This page was created by Anonymous.
Patrolman Harry Whittington assaulted
After 10 PM, when the crowd moved away from 125th Street, police used 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, but those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less travelled 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 travelled on the outside of the vehicle.
As well as the detail that Whittington was assaulted while riding on an emergency truck, the DM described the attack as a “sniping.”
Whittington appeared in lists of the injured published by the Am, HN, HT, NYDN, NYJ and NYP, as well as the story published in the DM. Although the Am and the HT reported he was treated at Harlem Hospital, he does not appear in either the list of admissions or ambulance call-outs. The HN and NYJ describe his injuries simply as lacerations; the other reports specify a head injury.