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• 1 2022-11-11T17:08:57+00:00 The public hearing of the MCCH's subcommittee on crime (April 20) 35 plain 2024-05-31T19:07:56+00:00 Just eight witnesses testified in the public hearing held in the Washington Heights Magistrates court on April 20, and only five gave testimony about the events of the disorder. Three of those witnesses added details to the police narrative of the killing of Lloyd Hobbs. Patrolman Watterson was at the scene of the shooting. Detective O’Brien conducted the police investigation. Detective McCormick testified again about the statement he took from the boy at Harlem Hospital. Detective O’Brien also testified about the death of August Miller, together with Patrolman Kaminsky. Charles Romney, who had taken a prominent part in questioning witnesses, himself gave testimony about the crowds he encountered on 7th Avenue around 125th Street early in the disorder. Newspaper stories about the hearing generally focused on the testimony of the three other witnesses who testified about police brutality toward Thomas Aiken and on audience reactions that highlighted police violence and mistreatment. The Black press and a handful of white newspapers also gave attention to the testimony about the killing of Hobbs.
  
  Most of the testimony about the events of the disorder concerned the killing of Lloyd Hobbs by police. Patrolman Watterson’s testimony about how Hobbs was killed followed the narrative in the police report about which the MCCH investigator James Tartar had testified in the previous hearing. Watterson confirmed that he and his partner had heard a window break, seen a man climb in and start handing out items to those on the street, and then stopped their car by the group. He had heard McInerney call out to Hobbs to halt. However, as he was driving the car, he did not see the shooting nor could he identify Hobbs as the man in the window, as only McInerney had been close enough to see him. When Watterson reversed the patrol car into West 128th Street, he testified that he saw items lying by the boy which McInerney picked up. He then got out of the car to point a rifle at the gathering crowd so McInerney could put Hobbs in the vehicle and they could leave the scene. Detective O’Brien testified that he met McInerney and Hobbs at the hospital, but failed to find any witnesses to the shooting. He did not, however, speak to the boy’s family, who were aware of witnesses. Hays questioned O'Brien about the lack of information in the police records about the items allegedly found with Hobbs, introducing questions about that evidence not raised at the previous hearing. Detective McCormick provided additional details of the circumstances in which he recorded the boy’s statement. As had been the case with the testimony about the killing in the previous hearing, it was reported in a variety of different ways. The Black press published the most detailed accounts, with the New York Amsterdam News reporting all three witnesses, the Norfolk Journal and Guide the testimony of Watterson and O'Brien, and the Afro-American only Watterson (this edition of the New York Age issue was missing). The Home News reported Watterson and McCormick’s testimony, the New York Times the testimony of Watterson and the Daily News the testimony of O’Brien and an interjection by Mary Hobbs. The New York Herald Tribune and New York World-Telegram mentioned Watterson only as the subject of an audience outburst. The New York Sun and the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal and New York American, ignored the testimony about Hobbs as they had in stories about the previous hearing.
  
  The testimony about the death of August Miller was the first evidence that the MCCH heard about that event. Patrolman Kaminsky testified that he had been summoned to Harlem Hospital after a taxi dropped off August Miller. He began to interview him but only established his name and address before Miller lost consciousness. Detective O’Brien was also assigned to investigate the death of August Miller. His testimony described failed efforts to find the taxi driver who had taken Miller to the hospital and any witnesses at the location from which the driver told the nurse he had come. He also recounted interviewing Miller’s employers. None of the stories about the hearing mentioned this testimony.
  
  Charles Romney described events on 7th Avenue around 125th Street between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM, around the time Louise Thompson was in the area. His testimony echoed what she had told the MCCH, that excited crowds had gathered, and were being moved on by police who refused to provide any information, and that windows in many stores had been broken. None of the newspaper stories mentioned his testimony, even as they gave a prominent place to Romney’s challenges to Hays and to police.
  
