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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

Released (27)

Twenty-seven of those prosecuted were released at some point in the legal process, just over one in four of those whose for who the outcome is known. An additional man, Hashi Mohammed, was released on one of the charges made against him but convicted on a second charge. An additional three individuals were released without being taken to court, as likely were another ten arrested for looting whose police records record an unknown disposition.

Individuals released by the police rather than by the courts had likely been spectators rather than participants in the disorder, arrested when police dispersed crowds, a practice that would also be evident in later disorders in Detroit and Harlem in 1943. So too likely were all but one of those discharged in the Magistrates courts. While arrested for a cross-section of types of violence that characterized the disorder, assault, breaking windows and looting, as well as unknown activities, they were charged with disorderly conduct in court. The variety of acts encompassed by that charge fell between being a bystander and a participant in acts of violence and theft, including "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," acting to "annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others," refusing "to move on when ordered by the police," and causing a crowd to collect. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge them with the offense for which they had been arrested for, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence that associated them with those acts. Possible scenarios might involve acting in a way that police interpreted as indicating an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior.

The release of individuals charged with disorderly conduct could result from police having grabbed members of a crowd who they could not associate at all with acts for which they had been arrested, as appeared to be the case with Viola Woods, who the magistrate released because of a "lack of evidence" according to a report in the New York Amsterdam News. He was likely encouraged in that decision by a lawyer representing Woods, one of a small number of recorded as representing those arrested in the disorder. (She was the only one of the six Black women prosecuted to be acquitted). While there are no newspaper reports of the other discharges - in fact the white press generally only mentioned convictions or the progress prosecutions to superior courts - Aubrey Patterson also had a lawyer. However, most of these released had been arrested in two groups, suggesting that the alleged incidents in those cases might not have happened at all. One set of arrests occurred after what several newspapers initially reported as a sniper attack on police, which led officers to target a group of Black men standing in a doorway. The men did try to avoid being taken into custody, going into the building, on to the roof, and in one case unsuccessfully trying to jump to a neighboring rooftop. However, no weapons were recovered from the four arrested men, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson, and no evidence was found of any gun shots. A note in the docket book that the form of disorderly conduct charged was acting to "annoy" suggests that police nonetheless alleged the men were responsible for the noise to which officers reacted. Their discharge indicated that Magistrate Ford was unconvinced. Police arrested three other men, Jacob Bonaparte, Oscar Austin and Sam Nicholas, for allegedly looting the same store store. While it is possible that police could have apprehended multiple members of a crowd at the scene without any of those men being associated with either damaging the store or taking merchandise, it seems more likely that the attack on the store did not take place, at least not at the time when the men were arrested.

The release of a proportion of those police charged with disorderly conduct was not out of the ordinary; the proportion, however, appeared to be different after the disorder. In the prior week, magistrates released forty-four of the eighty men and women charged with disorderly conduct in the Harlem court, including a group of thirty on March 15 and another group of nine on March 18, suggesting a police practice of arresting members of crowds to get them off the street. In comparison, those released after the disorder having been charged with disorderly conduct represented a smaller proportion, ten of forty-nine men and women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, magistrates appeared to be more willing to consider those on Harlem's streets to be disorderly rather than spectators (even as the sentences imposed in all levels of the courts indicated that saw only a limited amount of violence in the actions of those convicted).

