Fight the Power

Fight the Power

African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in
New York City

Clarence Taylor

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
www.nyupress.org

© 2019 by New York University

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Taylor, Clarence, author.
Title: Fight the power : African Americans and the long history of police brutality in New York City
/ Clarence Taylor.
Description: New York : New York University, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017060992 | ISBN 9781479862450 (cl : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Police brutality—New York (State)—New York—History. | African Americans—
Violence against—New York (State)—New York.
Classification: LCC HV8148.N5 T39 2018 | DDC 363.2/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060992

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 Contents

Introduction

1. The People’s Voice and Police Brutality

2. The Communist Party and Police Brutality

3. The Nation of Islam and Police Brutality

4. Civil Rights, Community Activists, and Police Brutality

5. Police Brutality, the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant Riots, and the

National Civil Rights Movement

6. John Lindsay, Racial Politics, and the Civilian Complaint Review Board

7. The Triumph of a False Narrative

8. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Brutality

9. Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, and the Resistance to Giuliani

10. The Campaign to End Stop, Question, and Frisk

11. The Limits of Mayor de Blasio’s Police Reform Agenda

Conclusion: Where Do We Go from Here?

Acknowledgments

Notes
Index
About the Author
 Introduction
On August 19, 2010, I served as the moderator of a panel examining the
1968 New York City teachers’ strike. The event took place at the Museum
of the City of New York and was held in conjunction with its exhibition on
mayor John Lindsay. Two weeks later, to my surprise, the museum invited
me back to take part in a symposium on Mayor Lindsay and policing. I
understood why I was asked to host the August 19 event; I had written a
book on the teachers’ strike and had given several public talks on the fight
for community control, a central focus of the strike, but I had never written
on policing and John Lindsay. Nevertheless, I agreed to take part.
The symposium’s moderator was Sam Roberts from the New York Times,
and a number of people who had served in the Lindsay administration took
part in the discussion. I had thought I would add little to the conversation,
but that was not the case. When one symposium participant blamed Lindsay
for the bad relationship between his administration and the police, I felt I
had to refute him. I spoke about police brutality in black communities, how
it had led to civil unrest and mistrust between blacks and the NYPD. I also
pointed out that there is a long history of African Americans’ efforts to
expose the brutality and bring it to an end. The ensuing questions from the
audience and symposium participants alike made it clear that they were
largely unaware of how the interactions of police and race had been
polarizing the city for decades and continued to do so. I decided that
evening to write this book.
Police brutality is the use of excessive force by police on citizens when
such force is unnecessary. Unjust shootings, severe beatings, intimidation,
verbal abuse, and psychological as well as physical coercion are some of its
most common forms.1
Policing and race have been a major focus of public discourse, with
renewed emphasis beginning, perhaps, with the killing of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Video recordings of police brutality incidents
across the country have resulted in numerous protests and confrontations
between the police and citizens—sometimes spreading beyond the cities
where the incidents took place. Under president Barack Obama, the
Department of Justice investigated a number of police killings of black
people. In March 2015 it released a report on the police department in
Ferguson which concluded that police there disproportionally targeted
African Americans in a number of ways, including unconstitutional traffic
stops and arrests and the use of excessive force.2
But despite the recent focus on police brutality, there has been little
examination by the media of the long history of the abusive imbalance of
power between the police and black communities or the early campaigns by
black people to expose and eliminate police brutality. Contemporary media
coverage that does look at the past does not look very far back. In July 2014
the Huffington Post published an article by Matthew Mathias and Carly
Schwartz titled “The NYPD Has a Long History of Killing Unarmed Black
Men.” With the exception of James Powell, who was killed in 1965, all the
victims profiled in the article were killed after 1990. In the preface to the
ACLU’s 1997 publication “Fighting Police Abuse: A Community Action
Manual,” Ira Glazer, then the organization’s executive director, writes of the
1991 police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, but with that
exception, all the other incidents of police brutality listed in the manual
happened no earlier than 1995.3 In her Huffington Post article “Police
Violence Has Been Going on Forever: No Wonder People Are Fed Up with
It,” Natasha Bach writes that the protests in Ferguson, Baltimore, and
elsewhere sparked by Michael Brown’s fatal shooting were rooted in past
brutality cases. Yet the earliest incident she notes was the Rodney King
beating.4 Bryan Burrough, writing in the Los Angeles Times on May 2,
2015, compares contemporary public response to police abuse to that of the
1960s and concludes that organized protests have become a lot less violent
than in the 1960s and the 1970s, when those opposing police brutality used
“terroristic violence.”5
Missing from all the above examples is any acknowledgment that police
brutality against people of color long predates the 1960s, as have the
vigorous campaigns mounted to address that abuse. And those few writers
who have traced police violence against black citizens back to well before
the 1960s have stopped short of informing readers about the various ways
people have organized and mobilized to stop the brutal attacks. Jamilah
King’s April 29, 2015, piece in the digital magazine Take Part, for example,
examines police abuse cases from the Chicago riot in 1919 up to the 2015
murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, but leaves out citizens’ organized
efforts to respond.6
 Although police brutality has been a problem since the founding of
professional police departments in the mid-nineteenth century, the starting
point of this book is the 1940s, when New York experienced a massive
wave of black migration from the South and of immigration from the
Caribbean. The city’s black population increased dramatically from 152,467
in 1920 to 327,706 in 1930. By 1940 it had jumped to 458,888, and by 1950
it reached 747,608. Harlem’s black population numbered 341,000 in 1950.7
By 1960 the city’s black population of over one million was larger than the
total population of Baltimore (939,024), Houston (938,219), Cleveland
(876,060), Washington, DC (763,956), St. Louis (750,026), San Francisco
(740,316), and Boston (697,197).8 As the black population grew, so did
related institutions such as religious bodies, political parties, civic groups,
civil rights organizations, and the black press. These institutions worked to
improve the social and economic conditions of black people in the North
and targeted racial oppression, one manifestation of which was police
brutality.
As black communities and their institutions grew, the push for equal
justice also increased. In the 1920s the Reverend Thomas Harten of
Brooklyn’s Holy Trinity Baptist Church led protests against police assaults
on black citizens. In 1925, for example, he held a rally of two thousand
people at his church protesting police brutality. But such events were
sporadic, and few black New York ministers in the early twentieth century
turned to street demonstrations, rallies, or other forms of social protest to
confront police practices.9 Protracted campaigns protesting police brutality
against black people in New York were launched in response to the Harlem
riots of 1935 and 1943, which were set off by police assaults on people of
color. Both riots helped to spotlight police brutality. The black press, civil
rights leaders, and others called loudly for an end to the police officers’
practice of brutalizing the citizens of Harlem.
This book examines the activist groups that carried out long campaigns,
first sparked by the 1935 and 1943 riots, to end racially targeted police
brutality. Those involved represented a wide spectrum of individuals and
groups, ranging from the politically secular and religious left in the 1940s,
black nationalists and civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s, elected
officials starting in the 1960s, and civil liberty groups on behalf of black
and brown people who were subjected to the abuses of the policy of stop,
question, and frisk beginning in the 1990s.
 Activists in the 1940s realized that police brutality was one expression of
a form of domination and extreme power police held over citizens, and they
rejected the then-popular theory that rogue cops, just a few bad apples, were
to blame. They and their successors understood that brutality was not only
pervasive but sanctioned by the highest echelons of the NYPD. Until John
Lindsay became New York City’s mayor in 1966, those in political power
did nothing to curtail the police. One major reason, which persists today,
was a matter of popular perception: the role of the police was to protect the
lives and rights of white citizens, not the lives or rights of “black
criminals”; they were control agents and crime fighters placed in the
community to stop crime and criminals, not to act as social workers. The
positive popular image of law enforcement and the general public’s support
of police officers is due in large measure to the fact that they put their lives
on the line to protect citizens and maintain the peace by confronting the
criminals in society. Their public image as a safeguarding force is
reinforced by a narrative disseminated by the media, political leaders,
popular culture outlets, and law enforcement agencies themselves. Since the
1940s radio programs and films, and later television, have portrayed heroic
police saving the public from dangerous criminals. From the mid-1940s to
the mid-1960s, Hollywood especially portrayed law enforcement as
comprising “men who enforced the law for moral and ethical reasons.”10
Political leaders also often beat the same drum. President Harry S.
Truman outlined to law enforcement officers their role in postwar America:
“You should be vigilant to enforce the laws which protect our citizens from
violence or intimidation in the exercise of their constitutional and legal
rights. The strength of our institutions depends in large measure upon the
vigorous efforts to prevent mob violence, and other forms of interference
with basic rights—the right to a fair trial, the right to vote, and the right to
exercise freedom of speech, assembly, and petition.” Reminding his
audience of its moral duty, Truman continued, “It is just as much your duty
to protect the innocent as it is to prosecute the guilty. The friendless, the
weak, the victims of prejudice and public excitement are entitled to the
same quality of justice and fair play that the rich, the powerful, the well-
connected, and the fellow with pull thinks he can get.”11
Unfortunately for people of color in New York, not all police took
Truman’s sentiments to heart. Another reason no action was taken to curb
police brutality until Mayor Lindsay took the first small steps was police
resistance and the enormous amount of political power the force wielded.
Whatever their station in life, those who attempted to take corrective action
or were seen as challenging police power were targeted for retribution.
The individuals and groups that challenged police power did so by
fighting for greater citizen input regarding how the police operated in their
communities and by trying to democratize the process determining who
should decide how police should function. They advocated greater racial
representation on the force at every level, demanded an independent civilian
complaint review board, and proposed innovative measures to try to
improve police–community relations—all in the interest of placing in the
hands of ordinary people power over the public institution of law
enforcement.
The people and groups profiled in this book came from a political
spectrum that ranged from the far left to liberal. Their efforts were
alternately ignored, received little attention, or were actively resisted, but
they made an important contribution to a long and ongoing civil rights
struggle in New York and elsewhere. Among the diverse people and groups
profiled here, a significant thread of religiously inflected activism should be
noted. The black religious community involved in civil rights struggles and
freedom from police brutality was diverse, involving men and women
across denominations and religions, from high-profile black churches in
Harlem to the Nation of Islam. This book showcases religious communities
not just as additions to the civil rights movement, but as forces that helped,
alongside other actors, to shape the movement.
Whether religious or lay activists, the experiences of those involved in
the struggle against police brutality in New York taught them to distrust the
pervasive positive image of the police. They mounted campaigns to end
what they saw as unjustifiable assaults on and killings of black people, and
to challenge the popular image of blacks as criminals, even claiming that
the mainstream press worked hand in hand with the police to denigrate
black people and propagate notions of crime waves in black communities.
Those profiled here, ranging from civil rights groups and African American
secular and religious leaders to the Communist Party and the black press,
understood that police brutality was a form of domination, and therefore
they were not just attempting to define how police operated in their
communities but were also attempting to define a new and active role for
citizens to take with respect to the policing of their communities. Yes, they
were trying to reduce the extraordinary power of the police, but ultimately
they wanted to democratize the operation of a public institution so that it
could and would serve all citizens fairly.
The fight against police brutality has been one of the longest civil rights
struggles in American history. Black people in New York have had to deal
with the crime of police brutality longer than any other racial or ethnic
group in the city. This book examines a more than seventy-year period,
from the 1940s to the de Blasio era, to trace how black activists have
challenged this form of racial terror by the arm of the state. Many of the
chapters in this book examine how black people sought ways to reduce the
power of the police. Those in the anti–police brutality campaign did not just
call for police reform—they wanted to assure that under any circumstances
police could not violate them as human beings. On the other hand, this
volume also points out the extraordinary resistance by the police and their
allies to altering the power dynamics between people of color and law
enforcement. Fight the Power argues that race was the major reason for
police brutality and that false racialized narratives were a major impediment
to struggles for change. Police officers, along with many in the general
society, equated blackness with criminality and attempted to control black
people through brutal force. Police targeting of blacks was more than a
problem of rogue cops—it was an institutional problem. The lack of
attention paid to addressing it stemmed from the refusal of those who
governed the police force to recognize legitimate grievances of black
victims. Instead, law enforcement, the white media, and New York City
mayors saw it merely as a crime problem. Black communities were
depicted by the NYPD, the white press, and city leaders as infested with
criminals—so, therefore, police officers were carrying out their duty in
aggressively targeting black crime. Indeed, this book argues with strong
evidence that the NYPD, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, major
white publications, criminologists, and a number of city mayors long denied
even the existence of police brutality. It was black activists and their allies
who challenged the popular portrayal of both blacks as criminals and the
police as upholders of the law. This book tells their story.
 1

The People’s Voice and Police Brutality

Since the 1990s, scholars have been investigating the civil rights struggles
outside the South and challenging an earlier historiography that depicted the
movement as an exclusively southern affair. They have also questioned the
1954 benchmark set as the start of the civil rights movement, citing
northern civil rights campaigns inaugurated well before the U.S. Supreme
Court found legal segregation unconstitutional in its Brown v. Board of
Education decision. They argued that civil rights activists outside the South
sought more than integration, an end to discrimination in public
accommodations, and the protection of voting rights. The campaigns in the
North and West, as well as in the South, also sought economic
empowerment, fairer distribution of governmental services and resources,
and an end to discriminatory practices in both the private and public sectors.
For activists in the North, ending police brutality was a major objective.
Historian Martha Biondi argues, for example, that starting in the 1940s,
activists in New York City fought for “protection from unreasonable search
and seizure, a halt to coerced confessions, the creation of an independent
civilian complaint-review board, a law to end police immunity from
criminal prosecution, greater accountability and disciplinary procedures
within the department, more Black police officers, an end to the media
stereotyping of Black men as criminals, a halt to the criminalization of poor,
minority neighborhoods, and better, fairer policing of Black
neighborhoods.”1
In New York City, police brutality was a major concern of the civil rights
community, and the People’s Voice newspaper carved out a key political
role in one of urban America’s most important civil rights battles. The Voice
framed itself as a champion of black people, particularly in the case of
police brutality. It pitted its version of the events in police brutality cases
against the official police version and the perspective of the white press,
and claimed that it was exposing the latter’s deliberate effort to denigrate
Harlem and other black communities.
 In December 1942, the Saturday Review published an essay by Warren H.
Brown, former director of Negro relations for the Council of Democracy
and once executive secretary of the March on Washington Movement, in
which he accused the black press of rushing to judgment when it came to
police brutality: “When a Negro runs seriously afoul of the law, the Negro
press seldom stops to ask the facts. It goes to town in flaming headlines to
turn the matter to race-rousing account.” Brown pointed to a case in New
York City in which a police officer shot a “demented Negro” who tried to
escape arrest. One black weekly, he noted, “did not wait for an official
investigation. It chose to ignore that, under the Police Commissioner and
the courts of New York, a fair trial can be assured. Instead this paper broke
out its blackest type for a ‘police brutality’ story.”2 The weekly in question
was the People’s Voice.
While one may question Brown’s assertion that the black press rushed to
judgment in such instances, in the 1940s, when there was dramatic growth
of New York City’s black population, many African American periodicals
did indeed highlight cases of police violence against African Americans and
often called for justice for the victims. Social scientist Maxwell R. Brooks
contended that even though the white press ignored racial discrimination,
“such reports of discriminatory treatment of members of the race are of
primary concern to Negro people everywhere.” Referring to the black press,
he noted that such “news furnishes the raw material for the editorials and
personal columns.”3 In his book The Negro Revolt, African American
reporter and author Louis E. Lomax writes that the “problem is aggravated
in areas like Harlem where police brutality is an accepted fact of life.
Without such cases to report, Negro newspapers would have considerable
blank space.”4
Although Lomax exaggerated the potential for empty space, he was
correct in claiming that black publications spent considerable ink reporting
cases of police officers physically abusing and/or killing people of African
origins. For example, the New York Amsterdam News, the longest-running
and largest New York City black weekly, founded in 1909, reported police
attacks on black New Yorkers practically every week in the 1940s and
1950s. Al Nall, a writer for the Amsterdam News, noted in 1957 that there
was not a week in which the paper was not informed of a police brutality
case. He claimed that there were so many police brutality lawsuits and
financial settlements that police abuse had become quite expensive for the
city.5 In 1953 the NAACP magazine Crisis declared that police brutality
was an “old story” carried out by police and “conniving supervisors” whose
victims were usually blacks and other minorities who had little recourse
under federal law.6 The black press became one of the most important
vehicles for informing their readership of police assaults on black citizens.
Of all the black-owned publications in New York City, the People’s Voice
was the most critical of police brutality. Created in 1942 by the Reverend
Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who served as editor in chief, and Charles P.
Buchanan, the paper’s publisher, it joined a long list of the city’s black-
owned weekly newspapers, monthly magazines, and journals; among the
most prominent were the Amsterdam News, New York Age, the NAACP’s
Crisis, and the Urban League’s Opportunity Journal. Despite the crowded
field, Powell decided that the city needed another black newspaper in order
to address the pressing needs of Harlem. One of the city’s preeminent black
leaders, in 1936 he was named senior pastor of New York’s largest and
most prestigious black church, Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. In
1941 he was elected to the New York City Council, becoming the first
African American to represent Harlem. Powell’s prestige ensured that New
York’s black press covered his activities. The Amsterdam News even invited
him to write a column, but he was more interested in a publication that he
felt would better promote his image as an effective leader and make the
city’s black community aware of his activities and accomplishments. While
New York’s black newspapers of course reported on the political and
cultural life of black New Yorkers, Powell accused them of containing too
much sensationalism and not enough reporting on vital issues that had an
impact on the community. He wanted to create a quality paper that would
report on international and national as well as local social and political
events.
Powell also wanted his paper to reflect his own political leanings, so he
was not afraid to recruit writers on the left. He hired a group of dedicated
journalists, including Marvel Cooke, who had written for the NAACP
Crisis and the Amsterdam News and was critical of the latter’s sensational
headlines. Cooke had joined the Communist Party during a 1935 strike
against the Amsterdam News by the Writers Guild. Powell also hired the
attorney Benjamin Davis, who was a prominent official in the American
Communist Party,7 as well as Doxey Wilkerson, who would officially join
the party in 1945 and was well-known for his leftist views. Wilkerson
would later become educational director of the Maryland Communist Party,
a columnist for the Daily Worker, and a member of the party’s National
Committee.8 Powell also convinced the managing editor of the Amsterdam
News and nationally renowned political cartoonist Ollie Harrington to come
on board as art director. Harrington may not have joined the Communist
Party, but he did support the 1935 Writers Guild strike against the
Amsterdam News, during which he became friends with Ben Davis and
Marvel Cooke and developed ties to the party.9
One of the Voice’s most important writers on police brutality was
journalist and photographer Llewellyn Ransom. Although not a member of
any left-leaning organizations, more than any other Voice writer he shaped
the paper’s arguments on the issue of police brutality—in particular with
regard to young people. Powell’s decision to hire leftist journalists assured
that the Voice would not dwell on the sensational but would seriously
interrogate the problems of Harlem and of people of African origins
throughout the nation and the world. Hiring politically dedicated journalists
also guaranteed that the Voice would present an interpretation of events
from the left, one that differed from the more middle-class-oriented
Amsterdam News and New York Age. Furthermore, a left-leaning staff made
it certain that the paper would take a position in support of Harlem and the
city’s other black working-class neighborhoods.
The People’s Voice wasted little time in revealing its political task. The
first edition came out on February 14, 1942, at what it called “modern
history’s most chaotic hour,” with war being waged on “every continent.”
The Voice proclaimed that it was time for those who were elected, selected,
or volunteered to assume some portion of leadership: “It matters not how
insignificant the role of past leaders may have been, this day and this hour
demand the highest, the greatest and the best that all of us can give.”
Reading like a manifesto, the first edition declared that its mission was to
solve “the people’s problem,” and went on to claim that it was the “people’s
hour to make democracy real.”10 It also embraced what would later be called
the Double V campaign, first called for in a January 31, 1942, letter to the
Pittsburgh Courier by James G. Thompson, who was a reader of that paper.
The twenty-six-year-old Thompson identified himself as an “American of
dark complexion” and suggested that “while we keep defense and victory in
the forefront that we don’t lose sight of our fight for true democracy at
home.”11 Thompson’s call for victory over racism at home as well as abroad
was adopted by the People’s Voice, which in its inaugural edition envisioned
a “world made safe for democracy and also an America made safe.” The
objective should be a “real democracy, triumphant not only on the scene of
battle but triumphant on the scene of civil liberties, racial equality and
human justices.”12
While the Voice embraced the tradition of the black press by becoming an
advocate of social reforms, it also reflected the left-leaning politics of its
staff and distinguished itself from other black weeklies by linking the issues
of race and class, asserting that people of African origins faced not only
racism but also class exploitation. It declared itself a “working class paper”
and African Americans “a working class race.”13 As such, it pledged its full
support to the trade union movement and embraced a civil rights agenda
that called not only for political democracy but also for economic justice,
which included the right to fair wages and an end to discrimination in
employment and in the union hall. The Voice recognized that the white
working class suffered from the plague of racism, and it declared a
challenge by announcing that it would see to it that blacks were admitted to
all unions. Focusing on issues that crossed lines of race and class, the Voice
promised to crusade for improved housing, health facilities, better
elementary schools, more black faculty members, and support for black
businesses.14 Writer Richard Robbins noted in 1949 that a major difference
between the Amsterdam News and the People’s Voice was that the latter was
“more militant, more outspoken in castigating white practices, more
impatient with the slow rate of amelioration. It is, in the non-invidious
meaning of the term, essentially radical.”15
The Voice’s weekly circulation ranged from sixteen thousand to fifty
thousand copies. This represented a significant percentage of New York
black population, but it was small compared to the more politically
moderate Amsterdam News, whose weekly circulation was over 105,000.
But the Voice’s importance was in its more militant tone,16 and the issue on
which it exceeded all other black publications in militancy was police
brutality.
The Voice mounted its campaign on police brutality by trying to empower
black New Yorkers in the battle against abuse. It published detailed
accounts of incidents, using eyewitnesses, in order to counter the police
versions that were usually reported in the white press. By providing a
counter-narrative, the Voice hoped to verify to a larger audience that the
police physically assaulted black people without justification. Its mission
was to expose police brutality so that an aware public could demand action
to end it. To that end, the paper went beyond the details of brutal police
assaults on blacks to also provide proposals for altering the power dynamics
between police and citizens.

Investigating Brutality Cases on the Behalf of the Victim

The People’s Voice differentiated itself from the Amsterdam News and the
New York Age, the city’s largest black weeklies, by not just reporting police
brutality cases but by also serving as an advocate for the victims. It
undertook “investigations” to uncover the truth about the incidents and
prove to the public the victims’ innocence and the culpability of the police.
As a victims’ advocate, the paper never accepted police versions of what
happened, which, it made clear, were at best suspect and at worst a cover-
up. In challenging the police versions of events, the Voice provided
elaborate details on how the police attacked black men, women, and
children with impunity. In practically all cases of police assaults on black
citizens, the paper took the position that police officers abused their power
by targeting black citizens solely because they were black, but it also went
further and asserted that police brutality did not just involve the police. In
many of its reports and editorials, the Voice pointed the finger at the
mainstream press for creating a distorted image of blacks as criminals. The
Voice used a variety of approaches in its challenge to police brutality,
including vivid imagery, eyewitness accounts, undermining the police
version of events, highlighting attacks on black youth, and challenging what
the paper labeled the crime smear. According to the Voice, the crime smear
was a campaign by the white press to portray Harlem and other black
communities as areas plagued by crime and therefore an unsafe place for
citizens to reside.
The Voice’s reports on police brutality were well researched and always
claimed to uncover events concealed by the police. In its efforts to
challenge the abuse of power by the powerful, the paper embraced the spirit
of investigative journalism by acting as a watchdog and attempting to get
the citizenry and government to take remedial action.
 In order to win support for its campaign to end police brutality, the
People’s Voice carefully constructed and distributed images of upright,
hardworking, law-abiding citizens, innocent of any criminal offense but
nonetheless targeted by police. The police were depicted as racist brutes
indifferent to human life who inflicted physical pain on black men, women,
and children with impunity. The images were intended to shock readers
with the viciousness and injustice of police brutality and to create a sense of
moral indignation that, the paper hoped, would spur people to take action.
The Voice’s reporting on the brutal beating of Palmer Anderson of 118
West 112th Street in February 1942 vividly displayed the paper’s advocacy
role with its riveting and detailed narrative of victims and villains.
According to the Voice, Anderson was a forty-nine-year-old war veteran
who had gone to the police precinct on 123rd Street in Harlem to report that
a woman had robbed him. Although he attempted to file a complaint, he
was told to wait, and after some time passed he complained about the long
wait, at which point two police officers leapt on him, hitting him with their
clubs and fists. Anderson told the Voice that other officers joined in the
beating, injuring his left shoulder, elbow, and wrist, knocking out several of
his teeth, and putting him in the hospital for a month. He was charged with
assaulting a police officer.17
The article was constructed as a story about a vicious and senseless
police assault on a middle-aged man who had put his life on the line for his
country in the armed forces. Anderson was portrayed as a responsible
citizen who instead of taking the law into his own hands went to the police
station to report that he was the victim of a crime—that he did so signaled
to the reader that he was a law-abiding citizen. The Voice did not speculate
about why the police attacked Anderson. Readers are left with the
impression that ruthless cops senselessly beat an innocent citizen because
he had the nerve to request that a public servant file his complaint.
This type of story of victims and villains was characteristic of the Voice.
The portrayal of the police as ruthless thugs implied that any black New
Yorker was in danger of police assault, as the police simply had no moral
conscience when it came to the treatment of black people no matter what
the victim’s physical or mental condition.18 Voice writer Llewellyn
Ransom’s report on a mentally disturbed man shot to death by police is a
case in point. Harold Reidman, age twenty-five, who was assigned to the
Twenty-Fifth Precinct at 120th Street, shot Wallace Armstrong in what the
reporter labeled a “cold blooded murder of a mental case about to be
committed to Bellevue Hospital for observation.” Ransom presented
Armstrong as a helpless mentally disturbed individual who was in need of
treatment and maintained that the police and “eyewitnesses” agree that
Armstrong was “mentally unbalanced.” His father had called the police to
ask them to take his son to Bellevue Hospital, but when Reidman arrived
and attempted to take Armstrong into custody, Armstrong resisted and
fought with the police officer. In his article, Ransom admitted that
Armstrong displayed a knife, but wrote that he “acted dazed” and made “no
attempt to use it.” The “crazed” man was actually walking away from the
officer, who followed him with his gun drawn and threatened to shoot him
if he did not drop the knife, Ransom wrote—characterizing the police
officer, rather than Armstrong, as threatening.19
Then another police officer, Patrick Smith, came on the scene, knocked
the knife out of Armstrong’s hand with his club and, along with Reidman,
began beating the crazed man. Once the beating started, a third patrolman
joined the assault. Then, in a move that is hard to explain, Reidman stepped
back and fired two shots into Armstrong’s stomach.20 A mentally disturbed
man with a knife would be seen as a threat by most anyone, but Ransom
constructed an image of Armstrong as a person whose emotional state made
him incapable of inflicting bodily harm and therefore could not possibly
pose a threat to police. Ransom’s description of the Armstrong shooting
represented an effort to speak for a victim of the police. Once the knife was
knocked out of Armstrong’s hand and he was thrown to the ground and
beaten, shooting him became an act of murder, according to Ransom.

Eyewitnesses
A pivotal element for Voice reporters writing on police brutality was the
eyewitness account. Unlike white-owned newspapers that usually just
reported the police version, eyewitnesses provided vital details
authenticating the Voice’s claims that the police perpetrated brutality against
innocent black citizens. This is not to say that the white-owned press did
not report witnesses who challenged the police version of events, but it did
not use those witnesses specifically to discredit the police version. Voice
articles highlighted the testimony of people who were on the scene and
could provide meticulous detail. Eyewitnesses were a key component in the
paper’s crusade against police brutality, and at times their testimony to
reporters took up many column inches. Eyewitnesses were portrayed as
good, law-abiding citizens who were not lashing out at the police but had a
sense of justice and wanted to perform their civic duty. The eyewitnesses
quoted always gained credence by noting that they were in close proximity
to the incident and always had no connection to the victim, thus establishing
their impartiality. They were on the scene and therefore could provide
elaborate details.
In the police versions of violent incidents involving Harlem citizens, the
story was almost always that officers were forced to use deadly force
because their lives were in grave danger.21 However, eyewitnesses helped to
authenticate the victims’ versions of events far better than a reporter’s
account could, and the People’s Voice turned to James W. Douglas in the
Armstrong case. Douglas could not be easily dismissed because he declared
that he saw the shooting from just a few feet away. He wrote a powerful
piece in the May 23 edition of the Voice discrediting the police claim that
Armstrong came at Reidman with his knife. Douglas maintained that
Reidman simply killed a “helpless man.” To establish Douglas as a credible
witness, the paper included a portrait photo along with his piece. It showed
him looking away from the camera with a serious expression reflecting his
somber mood and determination to set the record straight.22
To avoid being seen as a person opposed to all police officers, Douglas
wrote that he was sorry to have seen the killing, and his only reason for
coming forward was that he was happy to help his fellow Harlem citizens in
the campaign to rid the area of “brutal and stupid members of the police
force.” He insisted that his coming forward was a selfless act to protect the
Harlem community from further police killings. In copious detail he noted
the time and location of the event and described his proximity to the victim,
which put him in a better position to see what transpired than most of the
other witnesses. He was so close to Armstrong that he saw him “bleeding
profusely from wounds on his head and blood running all over his face and
into his eyes.” Although the police were ordering Armstrong to drop the
knife, Douglas maintained that he was “unable to handle the situation
adequately,” and despite having been beaten and made helpless, Reidman
shot him.23
 Black Youth and Police Brutality
A recurring narrative in the People’s Voice’s campaign against police
brutality was that of white police officers brutalizing Harlem’s African
American youth. In a number of reports the paper detailed young people’s
victimization and attempted to portray as atrocious and immoral the
behavior of police toward the community’s most precious and vulnerable
citizens. Such stories helped to present the image of a community under
siege and also served the wider purpose of portraying a different image of
young people than appeared in the white press.
Gang violence had become a major concern in the United States by the
1940s, especially in urban centers. Journalists, social scientists, and law
enforcement officials argued that thanks to the social ills exacerbated by
World War II, juvenile crime had increased.
Juvenile crime was admittedly a problem in Harlem, as it was in other
communities. The presiding justice of New York City’s Domestic Court,
Edward Boyle, commissioned a study titled “The Negro Problem as
Reflected in the Functioning of the Domestic Relations Court of the City of
New York.” It reported in 1934 that crime among black youth had increased
240 percent over a thirteen-year period.24 The increase in juvenile crime
made blacks a target of aggressive policing. In 1936 New York City police
commissioner Lewis Valentine advocated that criminals be “mussed up,”
thus giving police the green light to physically assault suspects.25
The Voice’s reports on attacks on young people showed that no one in
black communities was safe from the NYPD. Llewellyn Ransom’s coverage
of the James McCullum shooting by detective Thomas Coleman began with
the sentence “Another Negro youth was shot in Harlem early Monday
morning by what eyewitness called a drunken and irresponsible policeman
in plain clothes.” McCullum was charged with the attempted robbery of
Detective Coleman, which the Voice called a “police brutality ‘frame up.’”26
The paper’s notion of youth was quite liberal. McCullum, who was
wounded in the shooting, was twenty-two, by law an adult. But McCullum
was young enough for Ransom and the People’s Voice to proclaim that a
“youth” had been targeted by the police. One likely reason to ignore the
legal definition and label men in their twenties as youths was to help to alter
the popular image of young black men as criminals and create support for
the victim amid a public more inclined to be sympathetic to young people
than to adults. Public sympathy would also bolster the paper’s campaign
against police brutality.
An analysis of the articles in the People’s Voice would lead one to
conclude that the paper’s strategy to engender sympathy and support for
black youths who were victims of police brutality was to juxtapose the
image of the unruly cop who boldly violated proper police procedures with
that of a well-behaved young person who was innocent of any crime.
Writers and eyewitnesses provided elaborate details regarding police
officers involved in assaults on young people, leaving no doubt that the
cops were committing criminal acts. An eyewitness to the James McCullum
shooting, William Bradsher, told the Voice that it was the “same old affair,”
another case of “ruthless and criminal assault.” Bradsher, a parking lot
attendant, was reporting to work when he saw a white man physically
abusing a youth. Asserting his credibility as a witness, he told the paper that
he was close enough to touch McCullum. He described the cop, Thomas
Coleman, as “disorderly looking with mucous and spit all over his sleeve.
He was obviously drunk and kept yelling” at McCullum. The description
was designed to leave no doubt in the mind of the reader that McCullum
was being abused by an inebriated, out of control cop. Although the
People’s Voice did not say why the cop attacked McCullum, Brasher’s
report of verbal abuse using vile language left no doubt that the incident
was racially motivated. The cop, Brasher said, ordered McCullum to “get
over there you black son of a bitch.” McCullum, according to the
eyewitness, pleaded, “I didn’t do anything.”27
Though the Voice accused the police of keeping McCullum
“incommunicado,” the December 12, 1942, issue featured an interview with
him, giving “the youth’s own version of the shooting which may come as a
surprise to these police officials.” McCullum had gone to New York from
Lakewood, New Jersey, to visit his cousin living on 124th Street. He did not
see Coleman on the train or on the platform, but when he was almost on the
sidewalk Coleman came up behind him. McCullum says, “I did not attempt
in any way to rob or molest him.” Without explanation, Coleman demanded
that he accompany him to the police station and identified himself as a
detective when the young man asked who he was. McCullum agreed to go
with him, but once they were in the parking lot Coleman began shoving him
into a fence, reached for his gun, and threatened to shoot him. McCullum
confessed to the paper that he had begged, “Please Mister, don’t shoot me. I
haven’t done anything.” But Coleman “turned around towards me again and
shot me.” McCullum fell to the ground and passed out.28 His pleading
helped flesh out a picture of McCullum as a confused and frightened
“youth” who feared for his life.
To prove the victim’s decent character the Voice noted that he had never
been arrested or “in trouble” and was gainfully employed at the Hotel
Harmony in Lakewood. “I’ve held the job open for him and want him to
come back to work right away,” his employer, Musher Gross, told the Voice.
McCullum had worked at the hotel for three years and had “constantly been
around a large sum of money,” thus proving that he was trustworthy. The
Voice relied on people who were in a position to evaluate McCullum’s
character much more objectively than a relative or friend. The paper,
supported by the employer, painted a picture of an upright young citizen
who had “always been trust worthy, well-liked and extremely popular with
hotel customers.” Mrs. Anna Broudy, identified as another of McCullum’s
employers, said that he made “excellent tips due to his service.” Broudy
was identified as “white,” which was meant to highlight how McCullum
won the support of people across the color line. The paper’s mention that
McCullum had only twenty-five dollars on him when arrested made the
claim that there was a robbery seem even more implausible.29 With such
tactics, the Voice worked to dispel the dangerous myth of the young black
criminal.
According to the People’s Voice the police assault on youth was
extremely brutal and done with the express purpose of degrading them. The
Voice’s narrative of police officers’ assaults on children presented the cops
as torturers. For instance, Llewellyn Ransom wrote about “four polite,
intelligent, friendly Negro boys of high school age,” who were tortured by
the cops, beaten, kicked in the stomach and groin, and forced to urinate on
themselves by three police officers in an apartment hallway on 164th Street.
They were then taken to the Thirteenth Precinct on 132nd Street and
Amsterdam Avenue, where they were beaten some more. The boys told the
People’s Voice that they had been waiting for a friend in the lobby of the
apartment building to discuss opening a gym in their neighborhood because
the local facility had closed and youths had nowhere to go for recreational
activities. Ransom linked the incident to the city’s refusal to budget funding
for recreational facilities, one solution advocated by Adam Clayton Powell
and the Voice to the problem of crime in black urban New York.30
 In its most direct and accusatory article reporting on police assaults on
innocent and well-behaved black youths, the People’s Voice detailed a
police roundup of twenty black youth, five of whom were under the age of
sixteen. Before the police approached them some of the young people had
left the YMCA; others had left the St. Christopher Boys Club of St. Phillips
Protestant Episcopal Church. The reader was presented with young people
of high moral fiber associated with two of the most prestigious institutions
in Harlem. Founded in 1809 in Five Points by free blacks, St. Phillip’s is the
oldest black congregation in New York City. The church relocated in 1910
to 134th Street and Seventh Avenue, and its parishioners included Harlem’s
most prominent residents (e.g., W. E. B. Du Bois).31 Others among the teens
were members of the Salem Crescent Club of Salem Methodist Episcopal
Church.
Apparently two boys not associated with the arrested teens got into a
fight on 134th Street and Seventh Avenue. The altercation ended before the
police arrived, but the twenty boys were “swept up” by the police, despite
eyewitnesses’ insistence that they had had nothing to do with the turmoil
and had no weapons. They were taken to the Thirty-Second Precinct and
booked for disorderly conduct. For the Voice, the impact of the actions of
the police had profound consequences. The paper claimed that “these
innocent kids would suffer the stigma of a police record as a result of over-
ambitious and indiscriminate police activity.” The article’s title, “Juvenile
or Police Delinquency—Which?” indicated the Voice’s challenge to the
public perception of a crime wave in Harlem: juvenile delinquency was not
exclusive to Harlem; the problem was the confrontational approach that
police took toward black youth.32
The Voice claimed that the attack on black youths was not to be
dismissed as the actions of a group of rogue cops, but reflected police
policy. In August 1944 Ransom warned that Harlem was in danger of a
“growing menace of mass arrests of its youth” who were “indiscriminately
treated as juvenile delinquents.” He accused the police of creating a
“bogeyman squad” of thirty-four black detectives who lacked a
“constructive approach to the problem of juvenile delinquency.” Between
seventy-four and one hundred young people had been arrested by the
bogeyman squad and saddled with a police record that would have an
adverse impact on their future. Although most of the young people had been
given a suspended sentence, it became apparent to Harlem residents that
“anybody’s child is subject to [being] picked up.” Ransom argued that the
police were forging a perspective that blacks were dangerous from
childhood to adulthood, and the mass arrests represented a process of
criminalizing an entire race. Any black child standing on a street corner was
viewed as dangerous, and therefore subject to arrest.33

Fighting the Crime Smear Campaign

A prime target of the People’s Voice in its campaign against police brutality
was the mainstream white press, which it accused in numerous pieces of
deliberately portraying black communities as crime infested and black
people as prone to crime. The press, more than any other institution, had the
power to shape public opinion on numerous issues, including race and
crime. The white press has a long history of portraying blacks as criminals.
For example, a March 11, 1898, article headlined “Woman Attacked by
Negro” asserted that Mrs. Lizzie Cousins, twenty-three, of Belleville, New
Jersey, “was attacked and nearly killed last night by a Negro.”34 The August
20, 1900, New York Times ran a short article, “Negroes Stab a White Man,”
about a clerk who was walking on 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue when
suddenly “two Negroes stepped out.” After one of the assailants said,
“There is the man,” they stabbed him and ran. In the same edition was a
piece headlined “Frightened Negro Kills Girl.”35 In these pieces race was the
primary description of the alleged suspect—they were always a “Negro.”
By the 1930s and 1940s the Times was still emphasizing the race of
alleged criminals who were black. As an example, a July 1935 article bore
the headline “Woman Slain in Park: Stabbed by Negro in Morningside—
Her Escort Beaten.”36 Ten years later, a Times article headlined “One-Man
Offensive Halted by Bullet,” typically emphasized race, noting that John
Williams, “a Negro, six feet tall and weighing 200 pounds,” had battled the
police until shot. He was a “giant,” with “prodigious strength.”37 Although
they lacked evidence of this assertion, some papers announced that “crime
waves” had erupted, mainly carried out by youths.38 The March 27, 1943,
edition of the New York Times carried a piece headlined “Muggings Are
Laid to New Arrivals” in which Kings County judge Peter J. Brancato
claimed that the “crime wave involving Negroes could be attributed to
recent arrivals from the South and not to those who had been born and
brought up in the metropolitan area.”39
Black publications opposed the mainstream press’s portrayal of crime
waves in black communities. The NAACP’s Crisis magazine, for example,
ran an editorial in the December 1941 edition titled “Crime Smear.” Crisis
accused the New York Times of manufacturing a “crime wave” in Harlem
and branding that community’s three hundred thousand residents “as
criminals.” It also claimed that the Times and the rest of the white press
based its claim on the deaths in a Harlem park of two white youths—one
who was stabbed and one who was strangled.40
The People’s Voice joined in the effort to challenge the portrayal of a
crime wave in Harlem and other predominantly black communities, in
particular stressing that the police and the white media had manufactured
the young black criminal primarily in order to criminalize black youth. The
Voice claimed that the New York Daily News, the Hearst papers, and other
mainstream papers “consistently blazoned their front pages with sensational
stories, usually inaccurate,” that maligned “Harlem as a vice area,
dangerous to whites, overflowing with criminals, prostitutes, dope fiends,
muggers and a whole catalog of law breakers.” The Voice also blamed the
white press for refusing to print any positive stories about Harlem.41
When it came to reporting crime, the Voice asserted that it would not
feature such stories, leaving that to the “unenlightened metropolitan press
with its artificial crime waves.”42 The People’s Voice maintained that it was
the obligation of the black press to not only oppose the production of
negative images of black communities as crime-infested areas and black
people as criminals, but also to provide alternative images showing the
majority of black people as model citizens.
Regarding the white press’s claim of a crime wave in Harlem, the Voice
accused the papers of simply fabricating the stories. People’s Voice reporter
Joe Bostic declared that he could not find anyone in a position of authority
to support the Daily News allegation that the NYPD had placed Harlem off-
limits to the Army and Navy for the safety of the armed forces. He wrote
that he interviewed “every person I could locate who carried even the
slightest shred of authority. The sum total of my many interviews—Harlem
is not out of” bounds. Bostic told his readers to “mark it up in your memory
as just another smear attempt on Harlem by the local press.”43
 In gathering information to repudiate the Daily News story, Bostic
interviewed health commissioner Ernest Lyman Stebbins, who told him that
not only was there was no reason to bar military personnel from Harlem,
but in fact, Time Square, not Harlem, had the highest crime rate in the city.
Police commissioner Lewis Valentine also made it clear that he had not
received a request to declare any part of the city off-limits to soldiers or
sailors. The Daily News story, Valentine said, has “erroneously stigmatized
the city of New York as an immoral city.” According to the police
commissioner, there “are no areas or locations within the city that the armed
forces are banned from entering.”44
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. offered a political explanation for the smear
campaign by the white press after a Brooklyn grand jury claimed that
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn’s largest black community, was experiencing
a crime wave—he maintained that it was racism. The crime wave story, he
insisted, was created by a “group of bigoted whites” led by realtor Sumner
Sirtl, whom the New York City Teachers Union had labeled a Nazi.45 Powell
wrote that Sirtl’s intention was to “impose the Southern pattern [Jim Crow]
on Brooklyn.” Powell also denounced one of the star witnesses for the
Brooklyn grand jury as an “Alabama cracker cop” who supposedly had said
the crime wave was due to an “influx of sunburned citizens who came up
from the Deep South mistaking liberty for license.” Powell insisted that
“this cracker cop,” David Liebman, should be removed from the NYPD
immediately. The fact that an “Alabama cracker cop” was on the force and a
star witness for a grand jury was proof to him that New York was a Jim
Crow city and black New Yorkers subjugated to the same racial attacks that
blacks experienced in the South.46
Police assaults on black New Yorkers, Powell wrote, were evidence that
the North was a bastion of racial prejudice, and they were part of a larger
apparatus to deny black people the right to live in certain corners of the city.
In the case of Bedford-Stuyvesant, realtors teamed up with the police to
shut blacks out. Just a few years earlier, he contended, blacks were not
allowed to reside in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and the “police did everything
they could to keep Negroes from even walking the streets.” Blacks were not
even allowed on the grand jury that pronounced the crime wave.47
The People’s Voice strategy of “exposing” the mainstream press’s bias
and presenting a more positive image of Harlem and its residents was an
essential element in its campaign against police brutality. The paper worked
vigorously to combat a sea of negative images from the mainstream press.
The Voice was fighting what would be later be known as racial profiling of
individuals and a community by the police and white press.

Solutions
Although the People’s Voice was to the left of other New York City black
weeklies, the solutions it advocated for ending police brutality were at best
mainstream. After the 1943 Harlem Riot, for example, Powell proposed a
number of long-term solutions that included building more recreational
centers for youngsters, holding a conference of the various youth gangs of
the city to allow the “kids to get off what’s on their chest,” and suggesting
that they be allowed to organize their own movement, “however badly they
run it themselves.” The riot, which began on August 1, was triggered when
a rookie patrol officer by the name of James Collins attempted to arrest one
Margie Polite outside a Harlem hotel. Army private Robert Bandy
intervened in an attempt to assist Polite and got into a fight with Collins,
who shot him. Bandy was wounded, but a rumor spread that the police had
killed him and Harlem ignited for two days.48 Naming police brutality as a
cause of the riot, Powell wrote that Harlem’s citizens stood behind the
police when they were right; however, when they were wrong, the citizens
were “going to demand investigation and demand the wrong be righted.”49
Powell’s recommendations were in line with those of the New York Times in
its call for action to end violence in Harlem. The Times even noted that it
embraced some of Powell points, including building playgrounds,
recreational facilities, and summer schools in Harlem.50
One of the mainstream solutions the People’s Voice advocated was the
hiring of black police officers. Since racism was at the heart of police
brutality, it was assumed that black officers would not behave toward the
Harlem community like their white colleagues. A more racially inclusive
police force would end racial polarization. Moreover, black officers would
change the image of the police force from that of a white institution to a
racially diverse one that does not discriminate. Perhaps it might also change
the view that the police were an abusive force with the mission of keeping
blacks in their place. With more black officers, the NYPD could promote a
better relationship between black citizens and the police department.
In calling for Commissioner Valentine to hire more black officers, Powell
argued that such a move would not just benefit Harlem but the entire city
“with a more equally matched force.” Hiring one thousand black officers
would show the entire city that blacks were capable of serving as police
officers, since many of those new hires would be assigned to white
communities; it would foster an image of blacks as law enforcers rather
than the stereotypical criminals; and it would demonstrate to the entire city
that the police department was committed to integrating the force. The
Harlem councilman pointed out that the department’s record of hiring
blacks was pathetic: there was only one black detective, at the 135th Street
police station.51
The push for more black police officers was not just a campaign for
diversity. The People’s Voice maintained that black detectives could have an
important impact on the investigation process. A September 11, 1943, Voice
article complained that Harlem was “being stripped of Negro detectives,”
who were then replaced by whites. Of the sixty detectives in Harlem, only
five were black, and the lack of black detectives affected police work. Since
the basic task of a detective was to investigate, what was needed was the
“utmost confidence and forthrightness on the part of both the interviewer
and the interviewed.” The Voice argued that a larger number of black
detectives in Harlem could do a better job of policing the area, implying
that they were more familiar with the black community and people. It also
suggested that blacks would place more trust in black officers than in their
white counterparts.52
The People’s Voice called on assistant chief inspector John J. Ryan, who
was in charge of assigning detectives to precincts, to explain why there
were so few black detectives in Harlem. In the fall of 1943 the paper
claimed that its investigation had uncovered that no black detectives had
been assigned to Harlem since 1932 The NYPD had only eleven black
detectives on the entire force. The People’s Voice was not promoting
segregation—instead, it argued that the entire city could benefit from a
well-integrated police force.53
The People’s Voice supported the efforts of civil rights organizations that
pushed for more blacks on the force, and it praised the top brass who
promised to take action. In its July 10, 1943, issue, the Voice reported on a
meeting between a committee of New York Urban League and Police
Commissioner Valentine, noting that the commissioner agreed with the
committee’s assertion that one precautionary measure to “prevent racial
outbreaks” was to hire black police officers. Valentine said that he realized
the significance of black as well as white police officers in stopping racial
conflict, but that statement did not demonstrate that he accepted the premise
that police brutality was a reality and that the racial attitudes of white
officers led to confrontations between the police and black New Yorkers.
Valentine didn’t even bother to note the racial dynamics of police–
community tensions. Instead, he made a color-blind argument by pointing
to the contribution both black and white officers made toward stopping
racial conflict. Offering no concrete program to integrate the NYPD,
Valentine merely claimed that he was willing to work with any organization
that was eager to help in attracting candidates to the force.54
At times the People’s Voice placed too much trust in those who ran the
NYPD, in the hope that they would work to racially integrate the ranks.
Responding to Joe Bostic’s inquiry about the declining number of
detectives in Harlem, Assistant Chief Inspector Ryan promised that
“Harlem will get more Negro detectives and will get them in the very near
future.” He also promised that he would assure that a “representative
percentage” of blacks would be assigned to the new detective squad in
Brooklyn’s Seventy-Ninth Precinct. He even showed Bostic the files of
black police officers he said would be promoted to detectives. The People’s
Voice took credit for Ryan’s assurance, labeling it a “promise.” Bostic even
wrote that Ryan was “sincere.”55
Bostic’s optimism proved naïve, which led to disappointment when no
action was taken regarding the “promises.” Two weeks after writing that
Ryan was sincere, Bostic excoriated the assistant chief inspector for
upholding a “Jim Crow policy of refusing to assign a fair proportion of
detectives to Harlem.” Ryan’s “policy,” he wrote, confirmed the fears of the
Harlem community that “anti-Negro bias” was a major reason why black
detectives were not deployed in Harlem. Bostic was infuriated over Ryan’s
recent decision to appoint three white detectives to area. The appointments
“now proved [Ryan’s promises] to have been wholly insincere. . . . There
was only one conclusion to reach in the light of overwhelming evidence,”
Bostic wrote—“Harlem is the victim of a flagrant, vicious and un-American
Jim Cro[w] policy that has no place in a law enforcement agency.”56 Bostic
used moral suasion in an effort to embarrass the NYPD by arguing that its
actions were contrary to the American principles of liberty and justice. But
his criticism of Ryan reflected despair on the part of the People’s Voice.
Although Bostic expressed his disappointment that police top officials
did not take action to hire black officers, the Voice continued to express
faith that this would eventually happen. The number of blacks on the force
remained low, however, making up less than 1 percent of the NYPD in
1943. Of the total population of sixteen thousand police officers, only 155
were black, just six of whom were sergeants and one a patrol commissioner.
Mayor La Guardia and Police Commissioner Valentine, along with the U.S.
military, agreed to deploy 1,500 civilian volunteers—most of them black
citizens—after the Harlem Riot in 1943, but that group was only temporary.
Despite the absence of a proposal by Valentine to attract more blacks to the
force, the Voice still offered no criticism, and its July 10, 1943, article
reporting on the commissioner’s speech before the committee of Urban
League members, “Valentine Willing to Add More Negroes to Police
Force,” was optimistic in tone.57 Without offering any concrete solutions,
Valentine told the New York Urban League that he would continue doing
what he had been doing for his nine years as commissioner—urging blacks
to take the civil service examination for positions in the police department.
The police commissioner effectively promised to do nothing. It was the
Urban League that promised to take action in announcing that it planned to
set up classes at the Harlem YMCA to help blacks pass the exam.58
In a 1945 speech before an audience of two thousand at the NYPD’s
annual St. George Breakfast, Commissioner Valentine declared, “Whether
he [a police officer] be Catholic, Protestant or Jew, Republican or
Democrat, Negro or white, matters not at all. We are working together in
harmony.”59
The department did make progress by the early 1950s—in 1952 it
reported 16,577 white and 564 black officers. This was a significant
increase; however, of the 1,139 sergeants, only six were black. By 1953 it
had only one black captain.60
Why did the People’s Voice place its faith in the NYPD to open its ranks
to blacks and not call for more militant tactics such as civil disobedience,
lawsuits, and petition drives? Powell was not unfamiliar with hard-hitting
strategies. In the 1930s he had been involved in the “Don’t Buy Where You
Can’t Work” campaign. In 1941 he teamed up with the Harlem Labor
Union, the Manhattan Council of the National Negro Congress, and the
Transport Workers Union to conduct a two-week boycott against the Fifth
Avenue Coach Company and New York Omnibus Corporation, both of
which refused to hire blacks as bus drivers and mechanics and mistreated
black riders. The protesting groups organized the United Bus Strike
Committee, which conducted a bus boycott that kept an estimated sixty
thousand Harlem residents off the busses and managed to win major
concessions, including the hiring of black bus drivers and mechanics.61
One reason Powell did not resort to such militant tactics is that after 1941
he had moved away from protest toward more traditional politics. He had
been elected to the city council and already had his eye on climbing the
political ladder. In 1944 he ran for and won a seat in Congress but remained
editor in chief of the Voice until 1946, using the paper to promote himself.
Valentine’s statement that he wanted to hire blacks was framed as an
accomplishment. The Voice’s enthusiasm to highlight announcements made
by the police high brass on their willingness to add more black officers—
even if no actual hires were made—indicated Powell’s eagerness to show
the Harlem community that he was an effective leader who could deliver
services from those in power. He also wanted to distinguish his paper from
its rivals.
Despite the sharp focus on the issue of hiring black officers, Powell’s and
the People’s Voice’s solutions to ending police brutality did go beyond that
demand and included suspending and immediately prosecuting officers
accused of assaults and ensuring that victims had legal representation. They
even called into question the police and district attorney’s entire
investigative process. In his May 30, 1942, “Soapbox” column, Powell
pointed out that when a cop killed or assaulted a citizen, the district attorney
did not conduct an investigation unless there was a complaint filed. To
make matters worse, in cases involving police brutality, when an
investigation was conducted, the police usually escorted the witnesses to the
DA’s office, implying that such an escort could intimidate anyone who
might be willing to testify against a police officer. Another questionable
practice was that grand jury hearings were held behind closed doors, away
from the public. Powell noted that blacks were almost totally excluded from
grand juries. Although blacks made up 20 percent of the city’s population,
only one or two blacks served on a grand jury in 1941. The lack of black
grand jury members, according to the Harlem councilman, led to the
acquittal of white cops who murdered or brutalized black New Yorkers.62
Despite his criticism, however, Powell did not call for an alternative to the
grand jury system—instead, he demanded assurance that blacks would
serve on those bodies.
Powell maintained that institutional racism, such as the exclusion of
blacks from grand juries, revealed that racism was more than a regional
problem: “The false democracy of Alabama is dressed up a little bit more in
New York. The basic principles of a full democracy are just about ignored
in this ‘free’ North.” Powell’s accusation of institutional racism in New
York called into question northern racial liberalism by pointing to the
structural framework of the criminal justice system that led to racial
oppression of blacks. Such a statement was also a means of embarrassing
city officials.63
Powell argued that northern racism went beyond the realm of
“administration of justice.” He acknowledged that some restaurants served
blacks, that there was public school integration and even a few black
teachers in elementary schools, but he pointed out that there were
practically no black teachers in the high schools and colleges and that
blacks were excluded from civil service exams in many states. New York
City and State were better, but when “it comes to [a] question of
advancement, qualified people are passed over just because they are
Negroes.” He wrote, “Ole man Jim Crow is just dressed up in the North.”64
On occasion, the Voice helped to promote rallies and demonstrations.
Rallies were an effective way of informing people and showing moral
support for the struggle. Large protests were a means of demonstrating to
city officials the collective anger of the community. Commissioner
Valentine was extremely disturbed by the rally against police brutality
organized by Powell in the wake of the Wallace Armstrong killing.
Valentine informed Mayor La Guardia of a circular calling for a
demonstration on May 17, 1942, sparked by the “unfortunate killing” of
Armstrong. Powell was fully aware that the case was going to be presented
to the grand jury and that, in Valentine’s words, “this type of rabble rousing
is dangerous and might result in serious disorders,” but he was undeterred.
Valentine insisted that Powell “should be advised to cancel this proposed
Mass Meeting in the public interest and await the action and decision of the
New York County Grand Jury.”65
Fiorello La Guardia’s secretary, Lester Stone, told Powell in a phone call
that the mayor wanted to convey to Powell how “dangerous” such an event
was and that “if it produced any difficulties you would be held responsible.”
Powell told Stone that it was impossible to call off the event. He explained
that immediately after Armstrong’s killing he had sent a wire to both the
mayor and the commissioner but received no reply from La Guardia and
had only received a wire from Valentine the previous day—forty-eight
hours after his own wire had been sent. “That was pretty slow timing,” he
said. Stone again attempted to frighten Powell by asking if he was aware of
the “effect of a meeting of that kind.” The Harlem councilman attempted to
assure him that if it was handled properly and a committee was appointed to
meet with La Guardia, things would proceed peacefully. “The people have a
right to petition,” Powell told Stone, who replied that the people were
already riled up by the flyer announcing the rally, which read “ONE MORE
NEGRO BRUTALLY BEATEN and KILLED! Shot down like a Dog by the police.”
It called for Harlem residents to pack the Golden Gate Ballroom at Lenox
Avenue and 142nd Street in Harlem on Sunday, May 17, declaring it “I AM
an American Day,” and urged people to read about Armstrong in the
People’s Voice. “Don’t you think the handbill is inflammatory?” Stone
asked. “I think the handling is more inflammatory,” Powell retorted. Powell
informed Stone that he had affidavits from several eyewitnesses but assured
him that none of them would address the rally. Only “elected leaders of the
community” would speak: “Republicans, Democrats and American Labor
Party, both left and right wing.” Powell even went so far as to guarantee to
Stone that “there will be no disorders” and that the rally would be
“peaceful.”66
City officials were unable to stop the rally, so the police decided to
monitor it. Afterward, deputy police inspector George Mitchell sent a report
to Stone providing the names of the twelve speakers, their political
affiliation or occupation, and whether they were “white” or “colored.”
Acting Lieutenant Shilbersky, head of the Criminal Alien Squad, prepared
Mitchell’s report, which stated that Powell started the event at 5:10 p.m. by
saying that on the evening of May 12 Wallace Armstrong, “who comes
from an excellent family, was surrounded by twelve members of the police
force and unjustifiably killed.” Powell claimed that he had affidavits from
“twenty witnesses” in his pocket and photostats of the affidavits were
placed in two different locations in case the originals were “stolen” from
him. Declaring that he had a personal responsibility “to offer leadership,”
he said he had conferred with District Attorney Hogan and sent wires to
Valentine and La Guardia asking for the formation of a citizen’s committee
to investigate the murder. Powell said that all the community’s leaders were
united and were going to “elect” such a committee to demand an
investigation and would “sit on the steps of City Hall, until the Mayor
agrees to meet the representatives of Harlem.”67
A number of the speakers associated police brutality with the concept of
democracy. “Democracy,” according to Odel Clark, a leader of the
American Labor Party, “means more than riding in the same subway, or in
the bus or sitting in the same section with the white man.” Clark was asking
for the same fair treatment for Armstrong as would be accorded to a fallen
police officer. State assemblyman Danny Burrows, an African American,
wanted to see “Negroes in every branch of the Government service” and
said he had no desire to fight in the armed services “unless it is on equal
basis with the white man.”68
The list of speakers and their statements proved that this was not a
gathering of the far left. Nevertheless, the police were disturbed enough to
observe the event closely. Despite the fears of the mayor and others
regarding the rally, despite the tone of the leaflet and Powell’s refusal to call
off the event, Powell’s reassurance to La Guardia that the event would be
peaceful indicated that his militancy would go only so far. He would defy
the mayor’s request to call off the rally, but he was willing to place a
damper on the Harlem community’s anger. Limiting the speakers to elected
officials further indicated that Powell was more interested in show than in
substance.

Conclusion
The Voice should be given credit for advocating a number of solutions that
would be championed by activists in the 1950s and 1960s, including
racially integrating the police department and creating a monitoring agency.
Long before video cameras could record police beatings and killings, the
Voice served as a source of detailed accounts of such brutal attacks. Its
pages became the people’s record of violent encounters between law
enforcement and Harlemites.
The People’s Voice has to be given credit for making thousands of people
aware of important social, political, and economic issues that affected the
lives of black people, especially police brutality. The paper’s campaign to
stop police brutality by offering an alternative narrative to that of the
mainstream press and police department, and being able to organize huge
demonstrations to protest attacks on civil rights, made it unique among
white- and black-owned newspapers. At the heart of its crusade against
police brutality was its effort to provide black people with ways of opposing
police abuse.
While venues for airing their grievances and seeking justice against
police brutality—including city government, law enforcement, and the
white-owned media—were closed to black people, the black press took on
their cause and refused to allow such oppression to go unreported. In its
fight against police brutality, the People’s Voice portrayed the humanity of
black people while expounding on their plight.
 2

The Communist Party and Police Brutality

In the early morning of December 7, 1950, twenty-four-year-old Army
veteran John Derrick, thirty-five-year-old Zach Milline, and thirty-two-
year-old Oscar Farley were returning home from a local tavern where they
had been celebrating Derrick’s medical discharge from the armed forces.
Suddenly patrolmen Louis Palumbo and Basil Minakotis approached the
three black men and demanded that they raise their hands in the air.
According to Milline, a grocery store owner, and Farley, a private in the
U.S. Army, the two white policemen began shooting at them without
warning. Derrick, who had been wounded serving his country in Korea, was
shot in the heart and died. “Why? Why did they do it? I’ve never seen
anything like it in my life,” Milline said.1
Police claimed that Derrick had a gun, but affidavits of witnesses said he
was unarmed. Nevertheless, the district attorney’s office ruled that the two
patrolmen were “properly performing their duties.” A New York County
grand jury reported in February 1951 that “it had found no basis for an
indictment.”2
Many in the Harlem community were outraged by Derrick’s slaying and
the fact that the two cops were not indicted. Harlem councilman Earl Brown
called for Palumbo and Minakotis to be punished and asked that the War
Department take a role in the investigation, since Derrick was a veteran.
According to Lindsay White, head of the Manhattan branch of the NAACP,
the civil rights organization hired a private detective agency to investigate
the killing. The New York Amsterdam News, one of the nation’s largest
black weeklies, labeled Palumbo and Minakotis “police killers of Negro
veteran John Derrick” and announced a massive rally on January 5, 1951,
so that the “people of Harlem will be able to show the police, the district
attorney and the grand jury that police brutality in the community will be
tolerated no longer.”3 The New York City branch of the NAACP and
Harlem leaders planed the rally. U.S. senator Jacob Javits, U.S.
representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., civil rights and labor leader A.
Phillip Randolph, baseball great Jackie Robinson, and boxing sensation
Sugar Ray Robinson were scheduled to attend the event.4
We have seen how the most outspoken black weekly in Harlem, the
People’s Voice, took on police brutality. The reaction to the Derrick killing
demonstrated that civil rights activists, prominent leaders, and even
celebrated sports figures were also willing to challenge such misconduct.
But they weren’t alone. The American Communist Party was perhaps the
most active political organization in the fight against police brutality.
Writing for the Daily Worker, the Communist Party’s daily newspaper,
Abner W. Berry portrayed the Derrick shooting as a cold-blooded racist
murder covered up by those in power. “A Negro army veteran only 12
hours out of uniform was lynched by two white policemen in Harlem on
Pearl Harbor Day,” Berry wrote, charging that the Derrick case was part of
a “string of brutal Negro killings by police officers” that had been
whitewashed by the district attorney’s office.5
Communist Party members considered police brutality one of the major
challenges facing black Americans. Assessing his tour of Detroit,
Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis on behalf of the Communist Party–
operated League of Struggle for Negro Rights, Harry Haywood, an early
black member of the American Communist Party, declared that the
“burning civil rights issue in these cities was police terror against the Black
Community.”6 American Communist Party member Carl Vedro contended
in 1950 that in the “case of the Negro people, the intensification of
oppressive measures is all too evident. Whereas the denial of civil rights to
the Negro people before the war was expressed in lynching mobs,
something new has been added today—the role of the police and the state.”
According to Vedro, instances of brutality demonstrated that the “police and
government directly assumed the role of oppressors.”7
What did their participation in the campaign suggest about the New York
City civil rights struggle? Communists organized campaigns against police
brutality, participated in demonstrations, and highlighted police brutality
cases in left-leaning publications. They became involved in the campaign. I
argue here that the view that Communists had little or no concern about
civil rights is incorrect, and I challenge the assumption that Cold War
repression marginalized Communists, thus muting their voice in civil rights
struggles. The American Communist Party played an important role in the
civil rights campaign to end police brutality in New York City from World
War II into the 1950s. Indeed, the party gave those involved in the struggle
new ways of addressing police brutality by connecting it to a larger national
and international movement. For Communists, police brutality called into
question the notion that racial terror sanctioned by the state was relegated to
the South. In the Daily Worker the party characterized police shootings,
beatings, and other forms of assaults as “northern lynching” perpetrated by
those in power. As a policy aimed at African Americans and sanctioned by
the government, police brutality, for the party, was a violation of human
rights as well as civil rights.
The American Communist Party analyzed police brutality against
African Americans along two dimensions. In terms of class, the police were
part of a superstructure used to maintain the capitalist economic structure.
Communists contended that police brutality against African Americans
happened because the latter were members of the American working class
who opposed the systematic effort to exploit their labor. However,
American Communists also argued that race was a significant factor in
understanding police repression of African Americans because it was used
as a means of fragmenting the working class, thus stopping any attempt at
creating a unified opposition front to capitalism.

Lynching Northern Style

In the early part of its history, the Communist Party maintained that it was
the target of police brutality. African American Communist Party member
Harry Haywood said that in the early 1930s “Chicago’s police force
undoubtedly held the record for terror and lawlessness against workers.
They were unsurpassed for sadism and brutality, regularly raiding the halls
and offices of the Unemployed Councils, revolutionary organizations and
the Party.” According to Haywood, “It took courage and on occasion
ingenuity to thwart the police terror aimed at forcibly stifling and
demoralizing the workers’ movement.”8
Chicago was not unique. According to party members, police also
targeted them in New York City. In July 1930, Gonzalo Gonzalez, whom
the press described as a “Mexican Communist,” was shot and killed by
officer Edmund J. O’Brian while walking in a “procession of about 30
Mexican and Spanish Communists.” Latino Communists were marching to
pay homage to Alfred Luro, an African American Communist who had
been killed when hit by a piece of wood thrown from a roof—purportedly
by the police. When O’Brian told them to break up their demonstration, he
was “struck” by one of the demonstrators. The press quoted witnesses who
testified that Gonzales then grabbed the cop’s nightstick and began beating
him, knocking him down twice. After being knocked down the second time,
O’Brian shot Gonzales in the heart.9
The deaths of Luro and Gonzalez bolstered the Communist Party’s
argument that the police were an apparatus of the state, which had
“launched a reign of terror” against the working class. A. B. Magil and
Joseph North, writers for the Marxist journal the New Masses, identified
Alfred Luro (“a Negro”) and Gonzales as “two workers” who were “killed
by New York Finest,” demonstrating the “current of struggle” that
“swiftened as the bosses feverishly built their dam of fascism.”10
The Communists’ accusations were not unfounded. In a 1931 report, the
American Civil Liberties Union found that the “chief interferences by city
police with civil rights affect radical meetings and strikers’ picket lines.”
The ACLU stated, “The most conspicuous offender among police
departments is New York City, with the longest record of meetings and
picket-lines broken up, despite the fact that permits for street meetings are
not required in New York. The principal victims were Communists.” In
particular, “smaller Communist demonstrations, particularly at the City
Hall, before foreign consulates, and at other unfamiliar spots, were violently
broken up.” Despite formal complaints to the police commissioner against
such assaults, the ACLU declared that there has only been a
“whitewashing” of the incidents.11
The Communist Party contended that the police specifically targeted
African Americans in order to destroy any effort to create black and white
unity among workers.12 According to the party, black Americans were the
most exploited segment of the working class. As early as 1921, the
American Communist Party (then called the Workers Party) addressed the
oppression of African Americans: “The Negro workers in America are
exploited and oppressed more ruthlessly than any other group. The history
of the Southern Negro is the history of a reign of terror—of persecution,
rape and murder. . . . The Workers Party will support Negroes in their
struggle for liberation, and will help them in their fight for economic,
political and social equality.”13
It pledged to “destroy” the obstacles that had been implemented to divide
black and white workers.14 Blacks faced a crueler form of oppression than
did other workers, and the party would make a vigorous effort to end racial
terror. In 1926 William Z. Foster, who joined the American Communist
Party in 1923 and would later became its general secretary, echoed this
view when he wrote that the “working class is far from being a
homogeneous mass. It is divided against itself in regard to race, nationality,
color, creed, age, sex, skill, etc.” He wrote that the “problem is still further
complicated because the employers have learned skillfully to play upon
these differences and to split up the workers disastrously on the basis of
them.” Foster argued that the inclusion of black workers in trade unions
could only be “accomplished by complete suppression of race antagonism
in the trade unions and by a loyal defense of the Negro worker’s interest.”
However, realizing the intensity of racism in the United States, Foster
acknowledged, “This is easier said than done.” Therefore, Communists had
to take strong measures to challenge racial divisions.15
By the time the Communist Party moved into what it called its Third
Period (1928–35), it did take strong action to eliminate racial divisions.
According to the party, the Third Period witnessed, in the Great Depression,
the radicalization of the American working class as well as a collapse of
capitalism. During this time, the party worked militantly to end racial terror
in order to assure that the working class would not be fragmented in its
struggle for a workers’ state.16 Communists led campaigns to end lynching
and played a leading role in the Scottsboro Nine case. In 1931, nine youths
ranging from ages thirteen to nineteen were arrested in Scottsboro,
Alabama, and accused of raping two white women. All but one were
sentenced to death. The Communist Party and the International Labor
Defense, a Communist Party affiliate, defended the Scottsboro Nine and led
an international campaign to free them.17 For the Communist Party as well
as others, Alabama’s decision to execute the teenagers was a symbol of
southern whites’ racist obsession with interracial sex. Although Ruby Bates,
one of the two white women who made the charge that she had been raped,
could not identify any of her alleged attackers, and she would later recant
her story that she had been raped, an all-white jury found the teens guilty
and sentenced them to death.18
 By 1935, concerned that Nazi Germany was preparing to attack the
Soviet Union, Moscow ordered Communist Parties worldwide to drop the
argument that socialists, social democrats, and liberals who were opposed to
Communism were “social fascists” and to instead build a united front with
these forces to confront Hitler. In response, the U.S. Communist Party
advocated a “Popular Front” of socialists, social democrats, civil rights
groups, and non-Communist labor unions united against fascism and
racism. The best example of the Popular Front approach with regard to civil
rights was the party’s participation in the National Negro Congress, which it
joined in 1936. The National Negro Congress was a group of civil rights
and religious leaders whose objective was to fight for the civil and
economic rights of black Americans. Dropping its more strident
revolutionary rhetoric and adopting a more mainstream notion of forming a
coalition with reformist organizations, the party focused on the issue of
police brutality. At the NNC’s founding convention, the eight hundred
delegates agreed on a program that included the abolition of both police
brutality and lynching. In 1938 the NNC attempted to obtain thousands of
signatures for a petition against police brutality in Washington, DC, and
submit it to president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.19
Despite the American Communist Party’s public support for civil rights
for blacks, its back and forth positions on the international front sent a
confusing message. After the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact
with Nazi Germany in 1939, A. Philip Randolph resigned from the National
Negro Congress, condemning it for adhering to the dictates of the Soviet
Union and American Communist Party.20 The Baltimore Afro American, a
weekly newspaper, claimed that when the Soviet Union signed the non-
aggression pact with Nazi Germany, Communists lost credibility with black
Americans.21 Randolph declared at the April 1940 NNC Convention that for
“anyone to take the position that the Negroes should place their fortunes at
the feet of the Communist Party, which is subject to such violent and far-
reaching shakeups, a party which lacks stability of purpose, and serves an
alien master, is passing strange.”22 Some civil rights leaders, including
Randolph and Roy Wilkins, who would head the NAACP after 1955, even
charged that the Communists were not interested in the civil rights of
African Americans at all. Calling for a march on Washington in 1942,
Randolph declared, “We cannot sup with the Communists for they rule or
ruin any movement. This is their policy.”23
 When William Paterson of the Civil Rights Congress, a Communist
Party–affiliated organization fighting for civil rights, reached out to the
NAACP to form an alliance, Roy Wilkins responded angrily: “As soon as
Russia was attacked by Germany they dropped the Negro Question and
concentrated all effort in support of the war in order to help the Soviet
Union. During the war years the disciples of the extreme left sounded very
much like the worst of the Negro-hating Southerners.” Wilkins would later
write in his criticism of both the Republican Party and the Communists,
“Both have tossed the Brother overboard as soon as they got what they
wanted.”24
Yet, despite its changing positions on war, peace, and revolution, the U.S.
party did not abandon its attack on the racial terror aimed at black
Americans. After the war, the party press continued to characterize police
brutality as a form of lynching. Reporting on the shooting of three brothers
in Freeport, New York, by a white police officer, a writer for the Daily
Worker asserted that “Jim Crow Pulled the Trigger.” In February 1946
rookie police officer Joseph Romeika shot the two Ferguson brothers,
twenty-five-year-old Alfonso and twenty-seven-year-old Charles, a father
of three. Apparently, the bullet that killed Charles ricocheted and also
wounded twenty-two-old Joseph Ferguson. The fourth brother, Richard,
was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.25 Hours after his arrest,
he was tried without legal counsel or a jury, found guilty by a judge, and
fined $100. Official testimony showed that none of the men was armed. The
brothers were celebrating Charles’s reenlistment in the U.S. Army Air
Force. The Daily Worker pointed out that when an owner of the Bus
Terminal Tea Room refused to serve them coffee, Charles accused him of
displaying a “Jim Crow attitude.” Romeika was called on the scene, took
the brothers into custody and, according two eyewitnesses, lined them up—
at which point the “Negro-hating cop” shot them.26 Freeport police chief
Peter Elar decided not to suspend Romeika, and a Freeport grand jury
refused to bring charges, even though the officer admitted lining them up
and kicking the brothers in the groin before shooting them.27
The Communist Party joined in a campaign to win justice for the
Ferguson brothers and covered the story in the Daily Worker, calling the
killing a “lynching Northern style.” The New York Veterans against
Discrimination of Civil Rights, an organization that the attorney general
listed in 1948 as a “Communist Front,” and the United Veterans for
Equality organized a conference to help plan a fight for justice.28
Although there is no evidence that U.S. representative Vito Marcantonio
was a member of the American Communist Party (despite the fact that the
House Un-American Activities Committee listed him as one of the “well-
known Communists or fellow travelers”),29 he was of the opinion that
Communists had a right to be heard. He and the Communist Party were
allied on a number of issues, including civil rights, labor rights, anti-
lynching and anti–poll tax legislation, independence for Puerto Rico, and
opposition to the Taft-Hartley Act. The latter was passed by Congress in
1947 and restricted the activities of labor unions, such as prohibiting the
closed shop and secondary boycotts. Marcantonio also wrote a column for
the Daily Worker titled “Mark My Words.” On one occasion, he wrote that
the police killing of John Derrick was the “height of police violence and
brutality against Negro citizens,” arguing that in “recent years the police
have attempted to turn Harlem and East Harlem into a Georgia or
Mississippi.” Marcantonio sent the message to his readers that the NYPD
was no different in its treatment of blacks than law enforcement officials in
the Jim Crow South.30

Ben Davis and Police Brutality

Two of the Communist Party’s black members, Benjamin J. Davis and
William L. Patterson, made the fight against police brutality a major focus
of their political work, and no party members were more outspoken on the
issue. Their passion was due, in part, to Communist ideology. Both
articulated the party’s position that police brutality was a tool the owners
used as a “means of production” to divide the working class. But their
arguments came from more than ideology; as African Americans they were
responding to police brutality as victims of racial oppression.
Ben Davis was the first declared black member of the Communist Party
to be elected to the New York City Council, in 1943. He was a high-ranking
party official, serving as chairman of the New York State District. Despite
his Communist affiliation, he was elected to three terms and served until he
was expelled in 1949, after he was convicted under the Smith Act, a law
passed in 1940 making it illegal to advocate the overthrow of the United
States government.31
Davis was born in 1903 in Dawson, Georgia, a Jim Crow city where
blacks were relegated to the lowest social, political, and economic
positions. They could not vote or hold office. A black person who talked
back to a white person could be playing with his life by doing so. Davis
attended a one-room, ramshackle “Negro school,” where the term was six
weeks shorter than in schools for white children. According to Davis, the
black school was a “hazard to life and limb.”32 To provide their children
with a better education, Davis’s parents relocated to Atlanta.33 Davis would
attend Morehouse College and then Amherst College, where he earned a
bachelor’s degree, and finally Harvard Law School, from which he
graduated in 1933.34
Davis was radicalized when he got involved in the Angelo Herndon case
in 1933. Herndon, an African American labor organizer and member of the
Communist Party, was arrested in Georgia for insurrection when he tried to
organize black farmworkers. Serving as one of his defense attorneys, Davis
was threatened by white southerners and subjected to racial slurs from the
judge.35
Davis was so impressed by Herndon’s bravery, work, and ideology that
soon after the trial he joined the Communist Party.36 His interest in police
brutality stemmed from the Herndon case, during which he witnessed how
the state apparatus was used to persecute an African American trying to
organize the black working class. Davis considered the police an arm of the
state used to crush activism and to discourage unity among black and white
workers. He would later write that the “struggles of the Negro people are an
inseparable part of the struggles of the working class in America, and of the
workers, common people and colonials all over the world.” Racial
discrimination, he argued, was a weapon of “capitalism to intensify its
exploitation of certain sections of the population, to keep down the wages
and working conditions of the working class, and to prevent the working
people from uniting against the common foe—capitalism.”37
Davis also articulated the party’s position that Jim Crow was practiced
beyond the Mason-Dixon Line. Writing in the journal Phylon, he
maintained that, while Jim Crow had its “sharpest expressions in the
South,” it had spread “its tentacles all over America, including New York,
where I share in common with all other Negroes the denial of my
constitutional right to live.” The Jim Crow system in the North was evident,
according to Davis, “in jobs, civil rights, the slum-infested ghetto,
education and other fields—sometimes covertly and subtly, but nevertheless
it is there.”38 Capitalism was the “root cause” of racial discrimination,
motivated by the need to divide the classes and forestall challenges to
capitalist ownership of the “basic means of production and natural
resources.”39
Although he was willing to articulate the Communist Party position,
Davis did not hesitate to criticize Communists for their lack of recognition
of the black community’s leadership on the issues directly affecting it. In
his report to the Communist Party’s Fifteenth National Convention in
December 1950, held in New York City, Davis warned members that they
must “overcome a certain sluggishness in grasping the significance of this
new quality in the peace and Negro liberation struggles.” As an example of
independent militancy in the black communities, he pointed to those
involved in the black liberation struggle who had created a civilian
campaign “for death to the police-lynchers of [John] Derrick.”40
Davis’s twenty-two-page pamphlet Police Brutality, Lynching in the
Northern Style (actually written by Davis’s assistant, Horace Marshall, and
published in 1947 by Davis’s office) detailed many cases of flagrant police
violence in Harlem. Samuel T. Symonette, a forty-two-year-old Harlem
businessman, was “savagely” assaulted for thirty minutes by four
plainclothes cops on October 18, 1947. Peter Train, a twenty-six-year-old
veteran, accused New York City police detective John T. O’Connor of
hitting and kicking him without reason. The pamphlet declared that police
brutality is the northern “counterpart to lynch-terror against Negroes in the
semi-feudal South.” One section of the pamphlet defended the Communist
Party for its diligence in fighting police brutality: “Often when my [Davis’s]
Councilmanic office and my party—the Communist Party—have made
repeated charges of police brutality, the charges have been labeled as
‘empty Communist propaganda,’ or, as Police Commissioner Wallander
once said, ‘a campaign of calumny’ against the police department. The
cases cited here, show who has been indulging in ‘empty propaganda.’
They show what experience always proves, namely, that red-baiting is a
camouflage to hide the truth.” The pamphlet also remarked on the use of
police brutality as an attempt to divide black and white workers:
“Numerous cases of police brutality have been occasioned because Negro
and white were in company together either in Harlem or other sections of
the city. This represents a direct threat to the trade unions, which are based
upon private and public association of Negro and white, Jew and Gentile,
Catholic and Protestant, in all walks of life.” It continued, “As the Negro
people, supported by their trade union and white progressive allies, find it
necessary to demonstrate, picket, and fight evictions, the policemen’s billet
is there to turn them back.”41
In an April 2, 1948, press release, Davis argued that the pamphlet
outlined his program of action “to stop this evil and to secure redress and
justice for the victim of police brutality.” Echoing a familiar theme pushed
by the Communist Party, Davis noted that the pamphlet warned of the
danger of fascism in the lawless use of violence by police against citizens.
Davis also placed police brutality in a Cold War context: “It is noteworthy
that this vicious treatment of the Negro people takes place at the moment
when the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan to save the world from
Communism are supposed to be spreading freedom and equality all over the
world. There could be no more vivid exposure of hypocrisy of the Truman
Administration and its Republican partisans than what happens to Negroes
in America.”42
The argument equating police brutality to fascism echoed the party’s
position that the police were part of the repressive state apparatus used
against those who challenged the status quo. The attack on the Truman
administration and the Republican Party echoed accusations by the Soviet
Union and its allies that the racial terror and discrimination aimed at black
Americans undermined the United States’ claim that it was the paragon of
democracy while the Soviet Union was a slave state. But Davis’s arguments
were more than Communist propaganda. As we saw above, Adam Clayton
Powell Jr. and the People’s Voice also compared northern racism to its
southern counterpart.
Davis’s comparison of New York City police brutality to southern
lynching drew the attention of police commissioner Arthur William
Wallander, who accused the city councilman of equating police with
“Georgia lynchers” and carrying out a “campaign of calumny.” In response,
Davis declared that the “Communist Party and I and numerous police
victims” would continue to make the claim until the police ended the
brutality, and he warned that if nothing happened, “this city faces a
tragedy.” He also denied comparing the NYPD to Georgia lynchers—“The
comparison is his [Wallander’s] and not mine”—but he then reasserted his
principled point: “While on the subject, the Commissioner should be
reminded that a lynching was narrowly averted in Queens recently.”43
Even while articulating the Communist Party’s positions, Davis also left
room for those who were unsympathetic to the party. He pointed out that
the “growing incidence of police brutality in New York City has become a
serious public issue,” and in a letter to supporters described three recent
incidents in which police attacked citizens, including World War II veteran
Benjamin Gibbs, who was beaten by patrolman James Fisher on October
14, 1946, and Samuel T. Symonette: “Unless we act NOW to check the rising
menace to public safety, the Negro people will become the wholesale
victims of Wallander’s recent ‘muss-em up’ order to get tough with the
‘bums and street corner loafers.’”44 Davis was referring to Police
Commissioner Wallander’s order to crack down on criminals in Harlem in
order to curtail the rising crime rate. In a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article
headlined “‘Muss up’ Hoodlums, Wallander Tells Cops.” Wallander was
quoted in September 1947 as ordering police to “get all hoodlums off our
streets. I mean get the street corner loafers and get the easy money men, the
ones who never work, day or night, but manage to keep well dressed and
have plenty of spending money. Give them the proper treatment. You know
what I mean by that.”45
Police brutality would remain a key issue for Davis, even when he and
other top leaders of the American Communist Party became victims of the
Cold War and were charged in 1949 with violating the Smith Act. When he
ran, unsuccessfully, for reelection he continued to stress the issues of
“police brutality . . . better housing [and] . . . decent jobs.”46

Cold War Civil Rights?

According to some scholars, by the Cold War period the NAACP had
embraced anti-Communist liberalism and joined an alliance of the federal,
state, and local governments, private industry, labor, and others to remove
Communists from the fight for social justice. Historian Penny Von Eschen
writes, “As early as 1946, with the formation of Truman’s Committee on
Civil Rights, [NAACP executive secretary Walter] White and others began
to craft the dominant argument of the anti-Communist civil rights liberals.
The new argument seized on international criticism of American racism to
argue that antidiscrimination measures were necessary for the United States
in its struggle against communism. The liberal argument against racism,
using anti-Communism to justify the fight against domestic discrimination
and or civil rights, conceded the high ground to anti-Communism.”47
Accusing Walter White, head of the NAACP from 1931 to 1955, of
pushing the Communists out of the civil rights struggle, historian Manning
Marable argues that he “fought any influence of communists or independent
radicals in the organization. He supported the early ‘witch-hunts’ to exclude
communists from all levels of the federal government. . . . Like [A. Philip]
Randolph, White attempted to identify the struggle for black equality with
the anti-communist impulse.”48
To be sure, in the 1930s the NAACP had accused the Communist Party
of trying to exploit African Americans by pretending to fight on their
behalf. But the real aim of the party, according to NAACP officials, was to
recruit them to the party and get them to accept Communist ideology. In a
1931 article in Harper’s Magazine, Walter White accusing the party of
exploiting black grievances for its own selfish ends.49 In response, the party
insisted that the oldest civil rights organization in the nation was a tool of
capitalists, unwilling to mount a struggle on behalf of the black working
class.50
Ben Davis, like other party members, did not hold back from criticizing
the leadership of the NAACP. In a criticism of president Harry S. Truman,
Davis claimed, “All those like Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, who seem to
think the Negros are more interested in pulling Truman’s Cold War
chestnuts out of the fire than they are in stopping the lynch war against
black people in this country have simply lost their heads in a mess of
partisan politics.”51
However, Von Eschen and other proponents of what historian Eric
Arnesen calls the “new consensus on the domestic cold war civil rights”
ignore evidence that at times the NAACP and other liberals actually
cooperated with Communists.52 Historian Patricia Sullivan points out that
the “NAACP worked closely with a number of so-called Popular Front
groups, since the New Deal era, such as the National Lawyers Guild, the
National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax, the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare, and the Progressive Citizens of America. Walter White
even warned that communism was less of a threat than professional anti-
communists.”53
In addition, there were Communists in a few branches of the NAACP. At
the height of the Cold War, the Brooklyn branch leader worked alongside a
Communist member, the Reverend Milton A. Galamison, who became
president of the Brooklyn NAACP in 1956; and formed a strong alliance
with Annie Stein, a member of both the branch and the Communist Party.
Together, Stein and Galamison developed a grassroots organization called
the NAACP Schools Workshop, which helped to cultivate leadership among
black and Latino parents to challenge Board of Education policies that
many viewed as detrimental to their children’s education. The workshop
provided opportunities to negotiate with school officials and express
parents’ grievances to principals.54 Historian Manfred Berg points out that
Communists were members of the San Francisco and Richmond,
California; Great Neck, New York; and Philadelphia branches and of a
number of student chapters. Despite its misgivings about Communists in
leadership positions, Berg found no evidence that the national leaders of the
NAACP sought to purge members from these locales.55
Despite Ben Davis’s party membership, there is evidence that some
liberal voices reached out to the councilman for assistance. After he was
elected to the City Council in 1943, an editorial in the Republican-leaning
New York Age titled “Our New Councilman” declared, “When Benjamin J.
Davis takes office on January 1, 1944, as City Councilman, he becomes by
the very nature of things our councilman, regardless of his or our political
affiliation and ties. That is the challenge which Election Day gave to
Benjamin J. Davis. We are confident that he will satisfactorily meet that
challenge and will acquit himself with credit to the race as our
Councilman.”56
In the winter of 1947, the Reverend Ben Richardson, executive secretary
of the Regional Action Committee of The Protestant, wrote to the
councilman asking for his assistance in the case of Leona Hightower
Samuels, who had been physically assaulted by a patrolman the previous
September. An eyewitness reported to The Protestant that the police officer
kicked and punched her to the ground and began choking her.57 Dorothy M.
Hayes, the union representative for Social Services Employees Union Local
19 of the United Office and Professional Workers of America, CIO, also
reached out to Davis, complaining about a police officer’s “brutal and
discriminatory treatment” of an African American woman who was
member of the union. Davis assured Hayes that the union had his support
and promised to send a letter to both Commissioner Wallander and Mayor
O’Dwyer: “This case is apparently another in a whole series of brutal
treatment of Negro women by members of the Police Department.” Noting
that the incident must be protested, Davis contended that the cases of
brutality “are directed not only against the Negro people but against the
fraternization between Negro and white which is the very foundation of the
trade union movement.”58
Even though there was animosity between the NAACP and the
Communist Party, in 1946 Walter White sent Ben Davis a telegram
informing him that his organization had requested a meeting with
Commissioner Wallander “regarding the tense situation in Harlem growing
out of police brutality” and “cordially” inviting Davis to “be one of a small
and select group to attend this conference.”59 In 1949, James Powers, head
of the Brooklyn branch of the NAACP, informed Davis that the group’s
executive board had adopted a resolution criticizing the police department
“for willful and reckless practices which prevail throughout the police
service of invading homes without warrant or lawful cause, of making
illegal searches and seizures, and of exercising unnecessary and brutal
violence in making arrests.” Calling for a wide-scale investigation, Powers
invited Davis’s “attention to this subject” and said, “We request your
interest and support.”60 It is unlikely that Davis attended the meeting; his
name is not listed as an under signer in a press release issued by White.61
Still, the fact that Walter White wanted to include him among a select group
of leaders to meet with Wallander challenges the argument that the NAACP
had adopted a policy of total exclusion of Communists from civil rights
struggles.

Police Brutality as a Form of Genocide

Ben Davis was the leading Communist voice against police brutality during
and shortly after World War II, a mantle that passed to William L. Patterson
during the Cold War. Rising through the ranks of the Communist Party,
Patterson became a member of the Central Committee and the executive
secretary of the International Labor Defense (a party-affiliated legal defense
organization).
After graduating from high school in 1911 Patterson moved from
Oakland to San Francisco and began attending the University of California
to study engineering. However, he had a change of heart and decided to
study law, so in 1915 he enrolled at the Hastings College of Law of the
University of California in San Francisco and graduated in 1919. A few
years later he moved to New York City and in 1923 opened a law firm in
Harlem along with two friends specializing in civil rights cases, particularly
defending those whom he felt had been targeted unfairly by the state.62
In New York, Patterson encountered Marxists and socialists, including
some early black members of the Communist Party, such as Richard Moore
and Cyril Briggs. Patterson noted in his autobiography that he began
studying Marxism as a young lawyer, but it was the famous Sacco and
Vanzetti case that moved him to embrace Communism. Ferdinando Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two young Italian immigrants who were
anarchists, were arrested on April 15, 1920, and accused of a payroll
robbery at a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts. They were found
guilty of killing two guards and sentenced to death.63 Many Communists,
socialists, and others on the left believed that Sacco and Vanzetti were
falsely convicted and launched a campaign to stop their execution. After
reading about the case and talking to Richard Moore, Cyril Briggs, Otto
Huiswood, Lovett Fortman Whitman, and Grace Campbell, all black
members of the Communist Party, Patterson concluded that the trial
“revealed to millions the class nature of justice in the United States.” He
decided to join the campaign to save their lives. He traveled to Boston with
others from the International Labor Defense and demonstrated outside the
prison where Sacco and Vanzetti were being held. Despite protests
throughout the United States and other countries, Sacco and Vanzetti were
executed in late August 1927.64
The execution had a profound impact on Patterson: “For me, the world
had changed. American reaction had won a victory over the bodies of two
men, but its effort to stampede the people had ended in utter failure.” His
faith in the law as a tool for democracy had disappeared: “I could not
practice law again, at least not as I had before.” Patterson concluded that
“Sacco and Vanzetti belonged to white and Black, Italian, German, English,
Jew, Russian, American—they belonged to progressive mankind.” If
oppression was going to end, then workers must unite. For Patterson, the
execution was part of a larger effort by the ruling class to stop blacks and
whites from uniting for a common cause. When Cyril Briggs gave him a
copy of The Communist Manifesto, Patterson said a “door opened for me.”
He was soon reading works by Communists and speaking to party
members.65 The party was appealing to many African Americans because of
its emphasis on fighting racism and white chauvinism and promoting
integration. Its willingness to prioritize the fight against racism made it
different from the major political parties and even left-leaning organizations
such as the American Socialist Party. Eugene Debs, the founder of the
Socialist Party, recognized the racial oppression of African Americans. He
noted in a 1903 piece titled “The Negro in the Class Struggle” the fact that
the “white heel is still upon the black neck is simply proof that the world is
not yet civilized,” but he insisted that there was “no Negro Question outside
of the labor question. . . . We have nothing special to offer the Negro, and
we cannot make separate appeals to all the races.”66 While Debs contended
that the only important fight was the class struggle, Victor Berger, another
member of the Socialist Party, wrote in 1902, “There could be no doubt that
that the Negroes and mulattoes constitute a lower race.”67
Convinced that Communism was the solution to racial inequality in the
United States, Patterson joined the party and began taking classes at its
Workers School. After a few months there, party officials selected him to
visit the Soviet Union. The trip deepened his commitment, as he met
students of color from developing nations: “To many thousands of Black,
Brown and Yellow students, the effort of the USSR to give them a chance to
become acquainted with the real world and with objective truth was a
priceless gift. And to the USSR it represented the acceptance of
responsibility to mankind, to international working-class solidarity—their
philosophy.”68
In the early 1930s Patterson became a member of International Labor
Defense. In 1931, when the ILD defended the Scottsboro Nine, Patterson
wrote, “Scottsboro had revealed the role played by the state—the multiple
role—conspirator, judge, jury and executioner. If the state failed to carry
through its plans, it was because the progressive world was alerted and had
rallied to the defense of the hapless victims.”69 Patterson learned two things
from the Scottsboro case: the state, instead of protecting the lives of black
people, was guilty of murdering them; and a well-organized mass
movement of interracial workers and progressives could stop such killings.
In 1933 Patterson, who had by then become national secretary of the ILD,
declared the Scottsboro case a “legal lynching” but said the efforts of the
mass movement, along with expert legal defense, had forced the state of
Alabama not to carry out the executions: “The ruling class sought through
the Scottsboro terror to chill the blood of the earth crushed Negro masses,
but their liberation struggles have been raised to a higher level.” For
Patterson, “class war” prisoners had to rely not only on expert legal defense
but also on a vigorous working-class mass protest.70
In 1949 Patterson became head of the National Civil Rights Congress,
which was organized 1946 in Detroit when the National Negro Congress,
the International Labor Defense, and the National Federation for
Constitutional Liberties merged. The CRC’s major objective was to
challenge racial injustices perpetrated by federal and local governments.
Patterson adopted the same three-pronged approach he used in the ILD to
address racial inequality: “The development of an offensive movement
begins with mass democratic action; the broader and deeper and sharper it
is, the greater the defendant’s chances. . . . Legal, procedure and mass
action tactics must be coordinated. It is therefore necessary to prepare the
state’s intended victim for the activities that are an inseparable part of the
campaign.”71
As early as 1933 Patterson, too, had argued that oppression of blacks was
not a southern phenomenon but a national problem. In a speech he said,
“Tonight speakers have told you that 5,000 Negroes have been lynched
since the Civil War. Yet there have been 5,000 such lynchings, and the
Republican and Democratic Parties have done nothing about it.” He
ridiculed the idea that there was no discrimination in Harlem: “What about
that butchers shop, Harlem Hospital? What about the extra rents you have
to pay? What about the restaurants and hotels right in Harlem that you can’t
enter?”72 But it would not be until the 1940s that the term genocide was used
to describe the United States policy regarding African Americans.
The Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News, two of the
country’s largest black weeklies, suggested soon after the creation of the
United Nation’s Genocide Convention that the term genocide might apply
to the treatment of African Americans, especially when it came to southern
lynchings.73 But Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress went further.
World War II and the horrors of Nazism convinced Patterson to compare the
United States’ treatment of blacks to Germany’s policy of genocide: “I
could not fail to recognize that just as the United States, under cover of law,
carried out genocidal racist policies in police murders of Black men, framed
death sentences, death that came from withholding proper medical care to
Black people, just so had Hitler built and operated his mass death machine
made under cover of Nazi law. It goes without saying that this analogy was
not clearly seen by the masses in Western countries and by the masses of
Americans.”74
The CRC’s petition, We Charge Genocide, was presented to the UN
General Assembly in 1951, but the CRC was not first to solicit in that
forum. In 1946 the National Negro Congress drafted a petition calling on
the UN to address the oppression of black people throughout the United
States. In 1947, the NAACP submitted a petition calling on the UN
Commission on Human Rights to probe U.S. racial discrimination.75
However, the CRC’s petition went further in that it accused the United
States of implementing a policy of genocide against black Americans.
Patterson and members of the CRC prepared the petition, including
Communist Party members Elizabeth Lawson and writer Howard Fast, and
the folklorist, writer, and antiracist crusader Stetson Kennedy, who had
joined the Young Communist League.76
The CRC adopted the definition of genocide employed by the Genocide
Convention of the UN’s General Assembly: “Any intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, racial or religious group.” The creators of the
We Charge Genocide petition insisted that “we maintain, therefore, that the
oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated
against and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of
the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government.”77
Ninety-three people signed the petition. Most were from New York City,
and some were in the Communist Party. Among the Communists were
Isadore Begun, who in the late 1920s and early 1930s was a leader of the
Communist-led Rank and File Caucus of the New York City Teachers
Union; Harry Haywood, one of the party’s early black American leaders;
James W. Ford, vice presidential candidate on the Communist Party ticket
in 1940; Claudia Jones, who became a member of the National Committee
of the Communist Party in 1947; Maude White Katz, a party activist;
William Alphaeus Hunton, a professor of English at Howard University
who became head of the African Affairs Council and joined the party
sometime in the 1930s; Ferdinand Smith, second in command of the
national Maritime Union; Benjamin Davis; and author Howard Fast.78
W. E. B. Du Bois, who would join the party in 1959, and Paul Robeson,
who never joined but remained close to its leadership, also signed the
petition.79
The authors of the petition relied on newspaper accounts of police and
gang killings and of “masked men” motivated by hatred. The petition
specifically pointed to the killings of blacks by members of the law
enforcement establishment: “Our evidence concerns the thousands of
Negroes who over the years have been beaten to death on chain gangs and
in the back rooms of sheriff’s offices, in cells of county jails, in precinct
police stations and on city streets.”80
The CRC argued that the killing of innocent blacks was not limited to
any specific region of the country but happened in New York, Cleveland,
Detroit, Washington, DC, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, New
Orleans, and Los Angeles. Both lynching and the “policeman’s bullet” were
responsible for the murders.81 “We submit that the evidence suggests that the
killing of Negroes has become police policy in the United States,” they
wrote, “and that police policy is the most practical expression of
government policy.”82 Of the hundreds of cases of police brutality from
1945 to 1950 described in the petition, fifty-seven involved police shootings
and beatings of blacks in New York City. Race, according to CRC, was the
major reason blacks were targeted. The victims in New York ranged from
some of the most well-known, such as John Derrick and the Ferguson
brothers, to a case involving an “unidentified” black man into whom police
“emptied their guns.” The police involved were never prosecuted.83
Although few in the academic community and legal profession supported
the We Charge Genocide petition, a number of black journalists, ministers
and civil rights activists added their names. Among the signers were
Charlotta Bass, former owner of the California Eagle, who served as
director of the Youth Movement of the NAACP and was selected by the
Republican Party to serve as the western regional director of Wendell
Willkie’s presidential campaign; Roscoe Dunjee, owner and editor of the
Oklahoma Black Dispatch, one of the most prominent black newspapers in
the country; William Edward Harrison; editor of the famed Boston
Guardian; Mary Church Terrell, a leader of the Black Women’s Club
Movement; and the Reverend Charles A. Hill of Hartford Memorial Baptist
Church in Detroit.84

Conclusion
The growing scholarship on anti-Communist liberalism describes how
groups such as the NAACP and anti-Communist black intellectuals and
leaders protected the civil rights movement from being taken over by the
party.85 Anti-Communist liberals did indeed join the Cold War effort to
eliminate the Communist Party, but it is inaccurate to argue that the party
lacked all liberal support or that it was a nonfactor in the civil rights
struggle. The fact that Ben Davis and the CRC received support should
make us rethink the notion that the party was completely marginalized by
and/or alienated from non-Communist activists. Even the staunchly anti-
Communist NAACP reached out to Davis. In addition, scholars who have
promoted the notion of Cold War repression have provided a clearer picture
of how such actions devastated the Communist Party, its members, and the
black freedom struggle.86
To be sure, the Communist Party’s loyalty to Moscow, its efforts to
control the National Negro Congress, and its shameful decision to support
the “non-aggression” pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany all
helped to bolster the argument that the organization was less concerned
with social justice than with supporting the Soviet Union. But these
decisions on the part of the American Communist Party should not obscure
its work in the field of civil rights, including the effort the party and its
members made in the fight against New York City police brutality.
Ben Davis’s formulation of police brutality as “lynching” and William
Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress’ classifying police assaults on
black people as human rights violations that government had a
responsibility to address, helped many to conceptualize police assault on
black people. The refusal of the city government and police department to
take serious action against such violence made those with power to act
culpable of violating the constitutional and human rights of the victims. By
classifying police brutality as state-sanctioned violence, Davis and Paterson
provided those engaged in the anti–police brutality movement with a means
of pressuring the federal and local governments to respond.87
Depicting police brutality as a form of lynching and as genocide has
influenced later campaigns for social justice. In Chicago, a coalition of
grassroots organizations called We Charge Genocide, after the name of the
1951 petition, has targeted police brutality by sending a report to the UN
Committee against Torture on November 13, 2014, asserting that the
Chicago Police Department is torturing young black people. Robert Taylor
of the Millions for Reparations, a Brooklyn-based organization calling for
reparations for black people, has said that We Charge Genocide was the
antecedent to his campaign.88
On January 29, 2016, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on
People of African Descent released a statement to the media comparing
police brutality to lynching: “Contemporary police killings and the trauma
it creates are reminiscent of the racial terror of lynching of the past.
Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis
and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”89 In a July 2016 speech at a
church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Cornell Williams Brooks, president of the
NAACP, compared the recent killings of young black men by police to
lynching during the civil rights movement: “We will stand up and stand
against police misconduct, police brutality, and we will bring the 21st
Century lynching to an end.”90
Davis and Patterson’s work also refutes the argument that the civil rights
movement was a regional phenomenon. Instead, it reminds us today, as it
did in the 1940s and 1950s, that the movement was national in scope. A
variety of organizations were involved, including civil rights groups,
religious communities, and political forces that extended from those who
embraced racial liberalism to more radical elements, including the
American Communist Party. The party played a role in the northern civil
rights struggle by leading campaigns and framing a broader interpretation
of civil rights concerns. In fact, it was the Communist Party, more than any
other political organization, that connected the issues of race and class when
it came to police brutality.
 3

The Nation of Islam and Police Brutality

According to New York City Police Department records, on April 14, 1972,
eleven police officers from the Twenty-Eighth Precinct rushed into the
largest and most famous Nation of Islam Mosque in the United States,
Temple No. 7 on 116th Street in Harlem,1 after receiving an anonymous
phone call reporting that a police officer, a Detective Thomas, needed
assistance. It eventually was revealed to have been a fictitious claim.
Officers Phillip Cardillo and Vito Navarra were the first to enter the
mosque. Hearing a disturbance on the second floor, Navarra ran up the
stairs and was met by ten to twelve members of the Nation of Islam (NOI),
who forced him back down the stairway. Six other NOI members
confronted Cardillo, who had remained on the first floor. A fight erupted
inside the mosque between the officers and NOI members. One officer was
knocked to the floor, and Cardillo was shot. He would die from his wound a
few days later. The police detained sixteen NOI members, but tensions
remained high outside the mosque, where many onlookers had gathered.
Eventually Louis Farrakhan, the minister of Temple No. 7, and U.S.
representative Charles Rangel arrived, and Farrakhan used a police
loudspeaker to ask the crowd to disperse. He would later complain to the
NYPD that the police had raided a place of worship, and on May 13 police
commissioner Benjamin Ward issued an official apology to the NOI for
having invaded the mosque, noting that errors were made on the part of the
police.2
“What was so extraordinary about the 1972 incident,” writes historian
Rasul Miller, “was the Muslims’ ability to leverage their influence to
address the situation.” To help pressure the NYPD to stop its brutal policing
of black Muslims, the NOI organized a “unity rally” to protest the police
behavior: “Sunni Muslims were in attendance, including the world-
renowned Egyptian scholar and Qur’an reciter Sheikh Mahmoud Khalil al-
Hussary. Muslims of differing theological opinions came together to oppose
repressive policing of Muslims and people of color.” It was not the physical
confrontation between the police and NOI members that struck Miller but
the ability of the group to use its “power” to generate an apology from the
commissioner.3
Many have written about the Nation of Islam, its many confrontations
with police, and its efforts to stop police brutality, but scant attention has
been paid to those of its strategies that did not involve physical
confrontation. The historical record shows that the NOI did confront the
police with force and that its leading figures advocated self-defense, and
many have focused on Malcolm X’s call for black people to arm themselves
and fight back against physical assaults by white racists and the police. But
NOI leader Elijah Muhammad insisted, for both practical and religious
reasons, that his followers not engage in physical clashes with the police,
though almost nothing has been written about his many nonviolent
strategies, including attempts to negotiate with police officials, seek legal
redress, and employ public pressure through the media.
These were all means of empowering and mobilizing black people to take
action against state dominance. The NOI was a pivotal force in the 1950s
and 1960s that helped shape the responses of those involved in the struggle
to end police violence.

The Origins of the Nation of Islam

Beginning in 1920, a huge wave of southern black migrants, and to a lesser
extent black people from the Caribbean, began moving to northern urban
centers, resulting in a dramatic economic and social transition as cities
became divided by race and class. Between 1920 and 1930 the black
population of New York City grew from 152,467 to 327,706. Most of the
newcomers came from the upper seaboard states of Virginia, North
Carolina, and South Carolina, with a large number also from Georgia and
Florida.4 Coinciding with the rapid influx of blacks into Harlem in that ten-
year period, nearly 119,000 white residents left Harlem for other boroughs.
The black population, however, continued to grow dramatically over the
next two decades. Whites composed the majority in central Harlem in 1920
—67.4 percent of the 216,026 residents. By 1930 they constituted only 29.3
percent of a population of 209,663. The black population jumped from 32.4
percent in 1920 to 70.2 percent in 1930 and to 89.3 percent of 221,974
residents in 1940. By 1950 blacks made up over 98 percent of the 237,467
central Harlem residents.5
The migrants flooding into Harlem and other northern urban centers got
an economic boost, as they were able to secure industrial jobs that paid far
more than those in the South. And by moving from agricultural work to
become “proletariats,” migrants’ children could receive the education
denied to them back home. Nonetheless, conditions in the northern cities
were harsh, and economics and racism meant living in overcrowded,
dilapidated housing with few city services. During the Depression Harlem
became a ghetto. Historian Gilbert Osofsky notes, “Harlem was
transformed from a potentially ideal community to a neighborhood with
manifold social and economic problems called ‘deplorable,’ ‘unspeakable,’
‘incredible.’” While employment opportunities were better than in the
South, the new black residents nevertheless experienced high levels of
unemployment and underemployment. Although the national
unemployment rate was close to 25 percent at the height of the Depression
in 1933, in Harlem it was 50 percent. Another 43 percent of the population
were on relief, and family income dropped by nearly 50 percent from 1929
to 1933.6 To make matters worse, Harlem had the highest infant mortality,
TB, and general mortality rates in the city.7
The wave of migration into Harlem created overcrowded schools. Even
though a new school had not been built in Harlem since 1909, the
neighborhood received no school funds from the city or the federal
government. By contrast, despite a 1934 request by the city asking the
federal government to provide funding for 168 new schools, no new school
was planned for Harlem. The city only planned to build a school annex for
the Harlem community.8
One way the urban black poor responded to their socioeconomic
predicament was to form their own spiritual and religious organizations.
They challenged racial repression by creating community among their
members, providing black men and women with an avenue to leadership,
and offering opportunities to take on important roles in the new religions in
urban centers. In Black Gods of the Metropolis, his 1944 study of the new
urban working-class religious bodies, anthropologist Arthur Huff Fauset
wrote that race consciousness was a drawing card for the new black
nationalist religious groups. He also wrote that the new religions offered
black southern migrants a way of practicing their religious beliefs not
allowed in the larger churches of the black elite.9 The new religious
movements in urban America, wrote sociologist Erdmann Doane Beynon in
1938, arose “out of the growing disillusionment and race consciousness of
recent Negro migrants to northern industrial cities.”10 Some of the new
religious groups provided their followers with explanations for their social
circumstances that framed black people as the people of God and
challenged white supremacy by blaming whites for black misery.
The group that would become the most well-known black-nationalist
organization was the Nation of Islam, formed by Wallace D. Fard in 1930 in
Detroit. Beynon interviewed several followers of Fard, who told him that in
the 1930s Fard first went to the houses of black Detroit residents selling
raincoats and silks. Once he had developed a relationship with his
customers, he began expounding his nationalistic Islamic teachings that
black people were the Lost Tribe of Shabazz and white people had stolen
their language and culture. He preached that black people’s original religion
was Islam, that the Quran was their holy text, and that they must regain
their religion, including adopting a number dietary practices such as not
eating pork or shellfish and abstaining from alcohol. Fard referred to whites
as devils who kidnapped black people, the “original” people from Mecca.11
After Fard’s mysterious disappearance in the summer of 1934, Elijah
Robert Poole, who would change his name to Elijah Muhammad, became
the NOI leader. Born in Sandersville, Georgia, in 1897, he left Georgia as
part of the Great Migration, settled in Detroit, and was one of the handful of
black people there attracted to Fard’s teaching. He joined the Nation of
Islam in 1931 and became a close ally of Fard. After the founder’s
disappearance, he declared himself the new NOI leader, claiming that Fard
was Allah, had told him all the secrets of life, and had named him as the last
prophet. A number of members of the black Muslim movement rejected
these claims and the organization split into factions. Fearing for his life,
Elijah Muhammad fled to Chicago, where he led his faction of the NOI.
The Nation of Islam was not the only black nationalist religious sect
operating in black urban centers in the early twentieth century. Others
included the Moorish Science Temple, an Islamic group founded in 1913 by
Noble Drew Ali; and black nationalist groups that embraced Judaism,
including the Commandment Keepers of the Living God, known also as the
Black Jews of Harlem, and the House of Israel, which taught that black
Americans were the original Jews.12 However, the NOI was the most
successful of the sects, and while other groups largely faded from the scene,
by the 1960s it was estimated that the NOI had between one hundred
thousand and three hundred thousand members, a far cry from its few
hundred in the early 1950s. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated
that the NOI operated thirty-eight named temples and over thirty unnamed
temples throughout the country.13 It owned dozens of businesses, including
restaurants, bakeries, and farms, and published one of the largest black
weeklies in the nation, Muhammad Speaks, boasting a circulation of over
one hundred thousand by the mid-1960s.14
A major reason for the NOI’s popularity was its black-nationalist
message, which appealed to many working-class African Americans. It
adopted a psychological approach toward eliminating black low self-
esteem, arguing that blacks were of a noble race and were not the cause of
their own socioeconomic failure. Teaching that Allah was God and black
people were his chosen people was a counter to the denigration of people of
African origins and their resulting feelings of worthlessness. Similar to the
Garvey movement, the outward appearance of the NOI’s neatly dressed
men and women promoted racial pride. As scholar and member of the
Malcolm X Project at Columbia University Wayne Taylor has contended,
the “Nation of Islam propagated a Black theology of liberation that spoke to
the contemporary plight of African Americans in urban centers.”15
Another reason for the NOI’s success was its eschatological view that the
six-thousand-year reign of white people over Earth was coming to an end.
This position highlighted believers’ special relationship with a supreme
being that was willing to destroy the white “devils” and elevate the
“righteous” to their proper positions as rulers of the planet. It also
accentuated the urgency of the moment; if one wanted to be saved, one
needed to join the righteous in a timely matter or else face doom.16
Yet another reason for the organization’s growth was the charismatic
Malcolm X. Malcolm, as many knew him, joined the NOI while in prison in
the 1950s. Elijah Muhammad named him head minister of Temple No. 7 in
1955, as a reward for him becoming the organization’s most articulate
spokesperson. Malcolm publicly challenged those in power on issues of
race, colonialism, national liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America, and contemporary global and national politics. His ability to
destroy his opponents in debates became legendary, and his willingness to
attack white people for their inhumane treatment of black people led many
to accuse him of spreading hate and advocating violence. However, his fiery
language attracted countless admirers, and during his time in the NOI
membership grew by tens of thousands.

A Sleeping Tiger
One extremely influential group promoting the view that the Nation of
Islam comprised fanatical, dangerous religious zealots bent on physical
confrontation with police was the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1955
the FBI prepared a lengthy internal report on the history and beliefs of the
NOI which maintained that “Muhammad and ministers of the NOI take
pride in citing the fearless nature of its members. They speak with pride of
various incidents where the NOI members have engaged the police.” The
report claimed that when a large number of NOI members gather in a place
where there are whites, “there seems to be a sort of eagerness to
demonstrate their fearlessness.” According to the FBI report, it was the
police and not the NOI who demonstrated restraint when provoked by the
black Muslims.17
The FBI report maintained that in the 1930s the Detroit Board of
Education tried to prosecute NOI parents for violating state education laws
because they refused to send their children to the city’s public schools.
When some parents were jailed, members of the NOI “banned together and
stoned the prison. To avoid a race riot, the judge issued orders for the
prisoners’ release.”18 The report also described a 1950 confrontation
between the San Diego Police Department and NOI members: when
officers arrived at the home of a man whom they were attempting to serve
with a warrant, two men in the house reported that the suspect was not at
home. When the police tried to enter to search the house, “they were
ruthlessly attacked. This perpetrated a near riot. And necessitated the
calling out of additional cars and approximately twenty officers.” Officers
reported that before the subject was taken into custody, someone fired three
shots into a police car. The police later learned that the subject and the two
men who first confronted the officers were members of the San Diego NOI
temple.19
By 1959, the FBI became so concerned about the confrontations between
members of the NOI and the police that it issued a second volume of its
report. In this one, it compared NOI members to a sleeping tiger: “When
you awake a sleeping tiger, you must put a harness on him also, otherwise
he may do a great deal of damage.”20
The media also promulgated the view that the Nation of Islam was a
violent organization. In 1959 WNTA-TV in New York aired the
documentary The Hate That Hate Produced, produced by journalists Mike
Wallace and Louis Lomax. Wallace introduced the documentary by
claiming that the organization called for “black supremacy” and predicting
that sometime between 1959 and 1970 its leader, Elijah Muhammad, would
“give the call for the destruction of the white man.”21 The press labeled the
NOI “black supremacists” and “purveyors” of “cold black hatred.” Time
magazine asserted that Muhammad preached a “virulent anti-Americanism
and anti-Semitism” and that his “doctrine of total hate found a ready
medium in some newspapers which began to exploit Negro hopes and fears
of the Emmitt Till case.”22 In another issue, Time quoted James Curran,
Maryland’s superintendent of prisons, who warned that the black Muslims
were growing steadily stronger and more troublesome: “They are vicious
fighters, quick to take offense, and in their self-sacrificial way, they don’t
care what happens to them.”23
Civil rights leaders also denounced the NOI as irresponsible. Thurgood
Marshall, legal counsel for the NAACP, labeled the NOI “vicious and a real
threat to the FBI, the NAACP and state law enforcement agencies.” The
organization, according to Marshall, was “run by a bunch of thugs
organized from jails.”24
Various scholars have also insisted that the NOI posed a real threat. Lee
P. Brown—who was elected the first black mayor of Houston in 1997 and
served three terms—wrote an article in 1965 in which he called the NOI a
“radical movement” that “poses a problem to the police” and claimed it
“can be compared with the Ku Klux Klan; but its philosophy is a reversal of
the doctrines postulated by the Klan. The KKK advocates as their premise,
white supremacy; whereas the reversal of this doctrine is employed by the
Muslims in that they employ the doctrine of black supremacy.” According
to Brown, law enforcement was in danger from the NOI “because it has
been reported that the cult conceives of the police as a representative of the
white man’s authority,” and a major concern for the police “is that it has
been reported by many sources that the Muslims are prone toward hatred
and violence. It has been reported that they have arsenals throughout the
country, and are trained in the use of firearms. They supposedly have as
their target the law enforcement agents of the country.”25
C. Eric Lincoln, author of Black Muslims in America, the first scholarly
book on the Nation of Islam, also promoted the view that the NOI adopted a
violent approach. Lincoln claims that the Black Muslims were “neither
pacifists nor aggressors.” However, “they do believe in keeping the scores
even, and they have warned all America that ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth’ is the only effective way to settle racial differences.”26

