This page is referenced by:

• 1 2023-06-14T14:50:23+00:00 The MCCH investigation of the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs continues 106 plain 2024-02-02T22:08:14+00:00 James Tartar, the MCCH's investigator, described two charges as the focus of the MCCH's effort to "get the facts" about the shooting:

  1. Patrolman John F. McInerney deliberately shot Lloyd Hobbs without provocation
  2. That Lloyd Hobbs was charged with burglary in order to justify the policeman's claim that he was forced to shoot in order to effect an arrest

  Although Hays expected all three police witnesses to answer those charges on April 20, only Patrolman Watterson and Detective O'Brien testified. While no explanation was offered at the hearing for Patrolman McInerney's absence, Tartar recorded that the officer had been "granted a sick leave." Hays required that he be at the next hearing as his absence “gave the public a bad impression,” according to the Home News, but his leave extended until at least June 7, after the subcommittee final hearing, so he never testified publicly. The testimony of his partner, Patrolman Watterson, did not entirely answer the first charge about which the MCCH sought facts. He had not left the patrol car. While he had seen a man come out of the automobile store window with items in his hand, he could not identify him as Hobbs. McInerney told him it was Hobbs. Watterson heard his partner call out to the men outside the store to stop, but did not see what happened after that. He was reversing the patrol car to follow McInerney and the men as they ran north on 7th Avenue. He turned the car into 128th Street, and then saw his partner standing over Hobbs and a horn and socket set on the ground next to the boy. Contradicting the police reports, he testified that objects were not thrown at him and McInerney until after his partner shot the boy, when a crowd began to gather. Watterson then grabbed his rifle, leveled it at the crowd and told them to come no further while McInerney loaded Hobbs into the patrol car.
  
  Watterson's testimony was cut short when Hays took exception to heckling from an audience member, who had called out, "Will the dog bark a little louder, please?” Hays had warned, in his letter to Dodge after the grand jury's decision, that, "One of the most ominous features which emerges from the evidence we have taken appears to be a lack of confidence the people of Harlem have in the police, and their feeling that Negroes cannot expect justice." The heckling, hissing, and booing with which the audience reacted to the police witnesses that appeared in public hearings as the MCCH investigation of the killing continued bore out that warning.
  
  While Watterson did not return to the stand after Hays adjourned the hearing to regain order, Detective O'Brien later appeared to testify about his investigation of the shooting of Hobbs. He was questioned about the items that Hobbs had allegedly stolen, which were not recorded in the police blotter or the report sent from the 28th Precinct to Commissioner Valentine that Tartar had obtained. O'Brien testified that while McInerey mentioned the stolen items when they spoke at the hospital immediately after Hobbs was shot, he did not actually see them until the patrolman brought them to the District Attorney's office on April 1. ILD lawyers questioning the detective seized on that twelve-day interval to suggest McInerney could have obtained the horn and socket set after he shot the boy to justify his actions. Hays asked for the items to be fingerprinted to see if Hobbs had actually touched them.
  
  After the hearing, Tartar made further attempts to identify eyewitnesses and "to get information concerning the whereabouts of the stolen items." 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. That meant that the patrolman had those items in his possession for nineteen days after the shooting. Hays questioned O'Brien about that information at the subcommittee's final hearing on May 18, to which the detective brought the horn and socket set. O'Brien said he did not know when they had been turned in, but countered that they were described in the arrest record. As Tartar later explained to E. Franklin Frazier, who led the MCCH's research, the arrest record was a book containing a form that was filled in as the next record keeping step after a summary was entered into the police blotter, the record the MCCH investigator had seen. O'Brien had made no mention of the arrest record in his previous testimony or the reports he filed as part of his investigation. He also testified that no fingerprints had been found on the items — or more precisely, that only smudges had been found.
  
  Three additional eyewitnesses also testified in the MCCH hearing on May 18. Tartar reported that they had been found as a result of a survey of the neighborhood, implying that he had found them. However, at the hearing, Clarence Wilson testified that he had obtained the addresses of two witnesses from Lawyer Hobbs. One, John Bennett, did not respond when called on, but Wilson encountered another man who was an eyewitness, Marshall Pfifer, when looking for Joseph Hughes, the second witness. Hughes was too sick to attend the hearing, so Wilson recounted what he had seen. Warren Wright, the third man, provided no details of how he had been found. All three men told the same story as Malloy, Moore, and Pitts had in the earlier hearing: Hobbs was not carrying anything and McInerney had not called out for him to stop before shooting him. Wright and Hughes saw those events from different perspectives than the earlier witnesses: Wright was at the entrance to the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue, south of the automobile supply store, while Hughes was in 201 West 128th Street, toward which Hobbs was running when McInerney shot him. (Pfifer was on the same corner across 128th Street from the store as Malloy, Moore and Pitts, and, like the later man, had been there since around 10:00 PM.) Around April 20, Tartar also interviewed the owners of the businesses on the same block as the automobile supply store, to obtain information on when their windows were broken and what losses they suffered, providing some support for the testimony that the automobile supply store's windows were broken before Hobbs arrived offered by Pfifer, as well as Malloy and Moore.
  
  The audience for the results of the MCCCH's continued investigation was clearly not simply the public. Hays informed the hearing on May 18 that Commissioner Valentine had told him the police department was still investigating the case, a reference to exchange of letters between the men on May 2 and May 3. Hays' letter made clear that even before the new witnesses testified, he felt that the "large number of witnesses" who had testified proved that Hobbs had not been looting notwithstanding the grand jury's response to their evidence. During the hearing, Williams raised that efforts were being made "to get this case to go to the Grand Jury" again, which likely included ILD lawyers. Hays responded that the case was "now being taken up with the District Attorney."