This tag was created by Anonymous. 

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

Windows broken without arrest (52)

No one was identified as being arrested for breaking 75% (52 of 69) of the businesses identified in the sources (as no one was arrested for the first broken window in Kress' store, the store appears among those cases in which no arrests were made even though an arrest was made for allegedly breaking a window after another attack over four hours later). There are five individuals arrested for breaking windows for who there is no information about their alleged targets; some of those four men and one woman may have been charged with breaking windows in stores for which there was no reported arrests. So could the twenty-one men charged with disorderly conduct in the Magistrates Court for which there is no information about their alleged actions, although only just over one in four of those accused of breaking windows were charged with that offense.

There are significantly more businesses with broken windows for which no one was charged than businesses that were looted, 75% compared with 55%. Most of those stores were on and around West 125th Street, the area where the disorder began, and likely suffered damage during the time when small numbers of police struggled to control crowds that had gathered in front of Kress' store. Another cluster of businesses with broken windows for which no one was arrested was on West 116th Street and the blocks of Lenox Avenue around it. The lack of arrests could indicate a lack of police presence in that area, which also was ignored in the English-language press. The damage was reported only in La Prensa, with only the arrest of Jackie Ford the day after the disorder for allegedly breaking a window in a store at 142 Lenox Avenue mentioned in the New York Post and New York World-Telegram.

This page has tags:

Contents of this tag:

This page references: