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Oscar Leacock arrested
Leacock and Henry were two of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60).
Leacock lived at 39 West 118th Street, near 5th Avenue. Henry lived at the opposite end of the same street, at 313 West 118th Street, near 8th Avenue. Henry was the youngest person arrested during the disorder. There was no indication how he and Henry came to be together on March 19. Leacock lived in an area that housed a mix of Black and Spanish-speaking residents. In the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book he was recorded as Black; in his examination in the court he gave his birthplace as Brazil, making him one of the very few among those arrested who was not identified as born in the United States or the West Indies (the transcription of the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded his birthplace as the United States, but also misspelled his name as Ossor Leasode).
Zelvin later identified the jewelry police reportedly found on the men as coming from his store. In the charge against Leacock and Henry the value of the jewelry is initially typed as $100, but then struck out and $75 handwritten in its place. The grand jury reduced the felony burglary charge against the men to a misdemeanor, a decision that likely reflected the lack of evidence that the men had broken into the store that a charge of burglary required. Given that they had been arrested with merchandise in their possession, the grand jury likely charged them with petit larceny; a felony larceny charge was not an option as the jewelry they had allegedly taken was worth less than $100. Zelvin appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 21 to charge one additional man with burglary, a thirty-one-year-old Black man named Henry Goodwin. That charge was reduced to petit larceny, suggesting he too had allegedly taken jewelry worth less than $100.
There was no newspaper coverage of the looting; Leacock and Henry appeared only in the two most comprehensive lists of those arrested, published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal among those charged with burglary. The details come from the District Attorney's case file; as the grand jury sent the cases to the Court of Special Sessions, the only information was from the Magistrate Court affidavit. Although arrested together, the men appeared in the Harlem Magistrate Court at different times, Leacock on March 20 with most of those arrested during the disorder, and Henry not until the next day. Despite Officer Astel's report that the men had confessed at the time of their arrest, they pled not guilty in court. Leacock was one of only eighteen of those arrested in the disorder represented by a lawyer, in his case H. Hirsch of 9 Sylvan Place. No information could be found on the lawyer. Both men appeared again on March 22, when the Magistrate sent them to the grand jury. It was not until April 2 that the grand jury heard their case, and sent them to the Court of Special Sessions not the Court of General Sessions. The 28th Precinct Police Blotter is the only source for the outcome of those trials, that the judges convicted both men, Leacock on April 18 and Henry on April 17. The judges suspended Leacock's sentence, but sent Henry to the House of Refuge, a juvenile reformatory on Randalls Island (which would close less than a month later, on May 11).
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This page references:
- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36, Departmental Correspondence. Box 34, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- New York Penal Law, § 404, 407: Burglary in third degree.
- New York Penal Law, § 1298-1299: Petit Larceny
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- District Attorney's Closed Case Files, 204032 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives)