.” That would be the only public statement Mitchell would make about the disorder, as she refused repeated requests to testify at one of the MCCH’s public hearings in the following weeks. Her silence worked to disassociate her from disorder, perhaps to protect the respectability of her family or to avoid putting herself at odds with police and white authorities. While other women shopping in the store did speak to MCCH investigators, they also ultimately did not testify. Their silence contributed, in combination with the apparent unwillingness of police to arrest women, to historians overlooking the role of Black women in the early hours of the disorder.
Magistrate Renaud determined that Mitchell had not intended to provoke violence, describing her actions as not “malicious.” He was likely encouraged in that conclusion by Mitchell’s lawyer, Sidney Christian, a prominent West Indian attorney. At the same time, the magistrate evidently did believe Mitchel had contributed to the disorder in Kress’ store. That was not immediately obvious in the sentence he imposed of three days in the Workhouse or a fine of $10, a lesser sentence than he gave the others who appeared in court that day. However, Mitchell's sentence proved to be more punitive than those given to most of the others arrested for inciting crowds: six of the seven received suspended sentences, the other a month in the Workhouse. In Mitchell’s case, she (or her family) was able to mitigate that difference by paying the fine. That they had the financial resources to do so sets Mitchell apart from most of those arrested in the disorder, reinforcing the sense that the politics of respectability motivated her silence.
The other member of the group being sentenced who would have stood out was Leo Smith, a white man, but he did not receive the attention given to Mitchell. The Hearst newspapers, New York Evening Journal and New York American, did not mention him at all, avoiding distracting from their emphasis on white victims of violence. The other newspapers simply identified his race. Smith’s attorney apparently did not repeat the claims that the disorder had been a race riot started by Black residents, so not something a white man could have been involved in, that had provoked the Magistrate and Black spectators at his first appearance on March 20. Like three Black men who appeared with him, John Hawkins, James Bright, and Arthur Bennett, he received a sentence of one month in the Workhouse. Newspapers reported they had all broken windows, even though they would have been convicted of malicious mischief, not disorderly conduct, if police had evidence to support that charge. There was no suggestion that he had broken windows in Black rather than white businesses or otherwise been in conflict with Black residents during the disorder, so his presence among those convicted did not undermine efforts to present the disorder as “not a race riot,” but added to the variety of those involved in the disorder and to economic rather than racial motivations. The three men’s sentences of a month in the Workhouse were among the more punitive given to those accused of breaking windows, only half of whom served terms of one to six months.
The final man sentenced, Rivers Wright, received a term of only ten days. He had been arrested for assault, but as he had only been charged with disorderly conduct in court, police clearly did not have evidence he had participated in such violence. While not released, his short imprisonment cast him as someone police encountered in the crowds on the streets, not a participant in assaults or attacks on businesses.
Up in the Washington Heights court, unreported in the press, another of those arrested in the disorder joined those in the Harlem court in being removed from the ranks of those precipitating violence. Elva Jacobs was returned to court to have the charge against her reduced from burglary to unlawful entry. In other words, police only had evidence that she had entered a store, not that she had broken in or taken any merchandise. She was sent to the Court of Special Sessions for trial as that charge was still a misdemeanor. However, the magistrate set bail for Jacobs at only $50, the lowest for anyone arrested during the disorder.
This page references:
- 1 2021-09-19T23:29:30+00:00 Consolidated Laws of the State of New York, Vol. 4. Penal law to real property law. Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1909. 10 plain 2024-02-24T14:43:35+00:00