  The audience again inserted their perspectives into the hearing, on this occasion disrupting the MCCH’s program, or at least the how the press reported it, more extensively than at the previous hearing. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal, and the Afro-American, made the disruptions the headline of their stories, while the New York Times, New York American, New York Amsterdam News, and Norfolk Journal and Guide used headlines that highlighted the issue raised by the audience, police brutality and mistreatment. Twice the audience interrupted the hearing. Patrolman Watterson testified in a low voice, perhaps with the intention of limiting what the audience could hear, prompting calls to speak “louder” and finally a Black Communist named Edward Welsh to call from the rear of the room, “Will the dog bark a little louder, please?” This exchange was widely reported, in both the white New York World-Telegram, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and Daily News, and in the Black Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, and Norfolk Journal and Guide – but not in the Hearst publications or the New York Sun. Hays regarded Welsh's call as an insult, not an opinion, and demanded Welsh leave. He refused amid vocal support from the audience that eventually forced Hays to call a ten-minute adjournment. Only the New York Times, Daily News, and Afro-American reported Welsh addressed Hays before leaving, although not what he said. Welsh's statement, recorded in the transcript of the hearing, put into words what was behind the boos and jeers of the audience: Watterson “insulted the intelligence of every man and woman in this courtroom. Every word that left his lips is a lie.” Charles Romney provoked the second interruption. Making vague claims about police intimidation as Hays tried to get him to answer questions about what he saw on March 19, Romney burst out, “I am sick of this. I want to say that if any policeman interferes with me or any of my relatives I will take the law into my own hands.” The audience’s enthusiastic reaction amplified the criticism of police and illustrated their ability to shape what the MCCH heard, even as the stenographer omitted it from the transcript. People jumped to their feet and cheered, according to the New York Times and Norfolk Journal and Guide, broke into “‘tumultuous applause” according to the New York Evening Journal, and chanted “Down with the law! We don’t want the law!,” according to the Daily News and New York American. The result was “such a hubbub arose that it was futile to call another witness. Mr Hays struggled with the disorderly spectators from half an hour,” according to the New York Herald Tribune. MCCH chair Charles Roberts joined in his efforts to limit the hearing to the MCCH agenda to no avail, an intervention only reported in the New York Sun and Afro-American.
  
  The audience at the hearing did not recognize the distinction between the testimony on the events of the disorder and the testimony about police brutality at an earlier date which the subcommittee was investigating as a separate topic. Through their reactions they placed the events of the disorder in the context of police mistreatment and brutality, thereby making police violence a cause of the disorder. The New York American made that connection explicitly in the headline for its story, “White Police Blamed for Harlem Riots.” While the story itself vaguely alluded to unnamed witnesses making that claim, no one actually did, suggesting that the audience reactions shaped the journalist’s understanding of the testimony. While the New York Times sought to dismiss the reaction as the work of a radical minority, it reported “police witnesses seemed to antagonize nearly every one. Every statement made by a patrolman or a detective that was in any way controversial was met with boos and whistling.” The audience made a similar impression on the journalist from the New York Herald Tribune, who described the audience as seemingly “inspired by bitter hatred of the police.” The Black press added an explanation of that attitude missing from those stories. It was “Harlem’s long and smoldering resentment against police brutality” to which the audience gave voice according to the New York Amsterdam News. A similar explanation was offered in the Norfolk Journal and Guide, that the hearing was characterized by "smoldering hostility to police in general and outspoken resentment...at particular policemen involved in the disturbances of March 19 and 20," the latter greeted with "boos and hisses" whenever they spoke. The Afro-American offered a more mixed and somewhat critical picture, “Harlemites, afraid of a general ‘whitewash,’ others who believe that police brutalities are too often covered up, and others who want to air their pet opinions about the race problem in general, heckled, booed and yelled.”
  
  Audience reactions also raised questions about the police testimony regarding the killing of Lloyd Hobbs that made their way into the stories about the hearing, as they had in regard to the identity of the boy in the Kress store in the previous hearing. On this occasion it was the story in the Home News that most clearly captured that process. In response to Watterson’s testimony, ”Several spectators called out questions to the witness implying that McInerney shot indiscreetly and could easily have captured Hobbs had he tried.” Mention of McCormick’s testimony was also accompanied by the questions that the audience raised. “Hecklers implied that the police had faked the interview and had never given the boy the chance to speak for himself.”