Obey the Law

Without a doubt, the NOI did see the police as an adversarial force bent on
killing black people, a position rooted in its racial religious doctrine. In
explaining why there were a number of confrontations between his
members and white police, Elijah Muhammad, who led the NOI from 1933
until his death in 1975, argued that white officers attacked blacks because
“by nature” black people were peaceful and “by nature white people are for
war, bloodshed, are destroyers of high morals.” From the NOI’s
perspective, structural factors played no part in brutal attacks on black
people; rather, these acts were purely an expression of white people’s evil
nature. According to Muhammad, “They [white people] have no respect for
people who want to be at peace with them. They have no respect for the
laws or justice,” and they “have made trouble all over the world with people
who were at peace among themselves.”27 When writing on the 1963
confrontation between NOI members and police in Flint, Michigan,
Muhammad declared that the “enemies” of black people “have ruled and
killed us for the past 4,000 years and especially during the last 400 years.”
The NOI’s analysis of the cause of police brutality ruled out the left’s
contention that the police were part of a repressive state apparatus used to
crush any challenge to the power of the ruling elite. For the NOI, human
nature, not structural inequality or policy, was the root cause of black
suffering.28
If assaults on blacks were an artifact of white cops’ “evil,” what caused
black police officers to attack black people? While some anti–police
brutality activists argued that one way to end such practices was to hire
more black police officers, the NOI rejected this. Unlike advocates of hiring
more black police officers, who argued that black people would not be
brutal to their own, the NOI maintained that black police were not loyal to
their race. The simplistic psychology of the NOI’s answer declared that it
happened because “Uncle Toms” were willing to betray their race to gain
favor with whites. “In the past and maybe the present,” Elijah Muhammad
wrote in Muhammad Speaks in December 1968, “the white officer chooses
among the Uncle-Tom-like men to serve as law enforcement officers over
us.” Black police provided no useful service to the black community, and
the black cop “makes more trouble in the community than the trouble that is
made by the community, because he wants to be loved and honored by the
white officer at the expense of mistreating his Black people.”29 Muhammad
went as far as to accuse the white police of monitoring the behavior of
black officers by riding with them in the black community in order to assure
“that the Black officer mistreats his people as he would do himself.”
Consequently, the black police officer did not get the cooperation of his
“Black brothers,” because they were “divided by the third [white] man.”30
Although Muhammad criticized black police officers, he did not hold them
responsible for the bad relationship they had with the black community.
That was the doing of the white officer who refused to select a “Black Man
who loves his Black People.”31
On occasion, Elijah Muhammad warned that if Muslims were attacked,
they would retaliate. Speaking of the April 27, 1962, murder of NOI
member Ronald Stokes by the Los Angeles police, he said he hoped that the
“police will not send their trained dogs against my followers. The white
man is absolutely heartless; they are murderers of each other; what can we
expect from them?”32 In a May 18, 1963, piece in Muhammad Speaks, the
leader of the NOI cautioned, “We will fight like hell (the brave ones) with
those who fight against us. This is the very law of nature—self-defense—
and it is recognized by God and man.”33
 Such rhetoric could easily be interpreted as confrontational, thus
providing his opponents with ammunition. The FBI, the white media, and
others ignored Muhammad’s consistent message to his members to avoid
conflict with the police and to obey the law and those in authority. He
emphasized that his followers were nonviolent and would not engage in
retaliation against police brutality. Responding to police brutality against
NOI members in Detroit, Muhammad told an audience in January 1958 to
“obey those who are in authority.”34 He wrote in his book Message to the
Blackman in America, “We are not going to take part in any violence
whatsoever. We’re not going to do anything other than what we are
doing. . . . We have stripped ourselves of arms to let you know that we are
not people of violence. We don’t intend to attack you. We have no idea or
knowledge of anything like that coming in the future.”35
Such words were not just a plea for restraint—they reflected policy. Point
3 of the Nation of Islam’s “Laws and Instructions” commands members to
“obey the laws of the land or government you must live under for if you
cannot keep these laws how can you obey the laws of Allah (God)?”36
Muhammad was not contradicting himself in the 1963 Muhammad
Speaks statement quoted above saying both that “we will fight like hell”
and that Muslims would not retaliate if attacked and would not attack the
police out of revenge. He was referring to spontaneous response to an
attack, not asserting an official position of the organization. His qualifying
remark, noting that the “brave ones” would fight back, indicates that some
members would, out of sheer bravery, risk death. However, he was not
encouraging his followers to strike back, given NOI’s official no-retaliation
policy.
Muhammad also offered an additional, quite practical reason for not
responding with violence when attacked by the police: “Because if we
attacked you, we would have to have superior weapons to attack you with,
and we don’t have factories nor earth to dig metals to manufacture tools or
weapons such as you have.”37 In an April 1963 interview with a New York
Herald Tribune reporter, Muhammad emphasized that not only would the
NOI not participate in any violence, it would continue stripping its
members of arms “to let people know that they are not violent people.” The
Nation of Islam was not stockpiling weapons with the intent of organizing
an attack, for such an effort would lead to the NOI’s demise. His members
were not allowed to carry weapons, and he urged them to “clean themselves
up,” by which he meant giving up any activity that was considered immoral
or antisocial and attempting to live a religiously devout life free of
violence.38 “If you come to the door shooting,” Muhammed explained to
whites, “we have no guns here to shoot back with, so therefore the right is
with God, as it is written in the Book.”39
Muhammad’s declaration that the “right is with God” was also a
theological argument that it was God’s job to defend Muslims against police
violence, and that it was simply against God’s will for Muslims to take part
in any violent action against such attacks. In Message to the Blackman, he
insisted that “God forbids us even to accept weapons and even to carry
anything like weapons to fight with.”40 As to why God would deny his
people weapons to defend themselves, Muhammad argued that taking
action against the devil was in the hands of God, not Muslims: “Allah wants
to make Himself known in the Western Hemisphere that He is God and has
come to save us from the hands of our enemies and place us again in our
own country and among our own people. He has said that He would do this
job of delivering us and destroying those who have destroyed us. This is
prophesized almost throughout the Bible.”41
This reference to biblical scripture that he claimed was in line with his
teachings was an attempt to convince an audience outside the Nation of
Islam of the legitimacy of his leadership among black people. Black
Christians, after all, far outnumbered those who practiced Islam. Here, he
was tapping into a tradition of divine retribution espoused by numerous
religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.
In a 1964 article on police brutality, Muhammad claimed that God “would
make clear to everyone his plans to destroy the white devil race.”42
Muhammad’s message of restraint in the face of police violence
remained consistent throughout his leadership of the NOI. Even during the
Black Power era, when black nationalist and revolutionary groups called for
armed struggle against police, he remained steadfast in arguing that
Muslims must rely on Allah for protection. At a 1972 press conference, he
reemphasized that he did not “believe in carrying weapons. When a man
puts weapons in his pockets or a gun, I will make clear it takes his mind off
God’s protection and puts it on the gun to protect him. This I have taught
my followers ever since God [Fard] left me.”43
 Muhammad even pushed the notion of predestination as an explanation
for his insistence that his followers avoid confrontation with law
enforcement, arguing that persecution by the criminal justice system was
part of black people’s fate: “But actually our people in Los Angeles, New
York or any other place, here in Chicago, they have been mistreated right
along. They go to prison and the federal penitentiary. But that is all given to
us. The trial of the Black Muslims in America must come to pass. We must
be tried.” This otherworldly message accentuated the notion that it was
God’s plan that Muslims endure persecution, and thus, any attempt to fight
back violated God’s wishes.44
Muhammad was well aware of the consequences of NOI members
responding violently to the police, but his insistence that they remain
peaceful went beyond cautioning self-preservation. He recognized that
physical disengagement as a collective response could be a useful solution
to police violence. While the police, media, and FBI were busy painting the
NOI as an organization of thugs, the Nation of Islam was busy challenging
that image through speeches, writings, and the principles of the
organization, presenting the police, not NOI members, as the perpetrators of
violence. Disengaging could demonstrate to the world the humanity of
victims who were being depicted as culprits. At the same time, it reinforced
the NOI’s argument regarding the cruelty of white people.
This was not a strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience as represented by
the boycotts, sit-ins, strikes, marches, and demonstrations designed to
pressure those inflicting violence on the black population of the South to
end their repressive measures. The objective in the South, as characterized
by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was not to “humiliate the
opponent, only to win him.”45 The NOI, however, was far more concerned
about its own survival then about transforming those who were doing it
harm. The NOI’s form of nonviolence was to demonstrate to nonwhites the
brutality of white people. Wallace Muhammad, the son of Elijah
Muhammad who became head of the NOI after his father’s death in 1975,
claimed in an interview for the 1994 PBS documentary Malcolm X: Make It
Plain that the 1960s civil rights struggle benefited the NOI because “the
sixties showed us the white man in the image that the Nation [of Islam] cast
him in.” The 1963 police campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, that turned
water cannons and dogs on nonviolent demonstrators, for example, “helped
the Nation of Islam’s charge against the white race”46—it made the case that
the NOI held the moral high ground.

Malcolm’s Views
In contrast to Elijah Muhammad, NOI minister Malcolm X called for direct
and confrontational action, and his speeches and interviews advocated that
black people strike back when they were physically assaulted. He
constantly ridiculed civil rights leaders, calling them Uncle Toms who
foolishly subjected their followers to brutal attacks by racists.
Unlike Elijah Muhammad, who claimed that God would arrange for
retribution, Malcolm placed that responsibility in the hands of black people.
In a 1952 letter Malcolm wrote, “All over the world the Dark people know
that the devils’ time was up and those Dark people want to swoop down
like a huge tidal wave and wash the devils from this planet.” Allah, he said,
was holding back until all black people had heard his message and had had
the opportunity to accept or reject it, after which time Allah will allow his
“‘sea of Black Soldiers’ to swoop out of the East and make the entire
hemisphere a ‘sea of blood.’”47
When NOI women were the victims of police brutality, Malcolm was
even more emphatic about using self-defense. An FBI agent reported in a
March 1954 memorandum that Malcolm had told a Detroit audience that
black men “went to Korea to fight for the devil but they would not go help
their women when their sisters and mothers are being raped by the devil in
the street.” The minister was reported to have gone on to claim that 1954
was the last year for the white man to rule, because black men were “united
all over the world to fight the ‘devils.’”48 In a June 1959 talk in New York,
Malcolm told the story of “Sister Roberta,” who was mishandled and
arrested by New York City police when she attempted to intervene as police
officers were arresting her husband. According to Malcolm, Sister
Roberta’s husband was in a store when a woman came in charging that he
had raped her daughter. The police were called and arrested the accused
man. Sister Roberta learned about the arrest, went to the store, and spoke to
the woman who had made the charge. The woman recanted her story, but
when Sister Roberta then begged the police to release her husband the
arresting officer hit her in the face and placed her under arrest. At the police
station the same officer again struck Sister Roberta in the face. Malcolm
told his audience the couple’s cases were coming up in a week and urged
Muslims to make it their business to attend the trial, because when a single
member of NOI was in trouble, all members were in trouble. Although this
was a call for moral support, Malcolm then declared that as a rule, anybody
who strikes one Muslim woman should not be given the opportunity to
strike another.49
The differences between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X’s responses
to police brutality were evident in the NOI’s most noted case, the April 27,
1962, raid on the NOI temple in Los Angeles. During the raid, police beat
members inside the temple and shot seven NOI members, including Ronald
Stokes, the temple’s secretary, who was attempting to raise his hands in
surrender when he was killed. Manning Marable argues that Malcolm was
distraught over the raid and in response organized a group of Fruit of Islam
members from Temple No. 7 to kill the police officers involved in the
murder. The Fruit of Islam were NOI men trained in martial arts whose job
was to protect the NOI leadership and its temples. However, Elijah
Muhammad ordered him to drop that idea.50 At an August 10, 1963,
“Harlem Unity Rally,” Malcolm accused the Los Angeles police of shooting
Stokes in the heart, then beating him in the head as he lay dying. Malcolm
said angrily that Stokes, an unarmed Korean veteran who fought for the
United States, came back and “was shot down like a dog. . . . Not in
Mississippi but in Los Angeles, California; not in the South but the North,
in the West.”51
Malcolm warned the Los Angeles Police Department, “You don’t shoot
one of us and then grin in our faces. . . . Someone has to pay.” But payment,
he said, would not come from legal action. “A black man can’t get justice in
the court system in America. The only way you get justice is the streets, the
only way you get justice is in the sidewalk. The only way you get justice is
when you make justice for yourself. You’ll never get justice in the white
man’s court. No not me. I never want them to take me to court. . . . I’ve
seen what they have done right here in New York City.” He reminded NOI
members to obey the law, but said that if a white man puts his hands on
you, “take him off the planet.”52
Malcolm’s public accusation that black civil rights leaders and his critics
were “Uncle Toms” whose milquetoast-like, nonviolent approach was
selling out black people helped to foster his own image as a no-nonsense
revolutionary advocating armed self-defense. This led some civil rights
leaders to portray him as out of control and irresponsible. Although he did
not refer directly to the Nation of Islam or Malcolm X, NAACP leader Roy
Wilkins spoke out in a letter to famed baseball player and civil rights
activist Jackie Robinson saying he didn’t envision “the Negro employing
hate as a tactic” to “mobilize support or win a set of objectives.” Wilkins
argued that “the basic battle will not be won by noise makers and name-
callers and race baiters but by men and women mature emotionally as well
as physically. We are lost if we adopt Klan methods in the name of exalting
black people.”53 In an August 1959 speech to the National Bar Association,
Martin Luther King Jr. referred to the NOI as “one of the hate groups
arising in our midst which would preach a doctrine of black supremacy. . . .
Black supremacy is as bad as white supremacy. God is not interested merely
in the freedom of black men and brown and yellow men, God is interested
in the freedom of the whole human race.”54
Malcolm X’s more militant message of self-defense, as compared to
Elijah Muhammad’s promise of divine retribution, helped to portray the
former as uncompromising toward police brutality. However, his
pronouncements regarding the use of force in response to police brutality
obscured the fact that he and members of the NOI also adopted far less
militant approaches toward police assaults—including meetings,
negotiations, and the courts—which have received far less attention than his
calls for armed self-defense.

Malcolm X and the Johnson X Hinton Case

The Johnson X. Hinton case provides an example of Malcolm’s willingness
to use nonviolent approaches in the fight against police brutality. Hinton
was a member of the Nation of Islam and belonged to Temple No. 7 in
Harlem, headed by the then thirty-one-year-old Malcolm X.
On the evening of April 26, 1957, Hinton, also thirty-one, had left the
temple and met a friend, twenty-three-year-old Frankie Lee Potts, at the
corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. At 10:15 p.m. Hinton and Potts
were walking when they came upon patrolmen Ralph Plaisance and Mike
Dolan beating Reese V. Poe, who had been in a confrontation with an
acquaintance by the name of Martha Andrews. The police action attracted a
crowd of fifty people, including Hinton and Potts. Hinton, clearly disturbed
by the beating, asked the officers, “Why don’t you carry the man to jail?”55
Hinton said in an affidavit that he did not interfere with the arrest but
moved back into the crowd. Additional police officials came on the scene
and began asking people to move away. Officer Dolan decided that Hinton
was not moving fast enough and began beating him over the head with his
nightstick, knocking him to the ground. Hinton screamed and shouted,
“Allah au Akbar” (Allah is great), at which point other cops rushed over
and also began striking him. “Blood gushed from my head and all over my
clothes,” he reported, “but they still kept beating me.” He also accused a
police officer of kicking him in the “stomach.” Eventually he was
handcuffed and put into a police car, where, he claimed, “blood was running
all down my head” as he kept repeating “Allah au Akbar.” Hinton said one
cop threatened to break his neck if he did not “shut up with that damn
praying.”56
Hinton said that given his condition he thought the police would take him
to the hospital. Instead he was taken to the Twenty-Eighth Precinct, placed
in a back room, and handcuffed to a chair. Hinton noted in his affidavit that
when he started to pray once again, one cop punched him in the mouth,
kicked him the stomach, and then stomped on him while another cop began
hitting him across the knees.57
The police version of events claimed that Hinton was arrested after
refusing to leave the scene when the police ordered the crowd of onlookers
to disperse. The police claimed that the spectators grew restless, causing the
officers to call for assistance. NYPD officials accused Hinton of helping to
create a disturbance by taunting the police. When the police attempted to
place Hinton under arrest, he resisted and therefore was struck.
Eyewitnesses, however, insisted that the police assault on Hinton was
unprovoked.58 One police justification of the beating that would later be
used in Hinton’s lawsuit against the city was that once he resisted arrest, the
police used a nightstick to subdue him. Any injury Hinton suffered while
being subdued cannot be blamed on the police because “once a nightstick is
brought into use, neither the force nor the effect of a single blow can be
regulated. The only reasonable use is for the wielder of the weapon to hit
with whatever force he is capable of bringing to bear in the particular
situation. Nothing else is practicable nor, in the vast majority of instances,
even possible.” Moreover, the police denied ever beating Hinton in the
police station.59
A woman who witnessed the attack ran to a restaurant owned by the NOI
and alerted those inside. After a number of telephone calls were made,
Malcolm and a group of NOI members went to the precinct and demanded
to see Hinton, but they were told that no one by that name was in custody.
Malcolm was accompanied by fifty members of the Fruit of Islam.
According to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the police could not believe
what they were seeing: FOI members standing in “rank formation” outside
the police station with residents of Harlem arrayed behind them. “I said that
until he [Hinton] was seen and we were sure he received proper medical
attention, the Muslims would remain where they were,” Malcolm noted,
adding that the police were “nervous and scared of the gathering crowd
outside.”60
James L. Hicks of the Amsterdam News, who witnessed the exchange
between Malcolm X and the police, wrote about it in his paper. Hicks was
also chairman of the Twenty-Eighth Precinct Community Council, created
in the 1940s to facilitate better communications between the police and
community, and someone from that precinct asked him to meet with an
Inspector McGowen, deputy commissioner Walter Arm, and deputy
inspector Robert J. Mangum, an African American, in hopes of quelling a
confrontation between the police and the Nation of Islam. The meeting took
place later that day at Hicks’s office, and he was asked if he knew Malcolm
X. He let them know he did, after which he set up a meeting between
Malcolm and the trio of law enforcement officials, during which Arm
insulted Malcolm by claiming that the police could “handle any situation
that arises in Harlem, and we’re not here to ask anybody’s help.”61
Malcolm walked out; Mangum asked Hicks to persuade him to return,
which Malcolm did, although he told Arm he had no respect for him or the
police department. On the condition that Malcolm would dismiss the crowd
outside the precinct, the three police officials consented to Malcolm’s
terms: he wanted to see Hinton and be assured that if he needed medical
attention, he would be taken to the hospital. According to Malcom, “The
police were saying, ‘We can’t handle it without you.’ Nobody got down on
his knees. But they [the police] bowed.”62
 Hinton described to Malcolm the brutal treatment he’d suffered outside
and inside the precinct, and Malcolm insisted that Hinton be taken to the
hospital. The growing crowd of Harlem residents, which was raising police
fears of a riot, followed Hinton to Harlem Hospital. Hinton wrote in his
affidavit that he was still in a daze when a doctor saw him and put him on
an operating table, where “they sewed up my head.” His mouth and knee
were also treated. Despite his injuries, and though he still felt sick, the
hospital authorities released Hinton to the police, who took him back to the
precinct and put him in a cell. According to Hinton, “Up to this time the
police had never asked me my name or where I lived.” The crowd had
followed Hinton from the hospital back to the precinct, which further
alarmed the top brass, and they sent for all available reinforcements.63
Hicks wrote in the Amsterdam News that many NOI members stood in an
organized line a half-block long: “Their discipline amazed police, and more
than one high ranking officer expressed growing concern.” Over two
thousand people were still on the street at 2:30 a.m. when Malcolm X
reappeared and was asked to dismiss the crowd: “Malcolm stood up and
waved his hand, and all those people just disappeared. . . . One of the police
people said to me, ‘Did you see what I just saw?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said
‘This is too much power for one man to have.’ He meant one black man. I’ll
never forget that.” Malcolm, along with attorney Charles J. Bearers,
arranged bail for Potts and another member of the NOI named L’Pysli Tal,
who had also been arrested. When Bearers saw Hinton, he asked that he be
taken back to the hospital, but the police refused, contending that Hinton
had to be arraigned in the morning. The police even refused Bearers’s
request for Hinton to be given a pillow because he was unable to stand.64
Many subsequent retellings of this case romanticized the gallant warrior
image of Malcolm and the FOI, thus juxtaposing their militancy with the
nonviolent, peaceful protests and negotiations of the civil rights movement
just getting underway in the South. Hicks’s article in the New York
Amsterdam News (quoted above) was headlined “Riot Threat as Cops Beat
Moslem: God’s Angry Men Tangle with Police,” invoking an image of
fearless black men battling abusive police officers. Filmmaker Spike Lee’s
version appeared in his movie Malcolm X, which shows an
uncompromising Malcolm not only demanding to see the wounded man but
insisting that Hinton be taken to the hospital before he would tell the FOI
and the angry crowd to disperse. Once his demands were met, Malcolm
signals with a hand gesture and the FOI march away in military formation,
at which point, the Harlem crowd also walked away peacefully. Lee’s
version emphasizes the defiant Malcolm X while ignoring the one who was
willing to compromise with the police.65 Historian Fredrick Knight wrote
that the Johnson X. Hinton case helped to spread the message among black
New Yorkers that the “Nation of Islam was nothing to play with.”66 A 2012
piece titled “The Day That Malcolm Won Harlem Over” claimed that
Malcolm “stood up to the NYPD and won.”67 As late as May 2015, the
Hinton case was cited by Justin Charity as proof of Malcolm’s and the
Nation of Islam’s defiance of and victory over the police.68 Although the
romanticized warrior construct counters the image of out of control fanatics
bent on attacking law enforcement, it also plays into the larger narrative of
Malcolm X and the NOI as violent and confrontational individuals who
only addressed police brutality by force or threat of force.
However, a closer look at the Hinton incident reveals that Malcolm X
was more pragmatic and willing to make concessions than the popular
version of Malcolm would suggest. Despite the inflammatory title of
Hicks’s report, the text noted that there was a give and take between the
police and Malcolm. Malcolm was accompanied to the Twenty-Eighth
Precinct not only by members of the Fruit of Islam but also by attorney
Charles J. Beavers, who attempted to get Hinton released. In what he called
“excellent public relations work on the part of police,” Hicks wrote that the
department “persuaded the Moslem leader that every effort was being made
to correct any wrong on the part of police, and the meeting ended with an
implied, though not expressed, promise that the Moslems would not cause
any trouble Monday night.” In an effort not to inflame police–NOI tensions,
Malcolm ordered members of his temple not to appear at Hinton’s’
arraignment in felony court.69
The FBI files contain numerous detailed reports on Malcolm’s activities,
including a version of the Hinton case as reported by an unidentified man at
a Boston NOI temple. The individual is said to have told the temple that
New York police officers had beaten Hinton with sticks and that Malcolm
had taken along “hundreds” of NOI members when he went to see him. The
speaker claimed that while talking to Hinton, Malcolm had been surrounded
by police and that Muslims from several cities had come to Harlem, “and
Brother Malcolm had a hard time keeping the peace because the Muslims
were ready to fight.” The Boston contact then asserted that the “devil is not
playing with you or me so be ready, but don’t run out and antagonize the
devils now or be stupid on the job. Each Muslim must keep the other
Muslims in line but they must unite for strength.”70 The mention of
Malcolm’s difficulty in maintaining peace strongly suggests that his
intention was to maintain order and to not provoke physical confrontation
with the police. The unidentified speaker’s warning that the “devil is not
playing” and to not be “stupid on the job” also seems to have been urging
temple members to remain peaceful and not to precipitate physical violence.
In November 1959 the grand jury refused to indict Hinton for disorderly
conduct and refusing arrest; Potts was cleared of the disorderly conduct
charge, and Tal’s sentence for disorderly conduct was suspended. Relying
on a November 9 article from the Amsterdam News about the decision, the
FBI reported that afterward Malcolm sent a telegram to Commissioner
Kennedy saying that the two officers involved in the beating should be
dismissed from the force. Malcolm argued that their continued presence in
Harlem was a “potential powder keg.” He did not threaten retaliation by the
NOI but tried to convince the commissioner that the Harlem community
might react violently if the two continued working in the area. Just as
important, Malcolm reminded Commissioner Kennedy that during the April
29 negotiation between himself and Deputy Commissioners Arm and
Magnum they had promised a fair and impartial investigation of Hinton’s
beating.71
In response to Malcolm’s telegram to Kennedy, Arm, according to the
FBI, confirmed that he did indeed promise an immediate investigation but
had suspended it during the grand jury proceedings. Arm promised that
since those proceedings were completed, he would continue the NYPD’s
investigation.72 What was important about Malcolm’s telegram to Kennedy
was the former’s ability to get Arm to agree to an investigation of the
Hinton assault.
Other details of the Hinton affair also reveal that the police were able to
negotiate with Malcolm to defuse trouble before Hinton was eventually
released from police custody and the Muslims took him to Sydenham
Hospital. Unlike Harlem Hospital, where Hinton was first taken to by the
police and a number of people waited outside, Malcolm asked NOI
members not to stand outside of the hospital and not to “start trouble,”
indicating an effort to distance the NOI from some teens who had appeared
on the scene and were rumored to have zip guns. Although the FBI had
claimed that a riot almost occurred because the Muslims had “marched” on
the Twenty-Eighth Precinct to get “their Moslem Brother,” an FBI report on
Malcolm noted that when reporters questioned him on the still-recent
Hinton incident, his response was that Islam is the religion of peace. Black
people, he said, must “wake up” and realize that assaults by the police on
members of the NOI were not aimed at any particular group but followed a
“general pattern” against all black people.73 Such details, often buried in
reports about the Hinton case, counter the popular image of the NOI’s
uncompromising militancy and readiness to resort to physical altercations
when opposing police brutality.

Not by Any Means Necessary

Hinton’s beating was just one of a number of incidents in which Malcolm
advocated an approach other than self-defense. In April 1958, for example,
he and John Ali, secretary of Temple No. 7, met with deputy police
commissioner Walter Arm to request that the NYPD investigate detectives
Joseph Kiernan and Michael Bonura regarding their arrest earlier that year
of four NOI members: Betty X; John Mollette and his wife, Yvonne
Mollette; and Minnie X. Simmons. The FBI, reporting the police version,
wrote that several police officers along with a postal inspector had arrived
at 25-46 Ninety-Fourth Street in Queens on March 19, 1958, to serve a
federal warrant on one Margaret Dorsey, who along with four NOI
members was charged with assaulting two of the officers.
Malcolm told the Amsterdam News that the two detectives who should be
investigated illegally entered John and Yvonne Mollette’s house while
looking for Margaret Dorsey. Witnesses claimed that they saw the police
beating John Mollette, who was arrested along with the other three
defendants. After a three-week trial, two of the people arrested were cleared
of charges of assault on police officers. However, the jury failed to reach a
decision on the Mollettes and a mistrial was declared.74 The Mollettes then
charged the police with false arrest, malicious prosecution, violation of their
civil rights, breaking and entering, assaulting women, and property
damage.75
 Malcolm did not threaten violent retaliation in trying to convince the
police to discipline the officers but instead filed an official complaint,
contending that the detectives illegally entered John and Yvonne Mollette’s
house. While the FBI report portrayed Malcolm as provocative, it ignored
his negotiation with the police.76 The FBI version of events also did not
report that Deputy Commissioner Arm told Malcolm and Ali that the police
would investigate the arrest, and if the NOI’s allegations were valid there
would be a departmental trial of the officers. The Amsterdam News referred
to the meeting as a “conference” at police headquarters and noted that
Nicholas Gaffney, supervisor of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, also
attended.77 The black weekly later reported that many top police officials
took part in the subsequent investigation.78 Again, the Malcolm who
emerges in this episode is someone who used dialogue to resolve a police
brutality issue and was willing to seek redress through compromise.
In late June 1959 Malcolm complained in the Amsterdam News that he
had had to waste his time and miss his train to Philadelphia being forced to
wait to see commissioner Stephen Kennedy to discuss police brutality
incidents against black women. Deputy Commissioner Arm, Malcolm
explained, had told him he had arranged the appointment with Kennedy
days earlier, but Arm had never informed the commissioner. After waiting
for an hour, Malcolm said he was told that the commissioner did not have
time to see him. He accused Arm of having stalled him and his companion,
John X, for that hour before informing them that the “deal was off.”79
Though Malcolm did not explain what it meant that the “deal was off,”
he responded to Arm by saying that if “we can’t get justice from the law,
then we’ll have to seek justice elsewhere. We do not intend to let any man,
regardless of race, police or otherwise, molest our women.” He said that the
Muslims waited for the police to provide justice, but added, “I’m not
responsible for anything that happens.”80
Although he threatened to seek “justice elsewhere,” Malcolm had first
tried to discuss his community’s grievances with the commissioner, and his
reference to a deal indicates that he believed he and the NYPD had reached
some agreement. Clearly, Malcolm and members of the NOI were willing to
address police brutality issues by holding discussions with the police. Why
not simply turn to violence if meetings and conferences had actually been
dismissed as a waste of time? Because Malcolm and the NOI were more
interested in conflict management than in having a violent dispute that
would result in the injury or death of NOI members. Meetings provided
NOI leaders with a venue to express their discontent with those who held
power.
When police were accused of attacking NOI members, Malcolm
occasionally felt it necessary to remind the followers of Elijah Muhammad
not to take the law in their own hands, as happened in the summer 1961
case of NOI member Raymond Quarles of South Jamaica, Queens. Quarles,
who sold custom jewelry, had two cases of merchandise with him when the
police approached and questioned him as he was about to enter his uncle’s
house. Quarles told the Amsterdam News, “I pleaded with the officers to
take me in the home to verify” that he was a custom jeweler, ‘but they
refused. I was virtually thrown into the patrol car where the policeman with
the badge number 130822 assaulted me with his billy.” The officer then
went into Quarles’s uncle’s house and began searching it without a warrant.
The uncle phoned Joseph Gravitt (Yusuf Shah), captain of the Fruit of Islam
in New York, who soon arrived at the house and questioned the police. He
was informed that Quarles would be booked on a charge of vagrancy and
disorderly conduct.81
Gravitt spoke to lieutenant Francis McFee and arranged a meeting with
captain G. H. Seery of the Jamaica precinct. Commenting on the incident,
Malcolm X told the Amsterdam News, “We Muslims, followers of Elijah
Muhammad, obey the law. Our brothers are instructed to obey the police,
not to resist in any shape or form and to move quickly and peacefully when
ordered.” The leader of Temple No. 7 said the assault on Quarles, who had
been beaten until he was limp just because he was black, was unjustified,
but the situation could have been worse had this man not been a Muslim.
“The Muslims,” Malcolm said, “respect and obey the law and we as a group
demand respect.”82
Malcolm was reiterating what had become a common theme by the time
of the Quarles case: Muslims obey the law and respect authority. On April
26, 1959, he told a New York City NOI meeting that he “again must tell the
brothers that they should not resist any law enforcement officer at any time.
The NOI is not against the laws. . . . If the law enforcement officer is
wrong, he must still be obeyed because Allah will take care of him.”
According to an FBI report on a May 29, 1959, FOI meeting to plan for a
visit of Elijah Muhammad in Washington, DC, Malcolm told the gathering
that if local police ordered them to “move on” while they were handing out
flyers announcing the event, they should do “as instructed by the police, as
the NOI wanted no trouble while Muhammad was in Washington.”83
Malcolm’s willingness to negotiate with police did not stop him from
expressing his disdain for and distrust of law enforcement, an institution he
considered so viciously racist that he associated white police officers with
the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm substantiated this connection at a September 9,
1959, FOI meeting in New York City. According to the Amsterdam News,
Malcolm said that he had gotten hold of an August 6, 1959, letter sent from
J. B. Stoner, imperial wizard of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,
to Police Commissioner Kennedy. In it, after noting, “We are working to
unite all of the forces of White Christendom in the struggle to preserve the
great White Race,” Stoner claimed a New York City police officer who was
“one of our Klansmen” had told him that the “nigger Muslims are in
rebellion against White law and order” and that blacks had “no respect” for
the “honest White Christian policemen.” Stoner offered the NYPD the
support of his organization: “You and I must join forces to stop the black
Muslims now or they will soon drive every White person out of New York
City. The largest city in the world will then be an all nigger city of black
supremacy where White people will not be allowed to live.” Stoner offered
his “dear friend,” Commissioner Kennedy, “5,000 Klansmen” who along
with the police could “clean up Harlem” if Kennedy gave the Klansmen
badges and police uniforms: “They will leave their Klan robes at home so
the New York niggers won’t know that your police reinforcements are
White Christian Klansmen.”84
Malcolm used Stoner’s letter to accuse members of the NYPD of
membership in the KKK, and he linked several cases of police brutality to
Stoner’s willingness to take care of the “nigger Muslims.” Malcolm did not
consider Stoner’s informant within the force to have been a quack, and he
insisted, according to an FBI report, that “if Police Commissioner Stephen
Kennedy can’t provide the people of Harlem with protection against the
lawlessness of white police officers who show definite evidence of Klan-
like thinking in their methods of dealing with the people of Harlem, then
the people of Harlem demand that Mayor Wagner take already overdue
investigation action immediately.”85
 Although he had no evidence linking police officers to the Ku Klux Klan
and the letter allegedly written by Stoner was not proof of NYPD affiliation
with the white supremacist organization, Malcolm used it to pressure the
police department to take action against officers who brutalize blacks. He
submitted the letter to the Amsterdam News, which published it in its
entirety on the front page. The article also quoted extensively from a
statement by Malcolm accusing members of the police force of Klan
membership and pointing to a number of incidents that led him and others
to suspect it—including the Hinton episode and the Mollette case in
Queens. “We feel that there is physical evidence to indicate the KKK is
very active on the New York police force, as this letter suggests,” the
statement continued, and it went on to claim that despite a number of cases
of police brutality, the department had “never found any evidence of
brutality against Negroes.” Tellingly, instead of saying that the NOI would
retaliate, Malcolm again insisted that the “Moslem record in Harlem has
been one of courtesy and law abiding. We have never given a hint or sign of
any kind of violence; yet, for the past few weeks, we have been the target of
some of the most vicious anti-Moslem propaganda, which leads us to
believe that we are being penalized for being law-abiding citizens.”86
Stoner’s claim that NYPD officers were Klan members lacked proof, but
Malcolm was basing his reaction, in part, on observed behavior rather than
hard evidence. He argued that when police officers could murder and beat
black people with impunity, it was equivalent to the Klan’s onslaught of
racial terror. He was attempting to make black New Yorkers aware of the
NYPD’s unwillingness to address those problems in any serious way.
Despite his verbal attacks on the department’s methods and tactics,
historian Manning Marable writes that Malcolm took a “deferential
approach to the police.” Marable gives the example of an ad hoc working
committee meeting of Unity for Action, organized by A. Philip Randolph in
1961, at which Malcolm said “that he would encourage ‘his people’ to obey
the law, denied that NOI members had participated in any recent ‘uprising
in Harlem,’ and denounced the call for a ‘march on the 28th Precinct Police
Station,’ which had been outlined in a leaflet distributed through the crowd.
‘We do not think this will accomplish anything,’ he declared.”87
Most likely Malcolm was not making an argument that punishment
should be left to Allah; it’s more probable that he was referring to the evil
nature of white people, thus implying that protesting their behavior would
result in little if any substantive change. Demonstrating or boycotting were
just not an effective way of confronting police brutality, and Malcolm was
simply rejecting that particular approach. Legal action, on the other hand,
seemed more effective.

The Legal Approach

Malcolm and the NOI teamed up with a number of lawyers to take on the
issue of police brutality. These included NAACP attorney Edward Jacko,
who attended Howard Law School from 1939 to 1941 and was strongly
influenced by that school’s dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who
emphasized that the law should be used to defeat segregation and racial
discrimination. In 1946 Jacko joined the NAACP legal redress team and
helped to shape its approach to police brutality. He adopted the methods of
the New York NAACP State Conference under its head, Jawn A. Sandifer,
and filed civil law suits against New York City with the intent of making
police brutality cases so costly that the NYPD would be forced to address
the issue substantively.88
This strategy was used in the Johnson X. Hinton case. After the grand
jury refused in November 1959 to indict Hinton, the decision paved the way
for a lawsuit, and Malcolm retained the services of Sandifer and Jacko for
Hinton and the NOI, on whose behalf they filed a $1.125 million suit
against the city.89
In May 1960, an all-white jury, after deliberating for four hours, voted
unanimously to award Hinton $75,000, the largest settlement granted to a
victim of police brutality in New York City up to that date. Attorneys Jacko
and Sandifer provided what the Amsterdam News described as a “vigorous
cross-examination of police revealing inconsistency in the official records.
Dr. Thomas Matthews, a prominent neurosurgeon, told the press that Hinton
suffered permanent emotional and behavior disturbances, loss of his ability
to handle speech and memory of words and loss of sexual desire. He was
unable to rebuild his brain capacity to learn and as a result of the beating a
metal plate was placed in his head. Hinton’s wife, Christine Hinton,
testified that her husband was unable to help support their four children and
the family had to go on welfare.”90
 While those who focus on the Hinton case stress the NOI’s propensity to
physically confront the NYPD, the group’s willingness to use a legal path to
stop police brutality is the more significant aspect of this story. Fighting in
the courts may seem less courageous than physically confronting vicious
attacks by the police on unarmed black civilians. However, the NOI’s legal
pursuit demonstrated that it was willing to use a means that could gain
greater public support, financially hurt the city, and help bring substantive
relief to victims.

Conclusion
The Nation of Islam was an important force in the challenge to police
assaults on black people in postwar America. It was not, as the common
narrative suggests, a group of black racists bent on confrontation with law
enforcement or a disciplined paramilitary force ready to use self-defense
when confronting police brutality. Rather, it adopted nonphysical but
forceful de-escalation strategies such as meetings, negotiation, and lawsuits
to address law enforcement’s intimidation and physical assaults against
black people.
De-escalation was one of the greatest yet most often ignored legacies of
the NOI’s fight against police brutality. It prevented what would most likely
have been catastrophic outcomes of confrontations with the police. Some
writers have overlooked the evidence of Malcolm’s de-escalation tactics
while highlighting his call for manly self-defense and physical
confrontation. There is no doubt that had the NOI turned to retaliation
instead of de-escalation in the cases outlined here (and a number of other
incidents throughout the 1950s and 1960s) there would have more beatings,
arrests, and even deaths among NOI members.
The NOI adopted de-escalation as an approach before police departments
themselves embraced de-escalation training in the twenty-first century as a
strategy to curtail the number of violent incidents between officers and
citizens. The NOI’s de-escalation approach represented an attempt to
change the mind-set of black America with respect to police brutality,
especially given that many men in the their twenties and thirties were
members of the NOI, and that age group was statistically the most likely to
have physical confrontations with police. Beginning with Elijah
Mohammad, de-escalation as used by the NOI did not indicate compliance
or submission to police assaults but reflected an attempt to get NOI
members to understand the power dynamics at the moment of
confrontation. Police power is immense. Besides possessing an ample
supply of deadly weapons, officers have the legal right to use force,
including lethal force. In New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, they also
had the backing of the courts and the support of the mainstream media and
a vast majority of the public. Black citizens, including those profiled here,
were at a great disadvantage when confronting police brutality.
Muhammad’s declaration that those who carried guns would turn to the gun
for protection instead of turning to God, was an effort to foster a conscious
and alert perspective among FOI members, many of them young men and
most from poor working-class communities who had already had
encounters with police. The Boston member of the NOI who said that the
“devil isn’t playing with you and me” was not encouraging NOI followers
to back down but to realize the power dynamics at the moment. De-
escalation did not represent submission because the NOI turned to other
means of fighting the police, including the use of protests and the courts.
Elijah Muhammad’s public announcements of NOI policy and the
group’s emphasis on its religious beliefs were also an attempt to challenge
the popular image of the Nation of Islam as a hate group. By promoting an
image of the NOI as law-abiding and making it known that their religious
doctrine forbade them from carrying weapons and defending themselves
against the police, Muhammad showed he understood that the battle with
law enforcement meant taking on NOI’s negative public image in a
propaganda war in which NOI’s moral righteous had to be asserted and
proven.
Both Malcolm X and to a lesser degree Elijah Muhammad contributed to
formulating useful nonviolent strategies in that battle against police
violence. Like the black press and the Communist Party, they challenged
the racist images of blacks used by law enforcement to justify using
excessive force when dealing with black people. Negotiation, lawsuits, and
Muhammad’s attempt to change the mind-set of young black men so they
would not physically confront police officers laid the groundwork for later
activists. Using the courts and negotiating with city and state officials
would lead to major achievements in the anti–police brutality movement.
 4

Civil Rights, Community Activists, and Police

Brutality
As World War II wound down, police brutality remained a critical issue for
civil rights activists. In 1945 the Brooklyn branch of the NAACP reported
that between May and July of that year nine black people had been brutally
assaulted by the police. The chapter’s major focus by the 1940s was police
brutality. It publicly denounced alleged cases of violent police assaults on
black people, sponsored rallies against such violations, and in 1949 urged
governor Thomas Dewey to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate
police brutality. In addition, the Brooklyn branch provided attorneys to
victims of police assaults.1 In May 1948, disruptions erupted on 116th Street
in Harlem after rumors spread that a white police officer had killed a black
woman. In its efforts to improve relations the NYPD promised to hold
hearings on police brutality. The New York NAACP demanded that such
hearings be public.2
As we have seen, many New York City political activists were depicting
police brutality as a civil rights issue long before the rise of the civil rights
movement in the South. New York City civil liberties organizations,
political leaders, and activists all maintained that the killing and maiming of
unarmed black citizens by police was as much a violation of their civil
rights as being denied the vote or adequate public accommodations.3
By the postwar period there was a growing outcry among civil rights
organizations and others demanding that the city take action to end police
abuse of citizens. Among the solutions that activists and black leaders
continued to push for were increasing the number of African Americans on
the force as a way of determining who should police the black communities
of the city and creating a civilian complaint review board as a means of
determining how they will behave in communities. As police brutality
became a major focus as a civil rights issue in New York City, civil rights
organizations turned to advocating for an independent review board as the
primary means of addressing the problem. Based on the complaints
received, the agency would conduct investigations and decide on the
punishment of any officer found guilty. Those who called for creating a
review board argued that to ensure that police did not abuse the tremendous
power they had over citizens, it should offer a place where citizens could
file complaints away from police department premises and should have the
power to conduct investigations, subpoena police officers and witnesses,
hold hearings, and decide appropriate action, including bringing police to
justice when they break the law. Such a review board was seen as a way to
ensure that citizens’ constitutional rights would be protected. Just as
important, it would democratize policing in the city by giving citizens a
means of monitoring police actions and would empower citizens of color to
compel police to treat them just as they did white New Yorkers.
Just as the campaigns against police brutality continued into the 1950s,
so, too, did police resistance. The activists made no headway, as the NYPD
and city officials consistently ignored all requests to address police brutality
in any serious manner. By ignoring police brutality, the practice was de
facto sanctioned by the state, and as long as it was not addressed seriously,
tensions increased between the police and minority communities. The
activists, however, maintained their resolve on the issue.
Along with the black press, the American Communist Party, and the
Nation of Islam, civil rights and community activists in Harlem worked to
pressure the NYPD to adopt serious solutions to police brutality. Their
focus on a civilian complaint review board as a primary means to make the
police accountable to the communities they served raised an important new
question: What should be the citizens’ role in policing? The activist citizens
thought that playing a prominent role would defuse tensions and decrease
brutality. The police and other opponents of a review board argued that an
independent monitoring agency would undermine law enforcement, and
therefore monitoring should remain within the department and citizens
should play no role. Countering this resistance was the challenge activists
took on.

The Early Call for a Civilian Complaint Review Board

The struggle for a civilian complaint review board began decades before the
1950s. After the 1935 Harlem Riot, mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who served
from 1934 to 1945, formed a commission to study the causes of that event
and to make recommendations. The commission criticized the city for
having stationed extra police in Harlem, which it claimed was a “show of
force.” One of the commission’s recommendations was the formation of a
Citizens’ Public Safety Committee, which would be delegated to receive
complaints of alleged police brutality. The recommendation read as follows:
“That the commissioner of police arrange for the appointment of a
committee of from five to seven Harlem citizens of both races [black and
white] to whom colored people may make complaint if mistreated by the
police.” The commission assumed that the police commissioner was likely
to respond to this suggestion by claiming that there would be little he could
do if complaints were not made directly to the NYPD. In response, the
commission wrote, “But to this the reply is that the citizens are fearful of
making complaints lest there be unpleasant consequences to them and they
thereby gain the ill of the police.” The commission also pointed out that
complaints were routinely sent back to the precinct where the brutality
originally took place and were simply “pigeon-holed”: “We feel that the
situation would be greatly improved if there were a body of citizens to sift
all complaints and to take up with the commissioner, personally, if
necessary, such cases as merit attention.”4
The Harlem Commission did not wish to challenge the power of the
police commissioner, but it did want the reviewing body to be independent
of the NYPD. To that end, it recommended that such a committee be
advisory in nature so that the commissioner could be made aware of how
citizens regarded the police and of what steps could be taken to improve the
police–citizen relationship. To further assure the body’s independence from
“political or police domination,” the Harlem Commission suggested that it
include “one of more men who are dissenters from established institutions
and also men who are likely to have contact with victims of injustice.” It
also reasoned that any officer who violated the law should be investigated
and punished by the department; therefore it recommended “that in every
case of a shooting by the police a most careful investigation should be
personally made by one of the highest officials in the department.”5 Mayor
La Guardia ignored the recommendation that a citizens’ committee be
formed because he feared a harsh reaction from the police.
Eight years later, Mayor La Guardia again refused to set up a monitoring
agency after another riot took place in Harlem on August 1, 1943. As
discussed in chapter 1, on that day Robert Bandy, a private in the United
States Army, came to the aid of a black women who was involved in an
altercation with a white clerk in the lobby of a hotel. When Bandy
intervened, a white police officer attempted to arrest him, and when he
allegedly resisted arrest, the officer shot and wounded him. When word
spread that a white cop had shot and killed a black soldier, a riot erupted.
In response to the 1943 Harlem Riot, La Guardia did not set up a special
commission, and civil rights leaders and groups did not advocate for a
citizen’s review board. The lack of advocacy for a board was due, in large
part, to the wartime focus on maintaining national unity in order to help
defeat the Axis powers. Achieving unity meant that racial strife was
downplayed even by those who had called for a civilian review board after
the 1935 riot. Many people realized that there would be backlash from the
NYPD if there were calls for a board, which would be seen as challenging
police power and authority. Instead of antagonizing the police, there was
praise for their actions at the hotel. On August 7, 1943, Adam Clayton
Powell’s People’s Voice, for example, ran the headline “No Detroit in New
York” over an article blaming Private Bandy, who “precipitated in Sunday
night’s disturbances.” In a separate Voice article, Llewelyn Ransom claimed
that the “police bent backward to prevent the riot, brutalities and the
vandalism experienced in Detroit, and for this Harlem was grateful.”6
Ransom declared that Mayor La Guardia should receive “commendation for
the highly efficient manner in which he handled the situation, particularly
for his restraint of the police,” and noted that the mayor “stayed in Harlem
until morning” along with Walter White and other prominent black leaders.
Voice reporter Marvel Cooke also credited the police “who followed to the
letter Mayor LaGuardia’s order not to shoot.”7
Although there was no call for the creation of an oversight panel after the
1943 riot, activists did push the mayor to address the deplorable social
conditions in Harlem. Among the remedies suggested by the People’s
Committee, which met at Abyssinian Baptist Church where Powell was the
senior pastor, were a call for rent control, “the breaking down of Jim Crow”
in the armed forces, “the expansion of the OPA program in Harlem, and
unity of the Negro people.”8 The U.S. Office of Price Administration (or
OPA), created in 1941 through an executive order of president Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, had the power to place ceilings on the price of
commodities and on rents.
 Public Relations, Not Police Brutality
After the end of World War II civil rights activists wasted little time before
taking on the NYPD by renewing their demand for a police monitoring
board and promoting other ways to stamp out police brutality. Under
pressure from civil rights groups to act, in 1948 police commissioner Arthur
W. Wallander created a new “advisory committee to investigate complaints
of police brutality in Harlem.” It would focus on seven aspects of
community life, including improving the welfare of Harlem residents and
conditions affecting the enforcement of the law and addressing situations
that might erupt into racial conflict. The committee was made up of
members of the black elite: Dr. Dan Dodson, director of the Mayor’s
Committee on Unity; the Reverend John H. Johnson, a Harlem clergyman
and police chaplain; attorney Madison Jones of the NAACP’s national staff;
Edward S. Lewis, executive secretary of the Urban League; and
businessman Chilian B. Powell.9
Placing no trust in the NYPD to seriously address the brutality problem,
the New York branch of the NAACP announced the formation of its own
Committee of Action against Police Brutality, which would investigate and
take action on police brutality complaints. The committee was organized at
a February “mass meeting” of the New York branch, at which a number of
people described their encounters with police and requested help from the
NAACP. Located at 2272 Seventh Avenue, the Committee of Action’s
office was open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear complaints, and
the NAACP also promised to have an attorney on hand if legal action was
needed. The committee’s head, Herbert Hill, claimed it would take a new
approach to an old problem by combining the provision of legal counsel for
victims with organizing direct mass action.10
The issue of creating an agency to monitor police was again raised in
1949, when mayor William O’Dwyer appointed a special commission to
investigate police brutality headed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. In
response to the deaths of three citizens at the hands of police, this
commission reiterated earlier recommendations for the creation of a
monitoring agency, but O’Dwyer ignored it.11 Although city officials
remained uninterested in dealing with police brutality in any serious
manner, civil rights groups continued their efforts to eliminate police
assaults on black people.
 William P. O’Brian, who became police commissioner in 1949,
responded to demands that he address police brutality against black and
Latino citizens by attempting to direct the focus away from police abuse of
citizens. It was reported in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminality in
1950 that O’Brian declared that the primary problem between the police
and the community was poor public relations. To improve matters, the
journal noted, the NYPD’s Bureau of Public Relations would inform
citizens about the department’s good deeds. For O’Brian, the solution to
improving police–community relations lay in cultivating trust. According to
the journal, “The mutual advantage of a friendly relationship between the
people of a community and their police force should be widely understood
and more fully appreciated. The success of a police force in the
performance of its duties is largely measured by the degree of support and
cooperation it receives from the people whom it serves. It is of paramount
importance, therefore, to secure for this Department the confidence, respect
and approbation of the public.”12
The journal noted that O’Brian listed four factors for determining good
police–community relations, including the police attitude “toward the
people of the community, . . . the attitude of the people toward their police
force and law enforcement in general,” and racial and “religious attitudes.”
He emphasized that the police officer should “strive to train himself to
habits of acceptable conduct that will merit approval.” Thus it was left up to
the individual officer to develop behavior that a community would find
acceptable.13
The fact that the commissioner lumped racial attitudes and religious
attitudes as one category points to a lack of understanding or a strategic
downplaying of the racial tension between New York’s police and black
communities.14 That was the extent of O’Brian’s efforts to deal with racial
tension. Each officer was issued the revised edition of the procedures
manual that highlighted the push for better public relations and offered
“practical” ways of improving interactions between the police and the
“general public, the press, and the organized groups which espouse civic,
fraternal and other causes.” According to O’Brian, the “more people who
are acquainted with our aims, the greater will be the possibility of our
achieving them.”15
 Scandal and the Creation of a “Civilian” Complaint Review
Board
By the late 1940s it was apparent to many that the police had won the
struggle between civil rights and police brutality. Despite two riots in
Harlem; the recommendations from appointed commissions; and meetings
with civil rights, political, and community leaders urging that steps be taken
to end police violence against black and Latino residents, the NYPD and the
city still refused to act. This intransigence highlighted how difficult it was
to challenge institutional racism and made it clear to those leading the anti-
brutality campaign that the department and city were not going to act unless
forced to do so.
One such coercion strategy was to take the path of litigation. A number
of lawyers, some affiliated with the NAACP, argued that if the city were
legally compelled to pay out large sums awarded in jury trials or
settlements, it would be much more eager to take action against brutal cops.
In the spring of 1948 Jawn Sandifer, head of the New York State NAACP
Legal Redress Committee, announced that the organization was launching
an intensive campaign to halt police brutality and would pursue civil suits
against police involved in violence against citizens: “In criminal cases
police enjoy almost complete judicial immunity in the courts. By filing both
civil and criminal suits at the same time, we have a much better chance of
checking brutality.” Two weeks later, Sandifer expressed optimism when he
told the People’s Voice that police officials were “ready to cooperate with
the NAACP” in investigating police brutality complaints. “These
complaints of police brutality are our biggest headache now,” Sandifer
asserted, pointing out that the great majority of such cases were never
reported, and even if taken to trial, the “NAACP has found that the courts
will very seldom find a policeman guilty in cases of this sort.”16
In 1946, before becoming the Nation of Islam’s lawyer, Edward Jacko
joined the NAACP legal redress team and helped to shape its approach to
police brutality.17 Jacko won a number of such cases, including that of Ben
Fields, a thirty-one-year-old construction worker shot on June 22, 1959, by
police officer Harold “Davy Crocket” Stewart. Fields was in a candy store
on 126th Street trying to get change for a twenty-dollar bill when Stewart
saw him displaying a large sum of money. Stewart approached and
questioned the young black man and then took the money from him. When
Fields demanded its return, Stewart punched Fields in the face, slammed
him against the wall, and shot him in the stomach at close range. Hospital
authorities reported that Fields also suffered a head injury that would leave
him partially paralyzed for life. New York State Supreme Court justice
Mitchell D. Schweitzer awarded Fields $50,000, and a few months later, a
six-person jury found Stewart guilty of second-degree assault.18
One of Jacko’s most notable cases brought to the public’s attention a
secret agreement between the New York City police commissioner and the
U.S. Department of Justice that shielded the NYPD from a federal
investigation on police brutality. This revelation would eventually force the
NYPD to create a civilian complaint review board later in the 1950s. The
case in question began with an assault on Jacob Jackson, a black truck
driver who was beaten by officers from the Fifty-Fourth Precinct. On
August 9, 1952, after chasing some men caught gambling in the streets,
officer William J. Brennan arrested Jackson at his home on 52nd Street. In
court, Jackson claimed that once at the precinct, Brennan beat him so badly
that he had to be rushed to the hospital, where he underwent two brain
operations. While in the hospital Jackson was charged with felonious
assault of a police officer, though the charge was later changed to disorderly
conduct. He was convicted but given a suspended sentence.19 According to
the NAACP, Jackson arrived at the precinct a “sound, healthy man” but
“left in an ambulance.”20 Jacko, who represented Jackson, and the NAACP
were aware that the U.S. Justice Department was at the time conducting an
investigation of police departments to see if civil rights laws had been
violated in acts of police brutality. The NAACP sent the U.S. attorney
general a telegram requesting that the Justice Department investigate the
Jackson case.21
When investigating Jackson’s brutality claim, the FBI asked to interview
the officers involved in the case. Police commissioner George P. Monaghan
refused to cooperate, citing a previous agreement between the NYPD and
former U.S. attorney general James P. McGranery. However, once
McGranery, who served under President Truman, left office, his successor,
Herbert Brownell, serving under President Eisenhower, learned of the
agreement and refused to renew it, despite a plea from Monaghan.22
Civil rights leaders and city officials alike expressed outrage over the
agreement. The executive board of the NAACP released a press statement
arguing that “civil rights is a national issue. The responsibility of the
Federal Government to secure these rights to all citizens is as imperative in
New York as it is in Alabama.” The NAACP demanded the removal of
local and federal officials who were responsible for the agreement. Ella
Baker, president of the New York branch of the NAACP, and Jacko called
the agreement a “conspiracy.” The NAACP and others demanded that
mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri fire the police commissioner.23 The NAACP
claimed in a March 1953 edition of the Crisis that it “had already taken
effective action to prevent any future secret agreements between the police
and Justice Department to suspend federal intervention in cases involving
abuse of civil rights by police officers.” The organization noted that it had
sponsored a February 19 gathering of “seventeen civic, labor, church and
minority group organizations to consider plans for protest and action against
the non-repudiated agreement between the New York City Police
Department and the U.S. Department of Justice.”24
U.S. representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and U.S. senator Jacob
Javits both insisted on a congressional investigation. Rudolph Halley,
president of the New York City Council, asked for a public inquiry to find
out if Monaghan had made a secret deal with the Justice Department. If
such an agreement existed, Halley said, it was “vicious.” In a statement to
the press, Halley claimed that “every citizen of New York should know
whether the FBI made an exception here in police cases involving alleged
violations of civil rights.” City Council member Earl Brown, representing
Harlem, said he would present a resolution calling for the formation of a
five-person committee to investigate the policies and practices of the NYPD
in addressing citizen complaints of police brutality.25
Mayor Impellitteri declared that there was no need for a city inquiry,
noting that the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Subcommittee, headed
by New York Republican Kenneth B. Keating, was investigating the
agreement. Manhattan borough president Robert F. Wagner Jr. called for a
“full report” by the Board of Estimate on the incident, saying that unless it
was demonstrated that civil rights laws were equally enforced in the United
States, “Radio Moscow will blare forth that we have legalized lynching
right here in New York City.” The Board of Estimate oversaw many
domains, including the city budget, land use, and city contracts, and it is not
clear why Wagner asked for a report by that particular agency. The
Reverend Donald Harrington, pastor of the Community Church and chair of
the Coordinating Committee on Police Practices, told the press that he was
“shocked by the immoral practices revealed concerning the denial of
fundamental rights to American citizens” that had been “allegedly
committed by police officials and allegedly condoned by our highest police
officials.”26
James McInerney, special assistant to Attorney General Brownell,
verified that there was indeed such a deal.27 Knowledge of the secret
agreement made civil rights advocates more determined than ever to
address police brutality. The NAACP invited twenty-five civil rights and
civic organizations to its national office to discuss the police brutality
problem.28 Civil rights groups, city officials, and the House Judiciary
Subcommittee called for an investigation by the city and for Monaghan to
step down.
The public exposure of the secret deal and the widespread criticism
forced the NYPD to take action. It decided to create what it officially called
a Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB). True to the implications of its
title, it was a board where civilians could file complaints against police
officers whom they claimed had committed improprieties. However, no
civilians were themselves involved in the operation of the board, which was
made up of three deputy police commissioners—one who was in charge of
legal matters, one in charge of community relations, and one who acted as
board chair.29
Complaints filed with the board had to be promptly investigated by the
commanding officers of the echelon above that in which the accused was a
member. The Civilian Complaint Review Board chair had to attend the
hearing and could participate by questioning witnesses. Even though the
accused officer and the complainant might be present at the hearing, only
the officer conducting the investigation and the civilian complaint
supervisor were allowed to question witnesses. After the hearing, the officer
in charge of the investigation had to submit a transcript of its proceedings
and a report with recommendations to the civilian complaint supervisor,
who then had to review the report and refer it with his own
recommendations to the chairman of the CCRB. The board was required to
order the investigating officer to prefer charges if it concluded that the
accused officer was guilty of impropriety. The accused would then be
arraigned, and a trial would take place following procedures similar to those
in the criminal court of the state of New York. The police commissioner
could request that the corporation counsel present the department’s case.
The accused officer could be represented by an attorney, and witnesses had
to be sworn. After the trial, the board was to submit its report with
recommendations to the police commissioner: “The police commissioner
within his discretion makes the final determination and disposition. By
provision of the New York City Charter he has complete jurisdiction over
the disposition and discipline of the members of the force.”30

The Continuing Saga of Police Abuse

The creation of a police-operated unit to monitor complaints of police
brutality did nothing to lessen the demands that the NYPD address the issue
of police brutality. Critics rightfully pointed out that the review board and
the entire review process were in the hands of the police, and therefore the
new CCRB could not be trusted. The complaints of unfair treatment of
blacks and Latinos by the police would continue throughout the 1950s, and
the black press kept the issue alive with ongoing reporting. There seemed to
be no shortage of incidents to report on, and in practically all cases,
including the most sensational, the police officers in question were not
brought to justice. The Amsterdam News, for instance, reported in May
1955 that Elbert Dukes, a nine-year-old child, was beaten across the face by
a police officer from the Twenty-Eighth Precinct who, Dukes claimed, took
him into custody while he was waiting for a train and attacked him at the
precinct. Two weeks later, the Amsterdam News reported that a grand jury
had exonerated detective John McEnry in the death of forty-seven-year-old
Edward Johnson, who, the detective claimed, had been standing at 106th
Street and Central Park West and was “looking suspicious.” When the
detective attempted to search him, Johnson began kicking him. McEnry
claimed that during the confrontation Johnson fell and suffered a skull
fracture and hemorrhage. The attorney for Johnson’s family, Henry
Williams of the NAACP Legal Redress Committee, argued that it was
impossible that Johnson could have kicked the detective in the groin
because Johnson had suffered from severe arthritis in both legs since 1943.31
In April 1955 patrolman Herbert Fisher and city marshal Morris Heyman
were accused of “clubbing, shoving, flooring, kicking and beating” Cleo
McCaskill, a pregnant mother of five. McCaskill, who was being evicted
from her apartment, had objected to the marshal placing her furniture in the
street. She was arrested “at gun point” and charged with assault.32
Fame and wealth did not protect black people from police assaults. The
internationally famous jazz artist Miles Davis was made a victim of police
brutality in the summer of 1959 while performing at the club Birdland.
According to one witness, detectives Don Rolker and Gerald Kildof
attacked Davis because they saw him escort a woman with blonde hair to a
taxi. Davis told the Amsterdam News that Rolker starting “beating on my
head like a tom-tom—his breath reeking with liquor.” Arrested and charged
with assaulting a police officer, Davis was released after posting $1,000
bail. He claimed that the incident began when Kildof approached him and
ordered him to move on. Davis told the officer he was working at Birdland
and had just come outside for some fresh air. The cop called him a wise guy
and once again ordered him to move on. When Davis asked why he had to
do so, Kildof grabbed and pushed him. It is not clear what took place next.
According to Davis’s version of events, when he saw the officer go for his
club, he decided to “protect himself.” But it is not clear what he meant by
that. Rolker then came over and began beating Davis. Both officers cursed
at Davis and dragged him to the police car in front of dozens of witnesses.
He was then taken to the Fifty-Fourth Precinct and charged with disorderly
conduct and assault and later was taken to the hospital, where he received
stitches for a head wound. What was not in dispute was that the officers had
used excessive force. Witnesses told the Amsterdam News that the cops had
been simply brutal.33
The New York Times reported the police version, which alleged that when
Kildof told Davis to move on, the jazz artist argued with the cops and then
“grabbed the patrolman’s night stick.” Rolker was just passing by the jazz
club when he noticed the commotion, came to Kildof’s assistance, and only
began striking Davis in the head after the jazz artist pushed him.34 The Times
did not carry any eyewitness accounts of the events. The Amsterdam News,
on the other hand, said it received numerous calls from witnesses who
described the incident, and it even quoted two of them. Charles Chambers, a
bass player for the Miles Davis Quintet, said, “I’ve never seen anything like
it. The cop, who is a regular at Birdland, brought down the blackjack on
Davis’ head like he was beating a drum.” Another witness said that Rolker
ran toward Davis and just started beating him “on his head.”35
 In April 1964 Theodore Weiss, a reform Democrat city councilman from
Manhattan, hoped to end the practice of the police investigating the police
and recommended the creation of an all-civilian nine-person board to be
appointed by the mayor. Weiss’s version of a CCRB would have the
authority to investigate and conduct hearings, and its findings would be sent
to the mayor and police commissioner. However, it would have no
enforcement power and could only offer recommendations.36
While civil rights groups were supportive of Weiss, the New York City
police establishment was outraged by his proposal. The police
commissioner at that time, Michael J. Murphy, said that the NYPD was
under a “planned pattern” of attack with the intent to make it ineffective.
Although Murphy did not identify any individual or organization carrying
out the attack, it was clear he was speaking about civil rights groups. In a
speech before the Engineers Club in Manhattan, he said that amid the civil
rights confrontations, the police “bear the brunt of the resentment of civil
rights activists” and were subjected to “unfair abuse and underserved
criticism from some quarters in what I can only regard as a planned pattern
to destroy their effectiveness and leave the city open to confusion.”37

