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Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 63, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
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The police investigation
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2023-06-17T02:41:11+00:00
At 1:20 AM, Detective John O'Brien was assigned to investigate the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs. A detective based at the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, he was at the station at Lenox Avenue and West 118th Street at the time. Even though Harlem was still in disorder, the police department was following its procedure of investigating shootings. O'Brien immediately went to Harlem Hospital with his partner, Detective Foley and a stenographer. He found a stenographer from the Homicide squad who had already recorded a statement Hobbs gave to two detectives from that squad. Those officers were already at the hospital when the boy arrived and, having been told someone had been shot, took the statement because the boy was seriously injured and might have died. Detective Martin's questioning of Hobbs had taken place in the x-ray room, while an attendant set up the x-ray machine. Patrolman McInerney was not present, according to the stenographer. Asked what happened, Hobbs said "Some one threw a brick into a window and I was shot by a cop." After asking about other details, the detective repeated the question. "I was standing in the street and someone threw a brick and I ran," Hobbs responded. Even though that statement had been taken, O'Brien also questioned the boy, telling a hearing of the MCCH that he thought he "would get something additional."
O'Brien also talked with Patrolman McInerney, but did not write down his statement. In the Complaint Report he completed later that day, O'Brien summarized what he had been told: McInerney had seen Hobbs break a window in the automobile supply shop, take merchandise and run north on 7th Avenue. The patrolman pursued the boy, called on him to stop, and when he did not, shot him. O'Brien did not ask about the automobile accessories Hobbs had allegedly taken, which McInerney did not have with him at the time. He was more concerned with getting to the scene of the shooting. Around fifteen minutes after he arrived, O'Brien left Harlem Hospital. Although the Hobbs family were at the hospital around that time, the detective never crossed paths with them.
Arriving at 7th Avenue and 128th Street around 1:45 AM, O'Brien found bits of glass in the street, together with bricks, stones and other heavy objects. At the automobile supply store four of the display windows were broken, as well as one of the windows in the door. What O'Brien did not find were what he was looking for, witnesses to the shooting. It seems unlikely he found no one on the street, as many in the crowd on the corner when Hobbs was shot had been there for several hours at that time. However, the detective kept no record of who he spoke to. After about thirty minutes, O'Brien called the station. At that time he was assigned another case to investigate: August Miller, a white man injured during the disorder, at Joint Disease Hospital. He should not have been investigating two cases at the same time, O'Brien later told a hearing of the MCCH. Nonetheless, that was what he had been told to do, so he and Foley went to that hospital.
The next day, O'Brien returned to the scene of the shooting to again seek witnesses. He spoke to those he found in the stores and to residents, again without success. (He had equally little success finding witnesses to what had happened to August Miller, at West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue). With those efforts, O'Brien apparently decided that if there any witnesses they would "show up at the police station."
By March 28, O'Brien had taken statements from McInerney and his partner Patrolman Watterson. A Supplementary Complaint Report he filed on that date quoted more detailed narratives of the shooting. McInerney stated that he had been in a patrol car when the noise of smashing glass drew his attention to the automobile supply store. After Hobbs failed to stop, the patrolman said he fired one shot only, which caused Hobbs to fall. The boy also "held in his hands objects which were later found near where he fell." Watterson's testimony put Hobbs inside the window, passing out items, when the officers' attention was drawn to the store. What Watterson did after McInerney jumped out of the car to pursue those outside the store was not included in the report. However. O'Brien did add that both officers stated that "unknown colored persons were throwing bricks and other objects at them" as Hobbs was being chased.
Sometime in the following days O'Brien interviewed Louis Eisenberg, the owner of the automobile supply store. He had had to wait to speak to him; McInerney had not. Eisenberg told the detective that the patrolman had talked to him on March 20 and had him identify items that the officer claimed he found on the ground by Hobbs. That O'Brien was asked in a hearing of the MCCH, "Did McInerey get any articles or automobile accessories from the store the next morning?," indicated that others thought the patrolman had gone to Eisenberg seeking items he could use to defend himself. What O'Brien learned from Eisenberg was that when a brick had been thrown through the store window around 10:00 PM, he and three employees had fled out the rear of the store, and remained in the rear yard for some time before flagging down a taxi to escape the crowds. They were gone long before McInerney shot Hobbs. Eisenberg also gave O'Brien "a long list of stuff taken," which he included in the Supplementary Complaint Report quoting the storeowner's statement. Although unrecorded in that report, the detective told an MCCH hearing that he had asked shopkeepers when other windows were broken, and was told none were damaged at 10:00 PM (which is not what they later told the MCCH's investigator).
The death of Lloyd Hobbs on the evening of March 30 caused O'Brien to put the case in the hands of the District Attorney's office. When he called with the news, an ADA told him to have "all witnesses" at their office on April 1. O'Brien arranged for McInerney, Watterson and Eisenberg to appear. After hearing from them, ADA Saul Price had O'Brien deliver subpeonas to Russell Hobbs and his father to appear on April 3. Price told James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, that he delayed their hearing until after Lloyd's funeral on April 2. Delivering the subpeonas was Detective O'Brien's first contact with the Hobbs family, which he later explained to the MCCH was because he was unaware that Russell had been with Lloyd and thus a witness. When Russell and Lawyer Hobbs gave their statements to the ADA, the police investigation intersected with the MCCH investigation. Lawyer Hobbs said he knew of five eye-witnesses to the shooting but that he did not know their addresses. He must also have told Price that the men would be testifying at the MCCH hearing three days later. The ADA gave O'Brien subpoenas for the witnesses and told him to go to the hearing to serve them. -
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Police in front of Kress' store
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Although Inspector Di Martini told a MCCH hearing that he saw no “indications of further trouble” when he left 125th Street at 6:00 PM, he did station some officers at Kress’ store — "Sergeant Bauer, two foot policeman, one mounted policeman in the rear to prevent a riot” according to his testimony, or “a Sergeant and four patrolmen” on the 125th Street side and “a mounted patrolman and a foot patrolman” on the 124th Street side according to his report to the police commissioner immediately after the disorder. A patrolman stationed in front of the store told an MCCH hearing that there were 10–15 officers there around 6:15 PM; that total may have included officers on regular assignment on 125th Street. However many police were present, one was Patrolman Shannon, who like Bauer, had been inside the store earlier.
Patrolman Moran, who arrived after Kress' store was closed, described being instructed to “keep the crowd moving in front of the store.” He insisted he did so by requesting them to “move on”; the lawyers who questioned him at a hearing of the MCCH alleged he used force, pushing people and using his nightstick. By around 6:15 PM, Moran said the front of the store was “pretty clear” while a crowd walked up and down on the opposite side of the street. Louise Thompson told the MCCH that there “little knots of people” on the street (although she wrote in New Masses that the crowd in front of the store numbered in the hundreds, that across the street in the thousands). Two men set up a stepladder in front of the store. A Black man named James Parton speaking briefly and then, as Daniel Miller tried to speak to the crowd, a window in the store was broken and Patrolman Shannon arrested Miller. Outnumbered as they were by the crowd, police made the arrest following the practice of focusing on the leaders of crowds. Other officers then cleared the crowds from in front of the store, moving them first across West 125th Street and then towards 7th Avenue. Thompson testified that “police got rough and would not let anyone stop on the street” and wrote “the cops who were becoming ugly in their attempts to break up the increasing throngs of people.” About fifteen minutes later Patrolman Irwin Young, assisted by several other officers, arrested Harry Gordon when he climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd. They bundled him into a radio car and took him to the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street. Again, police were trying to control the crowd by arresting men they perceived to be leaders, possibly identifying them as Communists with whom they regularly clashed. They had not arrested Parton, the Black man who introduced both Miller and Gordon. A few minutes later, Patrolman Shannon, Sgt. Bauer, and Patrolman Moran were involved in arresting two white men and a Black man after they refused to stop picketing in front of Kress’ store. Those men carried placards that identified them as members of an organization associated with the Communist Party, which again likely contributed to the decision to arrest them.
After the arrests, police continued to move on people who stopped on the sidewalks around Kress’ store — and perhaps clear some who had gone into the street itself, as the New York Herald Tribune reported the street reopened after being blocked to automobiles and streetcars. By 7:00 PM, the crowds had been pushed to the avenues (some of those on 8th Avenue for a short time moved to attack the rear entrance of Kress’ store, where two police officers were hit by objects thrown by those trying to get into the store). Additional officers who arrived seem to have been key to that success. “15 patrolmen, six mounted police and uniformed men of five radio cars” were on 125th Street by that time according to the New York Evening Journal. Inspector Di Martini also returned, around 7:15 PM.