The very small proportion of the cases sent to the grand jury that it voted to dismiss, only two of forty-five, suggested a similar willingness to treat those arrested as contributing to the disorder even if police lacked evidence to support the initial charges made against them, particularly when put alongside the high proportion of misdemeanor rather than felony charges for which they voted. A misdemeanor charge was not what prosecutors sought when they sent a case to the grand jury. Individuals could be sent for trial on misdemeanor charges direct from the magistrates court: twenty of those arrested in the disorder were dealt with in that way. In not charging twenty-two individuals referred to them with a felony, the grand jury determined that police had not gathered evidence to support the initial charge. But rather then dismiss the charges entirely and release those individuals, they instead reduced the charges, sending them to the Court of Special Sessions for prosecution as nonetheless involved in the disorder. One case that the grand jury did dismiss involved a form of evidence unusual in the prosecutions after the disorder. Clifford Mitchell had been arrested the evening after the disorder, in his home, for looting. While there was no mention of how police came to make the arrest, items found in Mitchell's home that Louis Levy identified as coming from his store were identified in the legal record as evidence against him. [not clear what those items were, how distinctive and how established had not been obtained at some other time than the disorder. (Daughty Shavos, arrested in similar circumstances, was sent to the Court of Special Sessions). Such arrests would be a significant part of the police response to the racial disorder in Harlem in 1943, when ? charged with receiving stolen goods. The second case dismissed by the grand jury involved Bernard Smith, charged with riot. Given that an additional charge of breaking windows had been reduced to disorderly conduct, and punished by a sentence of only five days in the workhouse or a fine of $25, it seems likely that police did not have compelling evidence that Smith had not been responsible for crowds breaking windows as they alleged.

The ten individuals released in the Court of Special Sessions had been arrested for inciting riot, looting or possession of a weapon. The first group were atypical of those arrested in the disorder, the Young Liberators Daniel Miller, Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels and Claudio Viabolo, three white men and one Black man, alleged by the District Attorney Dodge and the Hearst newspapers to have started the disorder. ILD lawyers represented the four men. By the time they went to trial, represented by ILD lawyers, witnesses in the public hearings of the MCCH had debunked the claims they were responsible. The four men acquitted of looting included one about who there are no details and one apprehended in a crowd around a store who police likely could not link to its looting. The two remaining men, like Mitchell, police arrested away from the businesses they allegedly looted, although during the disorder not the next day. James Williams had been represented by a lawyer in the Magistrates court, so may have had a better defense than most arrested during the disorder; the other, Jean Jacquelin, was a white man. While five white men in all were released, almost two-thirds of those arrested, that the three Communists are included in that group weighs against that indicating that the courts showed leniency towards white defendants. Hashi Mohammed's release after being charged with possession of a weapon, a knife, came after he had been convicted of disorderly conduct in the Washington Heights Magistrates court having been arrested for breaking windows. He was injured, likely by police during his arrest, and the weapon possession charge may have been made to justify that violence.

Five men were acquitted in the Court of General Sessions, three arrested for looting at the direction of the judge, and two arrested for assaulting white men by juries. Milton Ackerman and Raymond Easley had their indictments dismissed, suggesting a lack of evidence of the charges. Easley had been part of a crowd in front of a cigar store when the windows were smashed, one of two men arrested by police who responded, charged with taking cigars. The dismissal indicated police could not prove that theft. Few details exist of the charges against Ackerman other than that he had taken merchandise with little value. Joseph Moore, acquitted at the direction of the judge, was arrested on the Third Avenue bridge, on the way to the Bronx, with unspecified merchandise allegedly taken from a Harlem store. The likeliest cause of Moore's release was a lack of evidence that whatever was found in his possession had been stolen.

In acquitting Paul Boyett and Isaac Daniels, juries decided that police had arrested the wrong members of crowds on the streets. Boyett had been among those drawn to investigate the attack on Timothy Murphy, the most widely reported assault on a white man during the disorder, and he scattered with that crowd when a police car drove up. It was being hit by a bullet that Patrolman George Conn fired at the crowd that led to Boyett being singled out, pursued and arrested. The prominent Black lawyer, William T. Andrews, representing Boyett clearly exposed the lack of evidence that he had been one of those who assaulted Murphy. In the case of Isaac Daniels, it appears to have been Herman Young, the storeowner injured when someone threw a rock that broke the glass in the door to his store, who was responsible for the wrong man being arrested. Daniels was arrested at Harlem Hospital, after Young saw him while being treated. However, Daniels wife said he was home at the time of the attack, having gone to the movies, and later went out to get cigarettes. None of the sources mention how he came by the injuries, contusions on his left arm, that he was having treated at Harlem Hospital when Young claimed to recognize him.

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