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Preparation for the public hearing on May 18
Although there are no reports from James Tartar from this period, the narrative summary of his investigation of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs in the Frazier Papers described additional efforts to find information. Tartar presented that investigation as his own initiative: "Your investigator, feeling that the case was of such great importance as an example to show how the citizens of Harlem are murdered by police officers and then charged with having committed a crime in order to justify the officer's act, sought to gather more witnesses if there were any." His survey of the neighborhood found four new witnesses, Tartar reported. However, Clarence Wilson would testify in the hearing on May 18 that he had encountered one of those witnesses, Marshall Pfifer, while looking for another man on the day of the hearing. As an unnamed member of the MCCH had sent Wilson to bring the other three witnesses to the hearing, Tartar could have identified the other three witnesses. However, Wilson had been sent to Lawyer Hobbs, the boy's father, for the men's addresses. Hobbs had provided the MCCH with the names of the three witnesses who had testified on April 6, so he seems more likely to have found this second group than Tartar.
What Tartar clearly did do was "get information concerning the whereabouts of the stolen items" that Patrolman McInerney claimed Lloyd Hobbs had looted and dropped when shot. An interview with ADA Price confirmed that McInerney brought the horn and socket set to the DA's office on April 1st, while a visit to the Property Clerk's office at Police headquarters revealed that those items were not delivered there until April 8, 1935. There are no records of those investigations in Hays' files; Tartar mentioned them in his narrative summary.
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This page references:
- James H. Tartar, Jr, "The Shooting of Lloyd Hobbs by Patrolman John F. McInerney," Sub-Committee on Crime and Police Treatment, Harlem Survey: Crime, Box 128, Folder 2, E. Franklin Frazier Papers (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University).
- Public Hearings - Riot (May 1935), 29, Subject Files, Box 410, Folder 7 (Roll 195), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).