The Daily News published a photograph of the disorder that showed police officers engaging with crowds. The caption for the image, which captures the largest crowd to appear in a photograph of the disorder, described only the actions of one of the two uniformed patrolmen visible: "The raincoated policeman swings in against the angry crowd as his comrade tries to hold the police line. One colored man is lifting his arm as if to restrain the cop.” The use of force captured here is at odds with Patrolman Moran's insistence that officers simply asked crowds to move. While uniformed patrolmen carried nightsticks as part of their standard equipment, detectives in plainclothes were issued them for riot duty, according to the New York Evening Journal. As well as hitting people with their batons, police officers used the butts of their revolvers and riot guns as clubs. The Times Union directly contradicted Moran's claim police did not use those weapons to move the crowds in front of the store: "Police night sticks swung and soon the mob was dispersed." Only the Daily News reported police fired their guns to move the crowd, describing with unlikely precision that five shots were fired in the air. Inspector Di Martini told a hearing of the MCCH that he heard no gunshots on 125th Street, so if those shots were fired, it was before he arrived around 7:15 PM. The caption makes no mention of where the photograph was taken; the group appears to be on the sidewalk, perhaps near Kress’ store or later near 7th or 8th Avenue. Unmentioned is the horse’s head visible on the right side of image, indicating the presence of a mounted patrolman.
Mounted patrolmen, part of the police crowd control force, were reportedly deployed “to ride people off the sidewalk,” Louise Thompson testified. Lt. Battle told Langston Hughes that "an officer on a horse can be more effective than twenty patrolmen on foot," as the horses are "trained to brush a crowd back without stepping on anyone." When a reporter for the Afro-American arrived around 7:30 PM, “mounted police rode the sidewalk [in front of the store] keeping the crowd back.” Charles Romney likewise told a hearing of the MCCH that he saw "men on horseback were on the sidewalk to trample people." The New York Times and Daily News opted to describe the mounted police in more sensational terms as ‘charging’ the crowds. In the New Masses, Thompson presented a similar picture, juxtaposing the mounted officers with women protesting in terms echoing those used by other Communists: “Brigades of mounted police cantered down the street, breaking into a gallop where the crowds were thickest. Horses' hoofs shot sparks as they mounted on the glass-littered pavements. The crowds fighting doggedly, gave way. The women more stubborn even than the men, shouted to their companions, 'What kind of men are you-drag them down off those horses.' The women shook their fists at the police. 'Cossacks! Cossacks!' they shouted here in Harlem on 125th Street.” Years later, interviewed for her autobiography, Thompson identified many of the mounted patrolmen as Black officers and described the women as actually fighting with them. Another Afro-American journalist simply described the mounted police as "somewhat rough" during the early hours of the disorder. Whatever approach they took, it was mounted police that the Afro-American credited with keeping large groups away from Kress and on the avenues.
While police cleared 125th Street of large groups and stopped any more assembling there, they did not — or could not — close it off. Instead, “they patrolled 124th and 125th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues constantly to prevent more groups from assembling,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. Thompson testified that she walked up and down 125th Street after the arrests, but was only able to stop and speak with members of groups on the corner of 8th Avenue. Charles Romney told a hearing of the MCCH that when he arrived on 125th Street around 7:30 PM, walking from Lenox to 7th Avenue, he “noticed a crowd of police with sticks on their hands telling the crowd to go on.” Given the small numbers of police, those patrols did not protect the stores on the block from attack: Thompson testified windows were broken in almost every store between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM (although she was away from the area from 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM); and Romney likewise testified that at 7:30 PM "there were a lot of windows smashed." The New York Herald Tribune reported the same timeline, that “by 8 p.m. one or more windows in virtually every 125th Street store front in the block had been smashed.” Around that time the situation began to change as additional officers arrived, reinforcements that made it possible for police to set up a perimeter around 125th Street and keep people away from the stores.
As with other events at the beginning of the disorder, the most detailed and consistent evidence is the testimony of individuals present on 125th Street in hearings of the MCCH. Newspaper stories were generally vague and inconsistent about how many police were on the scene at what times and how they responded to the crowds, and tended to exaggerate the size of the crowds and the number of people on the street. It does seem credible that several hundred — and perhaps as many as 2,000–3,000 people — were in the area during this time, although not gathered in a single group. This was a larger number than gathered in any one place later in the disorder, contributing to the different way that police responded.