Conclusion
Black and Latino communities repeatedly asked the NYPD to address
issues of police brutality; discrimination in the hiring, promoting, and
assigning of officers of color; and preferential treatment of white
lawbreakers. The police department systematically ignored or rebuffed
these requests, and in doing so lost many valuable opportunities to develop
a cooperative relationship with these communities.
Despite recalcitrance on the part of civil officials and the police
department to offer any meaningful solutions, civil rights groups did not let
the matter drop. They continued to push for a number of reforms, including
a civilian-led complaint review board. The tide would turn in 1964 with
civil rights demonstrations in New York; the creation of civilian complaint
review boards in Philadelphia, Rochester, and other cities; and no letup in
the cases of police abuse, including the killing of a fifteen-year-old junior
high school student in upper Manhattan. The eruption of riots in the city’s
two largest black communities in the summer of 1964 would only intensify
the pressure for a CCRB staffed by civilians.
 5

Police Brutality, the Harlem and Bedford-

Stuyvesant Riots, and the National Civil Rights
Movement
Ella Baker, president of the New York City branch of the NAACP, asserted
at the organization’s Eastern Regional Training Conference in March 1953
that police brutality was not a new issue and stressed that over the past ten
years the organization had received complaints of “incident after incident.”
Al Nall of the New York Amsterdam News noted in September 1957 that not
a week went by when that black weekly wasn’t informed of “some instance
of alleged police brutality.”1 In the May 18, 1957, edition of the Amsterdam
News, Milton Nallory’s “Sidewalk Interview” column questioned Harlem
residents about the issue, asking “Should policemen found guilty of
brutality in the cases where suits are won be automatically fired from the
force?” All the respondents were in agreement: yes. Owen Ridges of
Manhattan said that they should not only be fired “but should be arrested
and prosecuted the same as any other criminal.” Bruce Buffins insisted that
police who commit brutality “should be classified as inhuman or insane.”
Respondent Maceo Owens placed police brutality in a broad setting:
“Harlem is constantly the victim of police brutality. Race riots usually start
from the cruel acts of thoughtless police. The dark world today is a powder
keg. Harlem could be the fuse and police brutality is the spark to set it off.”2
Owens was prescient.
It was a pivotal moment for the national as well as the New York City
civil rights movements when NYPD lieutenant Thomas Gilligan killed
fifteen-year-old James Powell on July 16, 1964, triggering violence that
would force a broad spectrum of civil rights leaders to pay attention to the
problems blacks in urban centers faced—including police brutality. The
Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots—pitched battles between police and
those neighborhoods’ black residents—lasted from the day of the shooting
until July 22 and occurred during what has been remembered as the high
point of the civil rights movement. It had been eleven months since the
historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—which president
John F. Kennedy told the organizers was a great success. It had been just
one month since the start of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project,
which brought over a thousand out-of-state, college-educated, and mostly
white young people to work alongside thousands of black Mississippians to
end the legal apartheid system popularly known as Jim Crow, and just two
weeks after president Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights
Act, which, with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, helped to formally eradicate
that regime. President Johnson also launched his War on Poverty in 1964,
creating a number of programs and providing billions of dollars to end
poverty in the United States. In December of that year, Martin Luther King
Jr. would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, giving international
recognition to what he proclaimed was a movement committed to the
“unrelenting struggle” for freedom. However, several days of rioting in two
of New York’s largest black communities, Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant,
as well as riots in other northern cities that summer, raised concerns among
civil rights leaders that a white backlash would occur to jeopardize the
newly won civil rights gains. In 1964 police brutality became one of the
most important civil rights issues.
The presidential election scheduled for November that year was one
reason concern about white backlash had been triggered. President Johnson,
a liberal who was supportive of civil rights, was running against senator
Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a Republican conservative who was
antagonistic to the movement and its objectives. Martin Luther King Jr. and
Bayard Rustin of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, James
Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, Roy Wilkins of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Whitney Young of the
National Urban League, and other national civil rights leaders all became
involved in events in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant and expressed their
concern about the impact riots and demonstrations would have on the
electoral outcome.
However, not all civil rights leaders were on the same page when
addressing the rioting and police brutality in New York, and their opinions
on the causes and the action that should be taken brought to the surface a
deep division within the civil rights community. King, Wilkins, Rustin, and
others stressed that the federal government’s commitment to ending racial
and economic inequality was at stake and argued that continued
demonstrations could lead to Goldwater’s election. Therefore, they called
for a moratorium on all protests. Others, including James Farmer, struck a
more militant tone, maintaining that protests and demonstrations were
needed to assure that those in power would continue to act to bolster civil
rights. Thus a major question facing movement leaders was how black New
Yorkers should respond to police brutality in the face of the ever-
deteriorating relationship between the NYPD and the black community. The
crisis in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant reinforced the understanding that
civil rights were not just a southern concern. City officials and the NYPD
had for decades refused to earnestly address black and Latino grievances
regarding police violence and had ignored demands and action proposals
from civil rights and political leaders. The problems were allowed to fester,
and Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant became ground zero for confronting
the issue of police brutality.

The Riots in New York

On the morning of July 16, 1964, a number of students attending summer
school at Robert F. Wagner Junior High School on East Seventy-Sixth
Street were hanging out in front of the school building and others were
across the street in front of two apartment buildings. Many black students
were assigned to the junior high school in that predominantly white area on
the Upper East Side of Manhattan to retake courses they had failed during
the regular school year. The superintendent of the two apartment buildings,
Patrick Lynch, was watering the flowers and plants when he either
purposely or accidently sprayed water on the students standing in front of
the building. Some student witnesses claimed that he called them “dirty
niggers,” a charge he vehemently denied.3
Many of those black students may have been reminded of events the
previous year in Birmingham, Alabama, when civil rights protesters
demonstrating to end segregation in that city conducted sit-ins and marches
and launched a boycott of downtown merchants. In response, director of
public safety Eugene “Bull” Connor set police dogs on the nonviolent
demonstrators, turned firehoses on them, and sent hundreds of
demonstrators to jail, including high school and junior high school students.
Regardless of whether the New York City students made this connection,
the superintendent’s actions angered them, and they responded by hurling
garbage can lids and bottles at Lynch, forcing him to retreat into the
apartment building.
Ninth-grader James Powell, along with two of his classmates, ran after
the superintendent. A number of students who later appeared before the
grand jury investigating the case testified that Powell did not have a
weapon. However, other witnesses said that when Powell ran after Lynch
they saw him with a knife. One teenager said that just before Powell
pursued Lynch, he asked him, Harris, to give him the knife he had been
holding for him.4
Off-duty police lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, a sixteen-year veteran with
several citations, was in a television repair shop near the incident when he
saw what was taking place and ran to the scene. According to Gilligan,
Powell did have a knife. When he approached the fifteen-year-old, he fired
a warning shot and Powell lunged at him, nicking him in the right arm; he
then fired two additional shots. Witnesses, mostly other students at the
scene, said that Powell did not have a weapon. One fourteen-year-old
witness said the “cop just hit Jimmy and spun him around” and then shot
him twice. One bullet went through Powell’s right forearm, entered his
chest above the right nipple, and lodged in his left lung; the other hit him
just above the navel, piercing his abdomen and a major vein. Either shot
would have been fatal. Powell, who was five feet six inches tall and
weighed 122 pounds, fell to the ground. The fourteen-year-old witness
claimed that Gilligan “kicked him over” and called him a “dirty nigger.”
Beulah Barnes, a nurse, said she saw Gilligan come out of the repair shop
holding a revolver and that he shot Powell “twice and then the boy fell to
the sidewalk.” When Powell’s body was first searched, no weapon was
found. However, a knife was later found eight feet from where he was shot
and fell.
Not all the witnesses agreed. A bus driver who saw the incident testified
to the grand jury that he did see Powell with a knife. Another witness
asserted that he heard Gilligan identify himself as a police officer and order
Powell to stop. The NYPD did not help to clarify matters. According to the
New York Post, the police refused to allow newspapers to photograph the
knife. Soon after the killing, about three hundred students poured out of
Wagner Junior High into the streets near the scene and began throwing
bricks and bottles. Close to a hundred police were rushed to the area to
restore order,5 and their presence stopped the students’ violent reaction.
Although a confrontation was avoided the day of the shooting, the situation
would be different in Harlem two days later.
On July 18, the Downtown, South Jamaica, and East River branches of
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held a rally at 125th Street and
Seventh Avenue calling for the suspension of Lieutenant Gilligan. The
original purpose of the rally had been to protest the murder by the Ku Klux
Klan and law enforcement in Mississippi of Andrew Goodman, Michael
Schwerner, and James Chaney, participants in the Mississippi Freedom
Summer Project, but the organizers decided instead to focus on the killing
of James Powell. After the rally, participants in the larger demonstration,
led by Charles Saunders of East River CORE and Chris Sprowal of the
Downtown chapter, encouraged people to march to the 123rd Precinct to
take part in a nonviolent protest. About 150 did so, though by the time they
reached the police station, they numbered 250.6 Officers set up barriers a
block away from the precinct; when the protesters tried to get past them, the
police responded with their nightsticks. Harlem erupted in rebellion.
According to the New York Times, thousands of people took to the streets,
breaking windows and looting stores, pulling fire alarms, throwing bottles
and other debris, and firing weapons. Over five hundred police officers
were assigned to halt the rioting and fired thousands of shots into the air—
and, according to some, at people as well—as a means of crowd control.
Many protesters were clubbed or beaten by police, and thirty were arrested
that evening.7
The riots lasted four days and drew worldwide attention. Calling it the
worst outbreak in twenty-one years, the Asahi Evening News in Japan
reported on the fighting between blacks and “steel-helmeted” police in
Harlem, writing that hundreds of blacks “hurled bottles, bricks and Molotov
cocktails at police who fired hundreds of rounds of warning shots . . .
through the heart of the nation’s largest Negro community.”8 The Windsor-
Star in Canada estimated that a crowd of one thousand had broken through
police barricades and wrote that the crowd tossed bottles while the police
used their nightsticks. It claimed that on the second night “virtual guerrilla
warfare had erupted in strife-torn Harlem.”9
 Three days after the violence erupted in Harlem, rioting started in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn’s largest black community, when police fired
in the air in an attempt to stop demonstrators from setting off firecrackers
and breaking windows—largely triggered by what many saw as a police
assault on black people in Harlem. As of July 21, one person had been
killed and seventy had been injured as a result of the clashes between police
and civilians in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The police reported that fifty-three
officers suffered injuries.10 The number of protestors was estimated at a
thousand. By July 23, eighty-two civilians had been injured and over two
hundred people had been arrested. In addition, 117 businesses were
damaged. In Bedford-Stuyvesant ten civilians and twelve police officers
were injured.
The mainstream press, city officials, and the police all pointed at black
militants as the cause of the riots. Time magazine blamed “hate-preaching
demagogues” who “took to the street corners” and “raunchy radicals” who
“issued inflammatory broadsides.” Pointing to what it called a “pro–Red
China outfit called the Progressive Labor Movement,” the magazine blamed
that group for labeling the police as “Fascist and racist.” But it was the
“most restless elements of Harlem,” Time asserted, who were “bristling for
a fight.” The magazine went on to describe how the police tried to hold
back the “screaming mob” that marched on the police station and “swarmed
through the streets” but were unable to do so, and told its readers, “Roving
bands of rioters—most of them kids—surged through the districts,
aimlessly, desperately pursuing their urge for violence. . . . Some hoodlums
lobbed Molotov cocktails into the battalions of pursuing police.” Black
nationalist militants, Time said, used irresponsible rhetoric, as did CORE
leader James Farmer, whom it criticized for saying that white cops were
“united against the black man.”11 On the third day of the riot, the New York
Times reported that “groups of Negroes roamed the streets, attacking
newsmen and others” and were also on rooftops hurling bottles and bricks
at police on the street, who responded by firing warning shots “over the
attackers’ heads.”12
The official city response to the rioting was at first in the hands of the
acting mayor, Democrat Paul Screvane, head of the City Council and
formerly the Sanitation Department commissioner. When the riot in Harlem
erupted, Mayor Wagner was in Geneva attending a conference on
automation and unemployment, at which he was to give a speech on
poverty and unemployment as “related to discrimination and civil rights.”13
The acting mayor gave his approval to take “all necessary steps” to
maintain “law and order.” He assured New Yorkers that the shooting of
Powell by Gilligan was being investigated by the Civilian Complaint
Review Board (CCRB) and Manhattan district attorney Frank Hogan and
said, “Our civic survival depends upon on the rule of law as enforced by the
police and courts.”14 Screvane missed the point that Harlem residents did not
have any faith in the police-controlled CCRB. At the heart of the problem
for many blacks and Latinos was their unfair treatment by the very same
forces that Screvane declared were there to preserve law and order.
While in Switzerland Wagner was in contact with Screvane, and the
reports he received led him to decide to return to New York a little over one
hundred hours after leaving. Speaking for the city government at a news
conference on July 21, Screvane blamed the riots on “fringe groups,
including the Communist Party.” According to the New York Times, he
praised President Johnson for assigning FBI agents to investigate whether
federal statues had been violated and recommended that the FBI look at
some of the demonstrators’ financial sources, citing some “very
inflammatory . . . anti-American . . . and seditious statements.” When asked
by a reporter if he could verify that Communists were responsible for the
riot, he replied, “Well, I don’t think there’s any question about it. Some of
the people have been involved in some of the meetings and rallies that have
been called by people who are known Communists, and I don’t have any
doubt about that.” Referring to one rally that had turned violent, the acting
mayor claimed that anyone attending it could see firsthand that outside
agitators controlled the entire operation. Deputy police commissioner
Walter Arm also spoke at the press conference, and the Times quoted him as
saying that the police had been “investigating very closely indications of
leftwing incitement and were in no position to discuss it at this moment.”
The “extremist groups” under investigation by the police were accused of
trying to capitalize on black aspirations; they included, in addition to the
Communist Party, the Harlem Progressive Labor Party and its leader,
William Epton, and members of the Socialist Workers Party.15 The
Progressive Labor Party, a Maoist group advocating the “Chinese brand” of
Communism over the “Soviet brand,” had distributed leaflets calling on
black people to defend Harlem from the police. Some of its members had
even traveled to China and met with China’s leadership, including premier
Chou En-Lai, to be educated in Maoist dogma.16
Blaming Communists for racial disorder was nothing new. Southern
segregationists blamed them for civil rights protests in the South and
consistently labeled the NAACP and other civil rights groups as
Communist organizations. Some southern state legislatures even
“investigated” the NAACP in an attempt to prove that it was a Communist
outfit. Individual civil rights leaders were also called Communists, Martin
Luther King Jr. being the most prominent. FBI head J. Edgar Hoover
insisted that King was a Communist and persuaded U.S. attorney general
Robert Kennedy to wiretap his phone. The focus on Communism proved an
effective diversion from the real causes of protest in the South and the
demonstrations and disturbances in New York and other northern cities.
While Roy Wilkins contended that the violence gave Harlem a black eye, he
also claimed that “raising the Communist cry won’t solve very much at this
time.”17
While the mainstream press and city officials blamed black nationalists,
Communists, and the Harlem community for the riot, Harlem residents and
civil rights leaders blamed the police. Over one hundred people were
treated at Harlem and Sydenham hospitals as a result of the July 18 riot.
Patients at both hospitals accused the police of brutality. Doris Berry told
the New York Times that she was out on the street, looking for her mother,
who had been lost in the mob near her home, when a white policeman
aimed his gun at her and shot her in the right knee: “I thought they were just
shooting blanks until I got hit in the leg.” The cops, she claimed, “just left
me, and I had to take a taxi to the hospital.” Thessolonia Cutler, who was
treated at Harlem Hospital, told the Times she was shot in the back as she
headed home after leaving work. The police, she said, “were beating up
everyone and there was nothing but smoke and gunshots for blocks
around.”18 By the third day of the riot, the police had fired so many rounds
that they had exhausted their ammunition supply.19
Simone Montgomery, who lived in Harlem, sent a letter to Mayor
Wagner and Police Commissioner Murphy detailing her experience on July
19 between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. She had heard shots and as she looked out
her window saw fifteen or more cops “running up and down the block firing
shots in the air and chasing people.” Two of them looked at her and
shouted, “Get the fuck out of the window.” Then, she wrote, they “fired
directly at me.” One bullet just missed her head, traveled through her
drapes, grazed a wall, and ricocheted off the ceiling to the floor of her
apartment. The second bullet smashed through a windowpane and into the
ceiling. She gave both bullets to the detectives who responded to her
complaint: “There is no doubt that the officers fired directly at me, as can
be evidenced by where the bullet struck in relation to where I was
standing.” She also claimed that the words she heard one officer say to the
other was further proof that she was a target: “We might have got the black
bastard.” Montgomery wrote that although a riot was taking place, the only
disturbance on her block was created by the police.20

James Farmer and CORE

By 1963, well before the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots, the most
outspoken national civil rights figure on the issue of police brutality and the
need for a CCRB was James Farmer, who had served as chairman of CORE
from 1942 to 1944 and was reelected to that post in 1961. CORE was a
small organization competing with more prominent national civil rights
groups such as the NAACP and Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC). CORE did not have their respected
reputations nor their funding sources—the NAACP, for example, relied on
dues from a much larger national membership as well as on a host of
philanthropic organizations such as the New World Foundation and the
Field Foundation, both of which provided money for litigation.21 Neither
could CORE rely on a network structure that, like the SCLC, received
donations from black churches and ministerial organizations.
Farmer realized that for CORE to be on a par with the larger civil rights
organizations, it would have to take the lead in civil rights campaigns that
would grab public attention and have a national impact. In 1961 he decided
the way to do this was to challenge segregation on public means of
interstate travel. Although in 1946 the Supreme Court had handed down a
decision in Irene Morgan v. the Commonwealth of Virginia that banned
racial discrimination in interstate travel, the decision was not enforced in
the South. CORE decided to pressure the federal government to enforce the
Supreme Court decision by amassing a team of thirteen interracial
volunteers to travel on buses throughout the South as a challenge to de facto
segregation. However, when the Freedom Riders on two different busses
were beaten in Alabama in May 1961, CORE bowed out of the campaign.
Members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
continued it, however, eventually forcing the Kennedy administration to
take stronger measures to enforce the Supreme Court ruling.22
Backing out of the Freedom Ride movement was a failure for CORE and
certainly wasn’t the type of publicity Farmer was seeking. As one SNCC
member would comment decades later, “Your parents tell you don’t start
something that you can’t finish. Finish it!” The Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant riots offered Farmer an opportunity to jump out in front of a
civil rights issue that had gained national attention. Becoming the lead
spokesperson on police brutality, an arena where other nationally prominent
civil rights organizations had not had much to say, pushed Farmer and
CORE into the national spotlight and helped elevate Farmer as a legitimate
voice with the clout to negotiate with city officials and be interviewed on
national news programs. As for how to halt police brutality, both Farmer
and CORE took up a well-known refrain from the black community:
empower citizens through a CCRB.
Just speaking publicly on an issue was not enough to establish himself
and CORE as key players in the civil rights movement. Farmer realized that
he would have to produce results, and in order to do so he would have to
confront city officials directly. First Farmer called for meetings with the city
in an attempt to win their support for a civilian review board. If they were
not willing to support an independent board, CORE would pressure them by
carrying out street demonstrations. In late April 1964 Farmer requested and
was granted a meeting with Commissioner Murphy. It did not go well, and
to Farmer’s dismay, Murphy defended the already existing internal board.
However, Murphy did say he would consider Farmer’s request,23 but that
was certainly not enough for CORE to claim success.
Farmer told the New York Times, “There will be demonstrations
involving schools, housing, and jobs” during negotiations with the NYPD
and said it was going to be “a long hot summer.” For his part, Murphy
characterized the issue of widespread police brutality as bogus. He admitted
to the Times that there might have been some “isolated” cases, but claimed
there was no pattern to them and they were not necessarily directed at
blacks and Latinos.24
Soon after the killing of Powell, the NAACP and CORE said that they
would conduct their own investigation of the incident, and NAACP lawyer
Jawn Sandifer declared that Wagner and Murphy must realize that there
were officers who had to be weeded out of the force.25 Farmer told the press
that he had attempted to contact governor Nelson Rockefeller to urge him to
call out the National Guard to protect the people of Harlem from the police.
However, the governor was vacationing in Wyoming and was not available.
Famer accused the police of firing indiscriminately into crowds. He
denounced the brutality of the police and blamed them for being
“hysterical, and I must say that the Police Commissioner in the posture
which he had adopted in the last few months of self-congratulations for the
Police Department must assume part of the responsibility.” He told the two
hundred people attending a rally at a Harlem church on July 19 that the
Harlem riot was “New York’s night of Birmingham horror.”26
Farmer claimed that on the day rioting erupted, he had watched the police
carry out a “blood orgy” by firing into the windows of tenements and the
Therese Hotel. According to Farmer one woman who had approached the
police for help was shot in the groin and then taken to Harlem Hospital. The
Times confirmed that Barbara Barksdale, age twenty-three, was treated
there for a superficial gunshot wound in her left thigh.27

What Should Be Done

In an attempt to stop the violence, on July 20 acting mayor Paul R.
Screvane, deputy mayor Edward F. Cavanagh Jr., Manhattan borough
president Edward R. Dudley, police commissioner Michael J. Murphy, and
other city officials met with Farmer, Percy Sutton (an attorney for CORE),
the Reverend Eugene Callender of the NAACP, and a delegation of other
civil rights leaders. The latter group insisted that Officer Gilligan be
suspended from the force and arrested, and Farmer once again called for a
civilian review board. He also complained that almost all the police in
Harlem were white and demanded greater racial integration of the NYPD.28
Screvane met later that day with Richard A. Hildebrand, president of the
Manhattan branch of the NAACP, and three other civil rights leaders. In
response to their demands, Screvane announced at a press conference that
Gilligan’s case would go to a grand jury and also promised to assign more
black police officers to Harlem. Deputy Mayor Cavanagh, he said, would
review how the NYPD addressed police brutality charges.29
The acting mayor may have promised to place additional black police
officers in Harlem, but Police Commissioner Murphy made it clear that they
would not be there on a permanent basis. Murphy confessed to the Times
that he did not know what percentage of the police force was black and
explained that although he had withdrawn some of the white police officers
who were sent to Harlem to quell the violence, that did not signal a policy
change. The department would remain “colorblind in its hiring.”30
In the same Times piece, Farmer criticized Deputy Mayor Cavanagh’s
promised review process as “insufficient to insure fair play for the minority
community” and stressed the desirability of a truly independent civilian
review board and “intensive recruiting of Negro police.” For his part, the
NAACP’s Hildebrand called for the creation of a committee formed outside
of city governmental officials to investigate the Powell shooting.31 Two days
later, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., noting to the Times that he was speaking as
the only elected official of Harlem, said the violence would continue unless
six demands were met: the creation of a civilian review board, assigning
three black captains to Harlem, suspending Gilligan, expanding the
jurisdiction of the grand juries investigating gambling and corruption to
include police misuse of their authority, ending the assignment of rookie
police to “sensitive areas in Harlem,” and ceasing the use of live
ammunition to stop violence in Harlem. Powell, not one to mince words,
said of the police, “What has happened in Harlem is without precedent in
the history of any police department in any city, including the Deep South.
New York City ought to hang its head in shame.”32
Dr. Arthur C. Logan, chairman of the board of Harlem Youth
Opportunities Unlimited, issued a press release blaming the conflict in
Harlem on a “long-standing feeling of powerlessness and its resultant
frustrations, coupled with the inadequate training and unreasonable
behavior of the Police Department, evidenced by the numerous,
documented accounts of unprovoked assaults upon peaceful citizens,
including personnel employed by this agency.” Logan’s agency, created in
1962 by Kenneth Clark, a professor of psychology at City College,
recommended Gilligan’s “immediate suspension” and the “creation of an
independent civilian complaint review board which shall meet as a body
and personally hear cases. This board shall be appointed by the Mayor and
report only to him.” Logan also called for the “immediate promotion of a
Negro Police Captain to the rank of Inspector, to be assigned as
Commanding Officer of the Division covering Central Harlem,” stationing
additional black officers in the community, discontinuing the placement of
rookie police officers in Harlem, and creating an “effective community
relations division in the Police Department.”33
Civil rights activists fighting for a civilian review board found an ally in
the New York Civil Liberties Union, which circulated a statement in late
July predicting that further riots would erupt unless the issue of police
brutality was addressed. The organization argued that a civilian complaint
review board would improve relations between the police and community
and thereby reduce the risk of future riots. It attacked the existing review
board and the NYPD for not making public the nature and number of
complaints received.34 Two years after the Harlem riots, the NYCLU’s
parent organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, published Police
Power and Citizens’ Rights: The Case for an Independent Police Review
Board. In by-then urgent tones it warned that “time is running out. Impartial
review is required now to help lance the festering infection in police–citizen
relations, and to assist in halting violations of civil liberties at the hands of a
defensive and beleaguered law enforcement system.”35
Soon after his return from Geneva, Mayor Wagner spoke to city and
Harlem leaders and, along with Police Commissioner Murphy, toured the
areas hit by the riot. In a July 21 statement, he said he saw the “boarded up
windows. I saw the crowds, the itinerant gangs, the residents clustered on
the stoops, and looking fearfully out their windows.” He said that he was
convinced that the “overwhelming majority of those who live in the Harlem
community neither participated in, nor appreciated the violence or
disorder.” In what was essentially an appeal for law and order, the mayor
said it was the obligation of local government to maintain law and order and
he had a mandate to do so.36
He was trying to persuade the residents of Harlem not to go back out in
the streets to take part in violent confrontations, for the reason that
maintaining law and order was in the best interests of black Americans:
“The Supreme Court decision of 1954 is law and order. What would civil
rights be without that decision—without that law and order?” The just-
passed Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the antidiscrimination laws passed
during his mayoralty were other examples of how law and order helped
black people, and without it “civil rights would be set back fifty years.”
Wagner argued that the “opposite of law and order is mob rule, and that is
the way of the Ku Klux Klan and the night riders and the lynch mob.”37
But if reasoning with African Americans proved not enough to keep them
off the streets, Wagner also warned of dire consequences, declaring that
“illegal acts—including defiance of, or attacks upon the police whose
mission it is, to enforce law and order, will not be condoned or tolerated by
me, at any time.” Attacks against people, “property or police by
individuals” and “groups of hoodlums, rowdies and troublemakers, bent on
destruction, theft, and rioting, will be brought to a halt and the guilty will be
punished to the full extent of the law.” Attempting to balance a tough law
and order stance by also embracing a liberal formula for solving crime,
Wagner’s statement tried to reassure the residents of Harlem, Bedford-
Stuyvesant, South Jamaica, East Harlem, and other areas of high
unemployment and slum housing that he would do his best to relieve those
problems. Adding that he was aware of white citizens’ prejudice and of the
dangerous thinking that leads to the “perilous concept of inevitable conflict
between black and white,” he stressed that the city must do its best to
“reduce inequality, and to remove all conditions and practices which are a
source of resentment and recrimination among these fellow citizens of
ours.”38
Moving on to the issue of police brutality, the mayor again tried to strike
a balanced tone, stressing that Commissioner Murphy had his “complete
confidence,” yet saying also that the “ultimate authority and responsibility
for the police force rests in civilian hands, the mayor himself.” Wagner
would not admit to police brutality, but he did acknowledge that even
though the NYPD had the best training rules and regulations in the world, at
times, due to stress and danger, some officers “act as the individuals they
are” and commit acts that were not part of the department’s training. He
insisted that disciplinary action had to be taken when the evidence of such
violations was clear. However, that action would not come from outside the
department: “There is, within the Police Department, a Civilian Review
Board.” He also noted Deputy Mayor Cavanagh’s assignment to review
existing procedures to see if changes were needed. Although Wagner’s
administration was reviewing civilian boards in other cities, he gave no sign
that New York’s police-controlled board might be anything other than
permanent.39
Noting the measures Screvane had taken to improve relations between
the police and minority communities by stationing more black cops in
Harlem, Wagner ordered Murphy to move ahead with programs aimed at
recruiting black police officers and providing NYPD training for a greater
number of qualified young people from minority groups. He wanted New
Yorkers to know both that district attorney Frank Hogan had given Gillian’s
case to a grand jury and that “perpetrators of violence against” people or
“property of the innocent, or of the police” would be apprehended and
turned “over to the courts of justice.” He said he would also exercise his
right to review and consider cases of police brutality and review the present
measures within the NYPD. He promised to spend time in minority
communities to talk to residents and meet with representatives from various
groups concerning community problems. He would also encourage heads of
city departments to do likewise. Wagner said he had directed Screvane and
the Poverty Operations Board and Poverty Council to expedite their efforts
to provide unemployed youths with work in anti-poverty programs,
“constructive counseling,” and job training. Striking a Cold War theme, he
warned that the entire nation and the world were watching events in New
York City: “We carry the deepest responsibility these hours and days of
trouble.”40

