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Robert Tanner arrested
Tanner was one of only two of those arrested identified as a student, along with John Henry, and one of only four under eighteen years of age. His name is in the lists of those arrested for burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, and the New York Evening Journal. When he was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrate Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on $1000 bail, according to the Magistrates Court docket book. The Home News published the only report of that appearance, which grouped Tanner with Thomas Jackson, one of the men arrested for the earlier attack on Garmise's shop who the docket book indicates had been arraigned shortly before Tanner. The story mistakenly reversed the timing of the men's alleged crimes described in the legal records, reporting that Tanner smashed a side window an hour before Jackson broke the front window. A grand jury indicted him on a charge of burglary on March 22nd. Three days later the New York Sun reported that Tanner appeared in the Court of General Sessions, at which time he did not offer a plea, unlike the other men who appeared with him, and the judge continued his bail. When he appeared again in the court, he pled not guilty. By April 4, he had agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny, an outcome which went unreported in the press but was noted in the District Attorney's case file and the 28th Precinct Police Blotter. The district attorney offered that plea bargain to most of those indicted for burglary. The blotter provides the only evidence of his sentence, to the New York City Reformatory, as a result of being a youthful first offender.
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This page references:
- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36, Departmental Correspondence. Box 34, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- "List of Dead And Injured In Riot In New York City," Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 30, 1935, 18.
- New York Penal Law, § 404, 407: Burglary in third degree.
- "Says Economic Conditions in Harlem Are Bad," Atlanta World, March 27, 1935, 1, 2.
- "Harlem Riot Damage is Figured at Half Million," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 1, 2.
- New York Penal Law, § 1298-1299: Petit Larceny
- "Police Guard Against New Uprising as Mayor Acts to Probe Race Riot," Home News, March 21, 1935, 1.
- District Attorney's Closed Case Files, 203995 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives).
- "Indictments Due For Riot Anarchy," New York Sun, March 25, 1925, 2.
- "List of Those under Arrest in Harlem Riot and the Charges They Face," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 3.
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book