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Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 89, 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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At 1:20 AM On March 20, 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. 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 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 was 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 store owner'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 investigator).
The death of Lloyd Hobbs on the evening of March 30 prompted 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 subpoenas 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 subpoenas 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 eyewitnesses 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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The MCCH investigation of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs
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The MCCH learned of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs from the New York Urban League. His father, Lawyer Hobbs, went several times to the 28th Precinct police station on West 123rd Street trying to get the name and shield number of the patrolman who had shot Lloyd, which the family had been too upset to get when they encountered him at Harlem Hospital. He also wanted to file a complaint against the officer. Although Hobbs "was told by the inspector that he could not file a complaint because he did not witness the affair, and knew nothing about it," no one at the precinct mentioned that Detective O'Brien was investigating the shooting. As police kept him "running up and down with no satisfaction," Lawyer Hobbs also went to the offices of the New York Urban League on West 136th Street. The Urban League was a social work and civil rights organization focused on the social and economic conditions of Black residents. James Hubert, the executive director, told Hobbs that they would look into it and to come back later. Although Hobbs did not mention it, someone at the Urban League also recorded his statement. Hobbs recounted what his son Russell had told him, that the boys had stopped to see what a crowd was looking at when a patrolman appeared telling them to "break it up." The boys joined everyone else in running; the patrolman then shot Lloyd. Hobbs also added the exchange he and his wife had with the patrolman at Harlem Hospital, when he told them he had shot the boy because he had not stopped when told to. Lawyer Hobbs returned on Monday, March 25, to find that Hubert had no results for him. However, three days later, on March 28, the Urban League sent a letter sent to the MCCH, which enclosed the statement by Hobbs and asked for ”cooperation” and “assistance.” The MCCH had appealed for information in the statement it gave the press after its first meeting on March 25.
The MCCH responded to the information from the Urban League by including “Mr Lloyd Hobbs and family" on the list of eyewitnesses asked to give testimony to the first public hearing on March 30. Near the end of the day-long hearing, as Captain Rothengast was being questioned about who had been shot during the disorder, the chairman, Arthur Garfield Hays, asked did he "know anything specifically about a boy by the name of Hobbs?" Hays then had Mrs. Carrie Hobbs stand up, to ask her if her son Russell was present, and called the boy up to testify. Rothengast knew nothing beyond what was in the arrest report, so Hays excused him so Russell could be questioned. His testimony, or at least as recorded by the stenographer, was a somewhat garbled version of what he had told his parents. He talked of stopping on 125th Street, not 7th Avenue, and the patrolmen running up on the pavement on a horse, not in a patrol car. Few newspapers stories about the hearing mentioned Russell's testimony, even as they reported Lloyd's death later that night. Hays, however, did pay attention to the testimony, not only because Lloyd had died. Hays made investigating deaths during the disorder and victims of police brutality the next focus of his subcommittee's hearings.
On April 1, Hays wrote to the MCCH's secretary, Eunice Carter, telling her to have the Hobbs family attend the next hearing, on April 6, and to "have our investigators find out all they can about [the Hobbs case]." He also had an attorney at his law firm assisting him, Hyman Glickstein, write to Police Inspector Di Martini and the superintendent of Harlem Hospital to obtain their records relating to Lloyd Hobbs. Carter assigned the investigation to James Tartar, one of the staff who had sought witnesses to the causes of the disorder the previous week. He did what Detective O'Brien had not; he interviewed the Hobbs family "as the first source," having the advantage of knowing that Russell had been with Lloyd when Mcinerney shot him. Tartar complied a "social and economic history of the family" and took statements from Russell and his mother. He also learned from Lawyer Hobbs that he had been contacted by two eyewitnesses, Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore.
Tartar met with the men at 213 West 128th Street, the apartment building in which they both lived, and recorded "their story." Malloy said he had walked past the automobile store almost two hours before McInerney alleged he had heard the window breaking and Hobbs taking items and the windows had been entirely broken with no merchandise remaining inside them. Not long before the Hobbs brothers arrived, he and Moore had come out to get ice cream for their wives, who were in the Moores apartment. As they arrived at the northwest corner of 128th and 7th Avenue, they saw a "commotion" on the block of 7th Avenue to the south. As they watched, people began to move toward them, breaking into a run. When Lloyd Hobbs turned west on 128th Street, they saw the patrolman shoot the boy without calling on him to halt. Nothing fell to the ground when the shot hit the boy. They also contradicted the officers' claim that objects had been thrown at them, saying that seeing both men had guns caused people in the area to stay away.
On April 2, Tartar also spoke with ADA Saul Price, who told him "that the officer had not been exonerated, due to the fact that he was waiting to hear the story from the Hobbs family, particularly Russell Hobbs." An interview with the police department's ballistic expert produced no information as he had not received the bullet that hit Lloyd. Tartar's visit to Harlem Hospital was more successful, as Dr. Steinholz shared the boy's chart, which the investigator copied. An additional interview with Inspector Di Martini not mentioned in Tartar's report allowed him to make a copy of a report to Commissioner Valentine from commander of the 28th Precinct, Captain George Mulholland, on the subject of "The shooting of prisoner by Patrolman." It described McInerney observing Hobbs leaving the store window "with several objects in his hands," giving that evidence a far more prominent and specific place than they had in O'Brien's reports. Threats to the patrolman also received more attention, with allegations that "the colored people in the immediate vicinity threw bottles and other objects from the windows with the intent to strike the officer” and that the officers "dispersed a large crowd of colored men and women who had threatened them" before they could leave the scene.
Tartar was among those who testified at the MCCH's April 6 public hearing, with Russell Hobbs and both his parents, Malloy and Moore, and a third man who had been with them when Lloyd Hobbs was shot, Samuel Pitts. Pitts' name was added in pencil to the MCCH's typewritten witness list, indicating they had not known he would be present. He likely came with Malloy and Moore, although he lived some distance from them, at 112 West 127th Street. Pitts witnessed the shooting from the same corner as those men, where he had been since about 10:00 PM, "looking after people and cops shooting[, and] talking about the riot." Russell's testimony was more in line with his statement than the previous week. Having continued to run up 7th Avenue fearing a beating by police, he had not, however, seen his brother shot. His parents testified that when they found Lloyd in the hospital, he told them, “Mother, the officer shot me for nothing. I was not doing anything.” McInerney, guarding the boy, said "Why didn't you halt when I told you to?" Malloy, Moore, and Pitts, who all had seen the shooting, described the same details. Arthur Garfield Hays had also expected Patrolman McInerney to testify, but although he was at the hearing, District Attorney Dodge had refused to allow officers involved in cases in the legal system to give evidence. The police officer who did testify, also not on the MCCH list of witnesses, was Detective Thomas McCormick, the stenographer who recorded Lloyd's statement at Harlem Hospital. He read that statement, which echoed what the boy had told his parents when they found him in the hospital: he had done nothing but run when the patrol car pulled up but McInerney had shot him. The hearing also heard from medical staff from Harlem Hospital. The case of Lloyd Hobbs was the first about which Hays asked them. All Dr. Arthur Logan could tell him was the nature of the boy's injuries; he had not said anything in the doctor's presence and no items had been found in his clothing. While the Black press (except for the New York Amsterdam News) highlighted the testimony on the case, among white publications only the radical Daily Worker and New Masses gave it similar prominence in reporting the hearing, and only the New York Times and Home News among the mainstream white press even mentioned Lloyd Hobbs.
Hays announced plans to continue hearing evidence about the killing of Lloyd Hobbs at his subcommittee's next public hearing, in two weeks, the New York Times, New York Age, and Afro-American reported. However, Detective O'Brien delivered subpoenas to the three eyewitnesses after they appeared before the MCCH. Two days later, ADA Saul Price drew the men into the police investigation.