A Divided Leadership
The one issue that Mayor Wagner did not address in his July 21 statement
was the matter of a civilian complaint review board. His avoidance of the
topic did not endear him to local black leaders, nor did his decision in late
July to invite Martin Luther King Jr. to New York to discuss the riots—
indeed, it aroused considerable anger. Commenting on the riots in New
York City and Rochester at a press conference in Atlanta on July 27, King
had said that African Americans should receive justice in their communities
and that justice included an end to ghetto housing, “discriminatory barriers
to jobs, inferior and segregated schools and discriminatorily barriers to the
right to vote.” The ability of civil rights leaders to keep the movement
nonviolent depended on the progress blacks could make in jobs, housing,
and schools, he said, noting a New York Times article showing that 62
percent of blacks in that city felt that nonviolent means were a better way to
achieve equality than was violence. Regarding the role of black leaders,
King said, “We must condemn the violence and lawlessness of the Negro
Community,” but also must blame the white power structure “to give us
some victories.” Leaders had to be as concerned about the environmental
causes of the riots as “we are in condemning the violence.” He called for
massive spending to end the social isolation and economic deprivation of
blacks, for such action would do much to “cast a radiant light into the dark
chambers of despair.” He called on white and black citizens to continue to
struggle to end racial oppression and not to allow this “noble cause” to face
a setback and be “defeated by provocation both within and without our
movement.”41
In an attempt to confront accusations that he was meddling in the affairs
of a city where a number of civil rights leaders and groups were based,
King said that he was going to New York because Mayor Wagner had
invited him there to discuss the riots, but he was also going to meet with
leaders in Harlem and Brooklyn for conversations about the violence. He
also told reporters at the Atlanta press conference that he was willing to go
to New York on a “peace mission” because the violence was damaging to
the movement. Thus, his message to Wagner and to civil rights leaders
critical of his visit was that the riots were not just a local affair—because
they could jeopardize the entire civil rights movement, it was his duty to try
to help end the violence.42
Wagner had surmised that King’s visit to New York would calm the
situation there; instead, it set off a storm of criticism. Livingston L. Wingate
of the Unity Council of Harlem Organizations held a press conference on
July 27, the day King arrived in New York City, denouncing his visit and
saying that Harlem leaders were “mad as hell at Mayor Wagner for
importing Dr. King from Atlanta to discuss problems in Harlem.”43 Adam
Clayton Powell Jr. accused King of letting himself be used by Wagner. In a
sermon at Abyssinian Baptist Church, Powell said the mayor and King, who
had already held their first meeting to discuss the unrest, should have asked
him to join them and that “no leader outside of Harlem should come into
this town and tell us what to do.” Hurling insults at both King and Wagner,
Powell declared that he had been organizing demonstrations when Martin
Luther King was “still in diapers” and warned that his exclusion from the
talks could have dire consequences and that the blame for any future rioting
in the city should be place in the “lap of Bobby Wagner.” Even a close
supporter of King echoed Powell’s claim that King was being manipulated.
Kenneth Clark, professor of psychology at City College—who, along with
his wife, Mamie Clark, conducted the doll test that was used as evidence of
the negative impact of segregation in Brown v. Board of Education—
warned King not to let Wagner use him.44
L. Joseph Overton of the Harlem Labor Council also expressed his
resentment that King was discussing Harlem’s problems with Wagner
before he reached out to Harlem’s leaders. The Reverend Alvin A. Childs,
bishop of the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ—the fastest growing
Pentecostal church in New York City, with three thousand members—
acknowledged that he was upset that King did not bother to consult him: “I
cannot envision Dr. King being able to speak on a local level for all Negro
people everywhere. I feel the Mayor should have consulted myself and
other community leaders if he was really interested in resolving the tense
situation in the City.”45
For his part, King told the press that he had called for a civilian review
board and the suspension of Officer Gilligan.46 He said that when he met
with Wagner he had made it clear that City officials must talk to Harlem
leaders and that he had not come to New York to subvert local black
leaders.47 This did not stop the criticism of King’s presence in the city. Some
of the harshest criticism came from Aminda Badeau Wilkins, the wife of
NAACP leader Roy Wilkins. She telephoned Julius C. C. Edelstein,
Wagner’s executive assistant, to share with him the sentiments of her
husband’s “friends” regarding how black people felt about the mayor’s
conference with King. She claimed that her husband had received at least
twenty calls accusing Wagner of showing contempt for the city’s black
population. One caller, identified as a “property owner,” had asked if
Wagner had used taxpayers’ money to fly King from Atlanta to New York.
Aminda Wilkins said it was a “well known fact that he charges [a] fee for
appearances and consultations” and that if that was the case, she was “going
to protest on this basis.” The most critical reaction, she told Edelstein, had
come from those asking her to sign a letter to President Johnson objecting
to Wagner’s role in bringing King to New York: “This is a letter signed by
fifty prominent people which will be sent to President Johnson.”48
Aminda Wilkins’s criticism was not aimed just at King but also at other
national civil rights leaders who became involved in New York City affairs.
She complained about Bayard Rustin, a close adviser to King, having been
asked to play a role: “Although Rustin is a smart man, good organizer, he
has [a] terrible reputation—former communist, known homosexual, etc.—
doesn’t make any Negro feel good to have this kind of man speaking for
Negroes.” She claimed that the NAACP was the only civil rights
organization that had a “real constituency” in the city, with “thirteen bona
fide chapters,” whereas King had no organizational presence. And while
CORE did have a presence in the city, “Farmer has an organization of
‘kooks.’” She went on to say that callers to the NAACP “have resented very
much the fact that the mayor did not call Whitney Young, Mr. Wilkins, and
other responsible Negro leaders here in the City before taking the drastic
step of calling King.”49
To add to the division within the civil rights community, Jesse Gray,
leader of the Community Council for Housing, which in 1963 had
conducted a rent strike by tenants in a fifteen-block section of Harlem
protesting slum conditions, and William Epton, head of the Harlem Defense
Council, affiliated with the Maoist Progressive Labor Movement (PL),
planned to conduct a march in Harlem on July 25 denouncing police
brutality. Although Commissioner Murphy had banned demonstrations in
Harlem, Gray and Epton said they would defy his order. This increased
Wilkins and Rustin’s fears that violent confrontation might ensue, and they
sent a letter to Wagner asking him to rescind Murphy’s ban; some also tried
to convince Gray and Epton to call off their demonstration.50 Wilkins,
showing his concern about what a violent confrontation would produce, told
the heads of other civil rights organizations in a telegram, “The promise of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 could well be diminished or nullified and a
decade of increasingly violent and futile disorder ushered in if we do not
play our hand coolly and intelligently.” However, Epton insisted that the
march would go on.51
To stop the march, the City Corporation Counsel got a temporary court
injunction naming Epton, Jesse Gray, and PL head Milton Rosen. On July
25 Epton launched the march from the headquarters of the Harlem Defense
Council on Sixteenth Street and Lenox Avenue, which was also the
headquarters of PL. At 4:20 p.m. the thirty-two-year-old Epton linked arms
with the fifty-five-year-old civil rights attorney Conrad Lynn and began to
urge supporters to join them. But police soon moved in, arresting both
Epton and Lynn.52 In response to Epton and others insisting that the
demonstrations had to be continued, Wilkins called together leaders of top
civil rights organizations on July 29 for a meeting that resulted in a call for
a moratorium on demonstrations.
The admonitions of King, together with Gray and Epton’s determination
to go ahead with their July 25 march despite the pleas of Wilkins and
others, brought to the surface what some saw as a disconnect between the
leaders of nationally established civil rights organizations and ordinary
people. Attorney Clarence Jones, for example, told the Times in late July
that in his opinion, established civil rights leaders did not speak for the
poor. Jones was part of a group of artists and intellectuals that had come
together to discuss the meaning of the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant
riots, including writer John Oliver Killens, actor Ossie Davis, actress Ruby
Dee, painter Mel Williamson, and Martin Luther King Jr. They all agreed
that the riots were symptomatic of the larger problems poor blacks faced.
Jones told the press that Harlem’s young people had witnessed too much
police corruption to have any respect for the law and that Farmer, King,
Rustin, and other prominent leaders could not go into New York’s streets
and expect those who were rioting to listen to them. White authorities were
wrong in thinking that established black leaders spoke for poor black
people, Jones insisted, for they had no contact with the poor. The “white
power structure itself,” he went on, “diminished the influence of the Negro
leaders by refusing to make the necessary concessions” they had
requested.53

A Protest Moratorium?
The Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots not only revealed a divide
between King and New York City civil rights leaders over who had the right
to speak for black New Yorkers, but also brought to light the deep
ideological fissures within the national movement regarding the question of
whether civil rights organizations should continue protest demonstrations or
call for a moratorium on them. The question had taken on a great deal of
importance because the nation was in the midst of an election campaign in
which Lyndon B. Johnson was seeking to retain the office that he, as vice
president, had assumed when president John F. Kennedy was assassinated
the previous year. Johnson’s strong support of Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act
and his own efforts to eradicate poverty and racism had won him the
support of civil rights groups. In his January 8, 1964, State of the Union
speech, Johnson called on Congress to “do more for civil rights than the last
hundred sessions combined” and announced that “this administration today
here and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”54
Johnson’s Republican opponent, senator Barry Goldwater, was seen as
civil rights’ nemesis. He publicly opposed and voted against the Civil
Rights Act, arguing that the federal government had no right to dictate to
states that they must integrate schools. He called a public accommodations
bill unconstitutional because it tampered with the “right of assembly, the
freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, and the freedom of property.”
Civil rights leaders spoke vehemently against Goldwater. King called his
position on civil rights “politically and socially suicide, and while the
Republican candidate was not a racist, he articulated a philosophy that gave
aid to racists.”55 Responding to a May 12, 1964, campaign speech by
Goldwater at Madison Square Garden, in which he said that the problem of
integration was one of the heart, Roy Wilkins sent the senator a letter
arguing that leaving civil rights to the states would grant immunity for the
“use of cattle prods and shotguns by Alabama state troopers, the armored
tank and dogs and fire hoses of Birmingham police, the Bomb murderers of
little children in church in Alabama, and the assassins in Mississippi.”56
One faction of the civil rights community argued strongly that the riots
around the country only increased Goldwater’s chances of victory, because
the violence would lead to a white backlash that could harm Johnson’s
chances.57 Urging civil rights leaders not to do anything to assist the
Goldwater campaign, Wilkins called for a meeting of the top civil rights
groups to discuss how to keep the riots in Harlem and Brooklyn from
damaging the civil rights movement.58 On July 29 he, Bayard Rustin,
national director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Jack Greenberg, head
of the National Urban League Whitney Young, James Farmer, Martin
Luther King Jr., head of the Negro American Labor Council A. Philip
Randolph, SNCC chairman John Lewis, and Courtney Cox, also of SNCC,
met at the NAACP headquarters in Manhattan to see if they could decide on
a uniform response to the riots. Some at the meeting wanted a “broad
curtailment if not total moratorium” on demonstrations. Wilkins, King,
Young, and Randolph signed a statement warning that the riots posed a
“serious threat to the implementation of the Civil Rights Act.” Reflecting
their concern about Goldwater, they recommended a “voluntary temporary
alteration in strategy and procedure.” Simply put, they wanted a halt to
demonstrations until after the November elections. Wilkins, King, Young,
and Randolph said Goldwater’s position on civil rights was “clear enough
language for any Negro American,” but Farmer’s and Lewis’s signatures
were not on the group’s final statement calling for a moratorium on
demonstrations. Wilkins explained the absence by saying that the two men
first had to clear it with their organizations, but this was not exactly a
forthright explanation of the missing signatures.59
Farmer did not sign because he had already left the meeting when
Wilkins presented the statement. And although John Lewis was present, he
said he did not speak out against the statement in order to maintain unity
but later told the Associated Press he thought demonstrations must continue
in order to put pressure on those in power. During the meeting, he said,
there had been no discussion about continued demonstrations. Instead, he
thought emphasis should have been placed on voter registration. A
spokesperson for Farmer later said that as far as CORE was concerned there
was no moratorium, but the issue would be put on the agenda of CORE’s
National Action Council on August 8. Lincoln Lynch, head of the CORE
Long Island branch, said he did not see giving up the one tool civil rights
groups possessed. Herbert Callender, chair of the Bronx branch of CORE,
vowed that as long as there was injustice, they would demonstrate.60
The split between CORE and SNCC on the one side and SCLC, the
NAACP, the Urban League, and Randolph’s Negro American Labor
Council on the other was in part ideological, but it was also a matter of
timing. Wilkins and the NAACP and Whitney Young’s Urban League were,
for the most part, opposed to using demonstrations as a means of achieving
civil rights and preferred the tools of legislation and lobbying. Young was a
powerbroker who had strong contacts with influential people in government
and in the corporate world. He believed that the way to win concessions
from those in power was by cultivating trust and friendship and not through
demonstrations. In a 1964 interview he characterized the Urban League as
the “professional arm” of the movement, made up of people who tried to
implement policy with the “highest echelons of the corporate community,
. . . the highest echelons of the governmental community,” and at the “local,
state and federal level.” Thus Wilkins and Young’s support of a moratorium
was not surprising.61
More to the left, CORE and SNCC militants contended that lobbying and
cultivating strong relationships with those in power were not enough to end
racial inequality. Nonviolent resistance was a central element of both CORE
and SNCC’s philosophy, and the groups’ grassroots activists and
organizations contended that organized demonstrations using such tactics
were necessary to force those in powers to act and make concessions.
Hence, many in both these organizations believed that any suspension of
mass protest would weaken the movement’s position.
King, Randolph, and Rustin were for the moratorium. Although they had
a long history of supporting nonviolent resistance, Randolph and Rustin felt
that at this special moment, when the national government was supportive
of taking action against racial discrimination and economic inequality, a
moratorium was the right thing. It was Randolph who had convinced John
Lewis and the young SNCC activists to drop Lewis’s plan to criticize the
Kennedy administration in his speech at the March on Washington because
it could jeopardize the unity of the event. More important, any criticism of
the administration could also jeopardize support for a civil rights bill.
Randolph saw Johnson as a strong ally on the issue (Johnson had even
reached out to him the previous November to ask for his support) and did
not want to take any steps to jeopardize his goodwill.62
At the July 29 meeting, Rustin gave his reasons for supporting the
moratorium. “Leadership often has to do what is right, whether or not
people like it,” he said. He called the action “politically sound” and said the
civil rights “leaders have taken a very courageous stand.” He announced
that he would travel around the country to convince people of the
“soundness of the position.”63 A year later Rustin would call for an end to
street protest and ask African Americans to embrace more serious political
and economic agendas. Blacks had ended legal discrimination, now they
needed to address economic disparity and social isolation. Coalition
politics, he felt, would win programs to improve the economic plight of
working-class Americans. Indeed, since the Democratic Party supported
ending poverty and racism, it made sense for black Americans to embrace
the party along with labor.64
King’s position is harder to decipher. He was a strong believer in
nonviolent protest and had discussed its power on several occasions. For
instance, in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” he made a moral case
for nonviolent resistance: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a
crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that consistently
refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize
the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” King argued that action was
necessary in order to gain freedom: “We know through painful experience
that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be
demanded by the oppressed.”65
King most likely agreed to the call for a moratorium because he did not
want strife within the movement, especially among its leading figures.
Despite King’s willingness to challenge white segregationists, he was less
willing to challenge Roy Wilkins, who had criticized King’s campaigns in
conversations with other civil rights leaders. In addition, King had already
concluded that a Goldwater presidency would be a danger to the movement
and called the Republican Party’s nomination of him “unfortunate and
disastrous.”66
Of the two national civil rights organizations that opposed a moratorium
on demonstrations, CORE had the larger presence in New York City, where
its national headquarters and over a dozen chapters were located: Brooklyn,
the Bronx, and Staten Island each had a chapter, two were in Queens, and
four in Manhattan, including Harlem, Downtown, and East River. In
addition, New York University, Columbia University, and Queens College
each had chapters, and neighboring Long Island had one of the most active.
By 1963 most of the chapters had conducted significant protests in the city.
The Bronx chapter had led protests against the White Castle fast-food
restaurants demanding that 25 percent of the jobs go to blacks and Puerto
Ricans. At Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn CORE conducted one of
the largest civil rights campaigns in New York during the 1960s. The
chapter teamed up with pastors of the borough’s largest churches to demand
that a quarter of the jobs at the center’s construction site be provided to
blacks and Puerto Ricans, and over seven hundred people were arrested for
protesting at the site. It was no surprise that the national CORE organization
announced it would ignore the moratorium and continue direct action.67
Roy Wilkins made his case for a moratorium in his New York Times piece
titled “What Now!” He agreed with the more militant wing of the
movement on the systemic causes of the riots—the relegation of black
children to segregated schools, high unemployment and underemployment
rates among blacks, housing discrimination that forced many into slums,
and other social evils. Aiming his message at more militant factions, he
insisted, however, that any program to eradicate inequality must also win
the support of white America, and that rioting and the destruction of
property would not convince it to support civil rights objectives. Riots hurt
the nation more in 1964 than if they had taken place in 1924, because the
“World Struggle” between “controlled and free societies” was at a crucial
phase.68 Thus, the riots had a detrimental impact in the competition between
the United States and the Soviet Union for the loyalty of emerging nations
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Rioting would lead to repression.
Although he was not supportive of nonviolent protest, Wilkins gave
credit to King for leading the 1955–56 Montgomery Bus Boycott but would
not credit it with ending segregation on the transit system. He was willing
to acknowledge, however, that the protest was not violent and had raised the
national consciousness. He was not so kind when referencing the Brooklyn
chapter of CORE’s New York World’s Fair “stall-in.” In April, when the
fair opened, members and supporters of Brooklyn CORE attempted to stop
motorists going to the event by stalling their cars and creating traffic jams.
Proponents of the “stall-in” hoped their action would pressure Governor
Rockefeller and Mayor Wagner to pay attention to the horrible conditions in
black and Latino slums.69 Although this protest was nonviolent, it was
aimed at people who did not have any power to end poor housing or
employment discrimination in the building trades and had just led to
resentment by ordinary citizens of the “shotgun technique.”70
Black people in the North, Wilkins pointed out, had a weapon for gaining
civil rights that southern black people lacked: the franchise. “Violence,
however, had to be ruled out” as a viable option. “It seems clear that the
outbreaks in New York State and New Jersey have hurt the Negro’s cause
and that more of the same will injure it still further.” He also visited the
topic of how rioting could lead to the election of Goldwater, a man so far to
the right that he was “supported by the John Birch Society and endorsed by
the Georgia Ku Klux Klan” and who so exploited the fears of white voters
that “racial violence will be rampant.” Thus “nothing could be more
important at the moment in the Negro civil rights struggle than refraining
from any action that aids Goldwaterism. The response to the moratorium
plea will be the measure of the maturity of the Negro Community.”71
CORE made good on Farmer’s promise to continue demonstrations, the
first of which would be in August at the Democratic National Convention in
Atlantic City in support of seating delegates from the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party. Farmer announced that CORE “will throw the full weight
of our organization into demonstrations if the delegation is not seated” and
that SNCC would join CORE at the convention. Farmer was unconvinced
by the argument that demonstrations would lead to resentment among white
citizens and insisted that “white backlashers” were going to vote for
Goldwater anyway.72
Farmer maintained two years later in his book Freedom When? that
organized demonstrations were a positive course of action because there
was little violence when they were carried out; rather, it was when there
was a lack of organization that violence erupts. Nonviolent protest was a
CORE stock in trade, and Farmer insisted that a demonstration was not a
riot; instead, demonstrations tended to help by providing an alternative to
violence. To support this claim, Farmer compared the 1963 demonstrations
CORE conducted at construction sites throughout New York City, where
there were no cases of people “throwing bottles and bricks,” to the situation
in 1964 when CORE did not conduct organized protests and there was
violence.
In the telling, Farmer omitted the fact that the July 18 riot in Harlem had
followed a demonstration organized by CORE chapters. Farmer pointed to
the police when arguing about responsibility for the Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant riots. Lieutenant Gilligan’s shooting of Powell, a “slight, fifteen-
year-old Negro,” near a school housing hundreds of students was a formula
for disaster, Farmer wrote. The students were “furious, many of them
literally choking with rage at such wanton injustice.” CORE intervened to
organize “hundreds of Powell’s schoolmates” to march two days later to the
police precinct to demand Gilligan’s suspension and a “civilian
investigation.” “That demonstration, all agree, was a model of peaceful
protest” and a key factor in “sublimating the anger of the youngsters.”73
While Farmer took credit for the students’ nonviolence on their march
and near their school, it was a different story in Harlem. “If legitimate mass
demonstrations” had been allowed by the NYPD, and “if the police had not
acted so unwisely—the Harlem riots could have been averted,” Farmer
wrote, accusing the police of arresting CORE leaders on July 18 even as
members of the force were putting up a barricade near the precinct. He
accused an Inspector Pendergast of making the fateful decision to crack
down on the protests and allegedly saying “I’ve had enough of this. Get
them niggers”—words, Farmer wrote, that were “suicidal” in Harlem. The
demonstrators “went crazy and began throwing the bottles and bricks.”
Officers came out of the station and began pushing the crowd back; the
Tactical Patrol (which Farmer labeled the “shock troops”) appeared and
charged into the crowd. “The police could not have acted more foolishly
that evening had they tried,” Farmer wrote; they were “thirsting for action.”
But the police were not the only ones at fault. Farmer wrote that he had
consistently asked Mayor Wagner for a civilian complaint review board,
and had such existed, there would not have been rioting. Instead, people
would have been waiting for the board to act. In addition, had there been a
jobs program for youths, they would have been at work instead of taking to
the streets.74
Farmer’s positions aligned him with the militant wing of the civil rights
movement, and even twenty years after the riots he had not changed his
view on who bore responsibility. In his 1985 autobiography he called the
Powell shooting a “classic case of police brutality” and said he doubted that
the teen had charged at Gilligan with a knife. Black police officers, he
claimed, had told him that the police often carried knives in order to plant
them on suspects. Indeed, CORE’s investigation at the time of the incident
had called it an “unnecessary killing,” and Farmer acknowledged at a press
conference shortly after the shooting that he had said the “policeman should
be tried for murder.”75
Notwithstanding his consistent support of nonviolence as the means of
achieving racial equality, Farmer paid a heavy price in the press for his
position on the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots. Woody Klein of the
New York World-Telegram and Sun accused him of inflaming racial tension
in Harlem with his alarming remarks, pointing to Farmer’s claim that he
had personally seen a woman “shot in the groin” by a police officer when
she had asked for assistance. He later admitted that he had not seen the
incident. When Klein questioned Farmer about his having called the police
“our enemies” at a rally in a church, Farmer responded that the people in
the church were in no mood for a speech on nonviolence and he had been
booed and jeered when he was introduced. He wanted to let them know he
was on their side.76
Not only the press and Roy and Aminda Wilkins but also some who
identified themselves as supporters of CORE singled Farmer out for
criticism. A number of people sent Farmer letters claiming that they
admired Farmer’s balanced leadership but also expressing disappointment
with his role in the Harlem riot. One Fred Howard wrote on July 23 that he
was sympathetic “with the controlled militancy of your movement” and had
supported CORE’s earlier boycotts and demonstrations. He considered
Farmer a national leader for whites as well as blacks and identified himself
as a white man who had “been kicked around more than you” and “suffered
more brutality than you.” He urged Famer to “temper your remarks” and
begged him not to “inflame and not to fight demagoguery with emotional
outbursts” and not to accept as fact unsubstantiated rumors. He also asked
Farmer not to condemn an entire police department. Inflamed emotion,
Howard wrote, was a form of “violence,” and while he did not deny
incidents of police brutality, should the actions of one officer or for that
matter the actions of looters condemn all police or an entire community?
“Mr. Farmer, your cause is just. White backlash thrives on irrational and
irresponsible action, and leadership. If we both take issue with Barry
Goldwater’s statement of extremism, I respectfully suggest and urge that we
all conduct ourselves accordingly and that you, as a leader, protect only the
best of us.”77 Another correspondent, Ronald Freund, wrote on July 21 that
he thought Farmer had been “one of the few who has demonstrated both the
ability and responsibility for leadership in the civil rights area,” but his
actions over the last few days had caused him to “question either your
responsibility or your judgment.” He claimed that “irresponsible
demonstrations and riots” and Farmer’s actions have served only to incite
rather than to discourage this “unfortunate behavior,” and urged Farmer to
“exert the kind of rational leadership of which you are capable and not
allow yourself to be led by the unreasoned emotionalism of mob
psychology.”78 Blaine Lotz, who claimed to be a supporter of CORE, wrote
that he would no longer contribute financially to the organization because
“whatever good it might have served in registering new Democratic voters
in Mississippi has been lost by your riots,” which would only create more
votes for Goldwater.79
A majority of the letters Farmer received in response to his statements on
the riots expressed similar anger. Milton Ellenbogen, writing the day after
the July 18 riot, agreed that CORE had the right to hold a rally but argued
that the problem was timing. “But the actions of CORE in holding that rally
this past Saturday evening” in a “mob of impassioned people whose
emotions have clouded their rational thinking and good common sense,
represents to me a failure of your organization in seeking justice in a
civilized society.” Using the courts or peaceful demonstrations were
appropriate actions, Ellenbogen wrote, “but not violence or speeches that
incite violence.” He accused Farmer of adopting the philosophy that the
“ends justify the means.” His only “consolation” was that the “Negro
people still have a very splendid organization championing their cause—the
NAACP.”80 Perry S. Samuels was even more critical of Farmer’s role. He
declared that the most tragic aspect of the Harlem riot was the “attitude of
James Farmer” whose remarks were “contradictory and inflammatory.” His
example of the latter was Farmer’s statement about the woman who was
“shot in the groin”: “If ever there was a time when calm, objective
leadership is needed, this is it.”81 One letter writer went so far as to blame
Farmer for the disturbances: “Your attitude only encourages those that are
hoodlums to keep it up with all your answers to everything.”82
While some of the letters to CORE targeted Farmer, others leveled
criticism at various black people involved in the civil rights struggle. Justin
G. Ferguson, who expressed sympathy for the “plight of the Negro,”
nevertheless was “appalled by the actions of new leaders (especially
CORE).” He accused black leaders of supporting retaliatory action against
the New York police in the forms of demonstrations and group marches
because of alleged “police brutality.” Ferguson wrote that he was “opposed
wholeheartedly to mob demonstrations” because “by virtue of their being
retaliatory [they] inevitably lead to violence.” Scolding black leaders,
Ferguson claimed that “any consequences which may arise out of mass
demonstrations of this sort are your sole responsibility” and asked how they
could expect whites to embrace their cause when they were responsible for
mob violence in Harlem. The events in Harlem showed that CORE had a
“disregard for basic democratic principles.” The writer denied that he was a
“so-called Southern bigot. I have lived in Massachusetts for 22 of my 23
years.”83
Many of those who criticized the actions of Farmer and other civil rights
leaders and activists seemed unable to see police brutality as an issue or to
link it with the civil rights struggle. Many letters to Farmer defended the
police and blamed black people for the violence. Herbert B. Geist, for
example, blamed Farmer “for setting the civil rights movement back ten
years.” He wrote in disgust that after witnessing the “rabble rousing
performance of you and the other negro demagogues during the recent New
York riots, I find that the principle [sic] difference between you and your
kind and Governor Wallace is color and direction.” Calling the New York
riots “mass violence” and “unbridled savagery” he asked Farmer how he
could equate the killing of Powell with the civil rights struggle, and added
that he was going to disassociate himself from the those “who brought
shame in the Negro leadership.”84 Louis Schata characterized Powell as a
“punk” Farmer had elevated to martyrdom: “Does Negro leadership have
any good tactical reason to refuse to admit Negro shortcomings and
continue to sweep these glittering deficiencies under the rug?”85 Joanne
Ferrera called the recent actions of CORE “absolutely disgusting and your
demand for a murder charge against Lt. Gilligan is ridiculous.” Courageous
police officers like Gilligan, she claimed, were needed and “only an idiot
would condemn a man for enforcing the law, much less for saving his own
life.”86 Anne C. Jordan congratulated Farmer for selling his “people down
the river faster, better and more permanently than any group of
segregationists” or “white racists could do in several years.” He had proven
“what the White Southerners have been stating: Give the black man a finger
and he’ll take both hands . . . Boy you are clever.” She demanded that
Farmer stop blaming the New York City police for the mistakes of black
people and justifying the actions of an “emotionally crazed people” by
crying police brutality.87
These and many other such attacks on Farmer and other civil rights
leaders reflected the growing discontent in both the nation and New York
City with the civil rights campaigns.88
 Conclusion
Although the major national civil rights organizations and their leaders
turned their attention to the issue of police brutality in New York City
during and after the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots, they came up
short when it came to making any gains. The lack of any meaningful
changes following the riots demonstrated how extremely difficult an issue
police brutality was to solve and how much more work it would take to
effect change.
One major impediment to solving police brutality issues was the
intransience of mayor Robert Wagner. He refused to adopt any serious
proposal that would make him seem as if he were an adversary of the
police. Despite his liberal reputation and his advocacy of civil rights,
Wagner had built a strong alliance with municipal labor unions, including
the police, and was unwilling to risk jeopardizing it. In addition, his
political instinct informed him that challenging institutions such as the
police would not be a popular move.
A September 1964 New York Times survey showed that most white New
Yorkers felt the struggle for civil rights for American blacks “had gone too
far.” While denying that they were prejudiced, a large percentage of white
New Yorkers claimed that blacks got “everything on a silver platter” and
that whites faced “reverse discrimination.” Over a quarter of those surveyed
said they had become opposed to the objectives of black people. Even
though 68 percent of whites surveyed said that they would vote for Johnson,
54 percent said that the civil rights movement was moving too quickly. An
impressive 93 percent contended that the summer riots had hurt blacks,
while 55 percent said that Commissioner Murphy had handled the violence
in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant well.89
The New York Times survey revealed that while civil rights leaders
argued that police brutality was a civil rights concern, they had a hard time
convincing white Americans that this was the case. The issues of crime,
race, and policing have never been easy to untangle. Many white New
Yorkers, as the Times survey noted, were not persuaded that blacks were
victims of police abuse, or if police officers used excessive force, they
believed it was in response to violent resistance by blacks who were
breaking the law. In a letter to CORE, Thomas Hudson McKee epitomized
this view. Describing himself as an opponent of “the institution of racial
segregation” who had sent a check to CORE, he wrote forcefully about how
disturbed he was by “Farmer’s attacks on New York City police officers and
the CORE leader’s accusation that a police officer murdered Powell.”
Admitting that he was not familiar with the details of the case, he still
seriously doubted that “any policeman in New York City or even Jackson,
Mississippi, would murder any fifteen-year-old in cold blood without very
substantial provocation.” He insisted that “CORE people” should support
the police and other law enforcement officers because they were risking
their lives in stopping “Negro riots.”90
The rebellions in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant did help police
brutality become a national civil rights issue, but efforts to make the city
and the NYPD take steps to end the killing and beating of black New
Yorkers continued to face resistance throughout Mayor Wagner’s
administration. The mayor and the NYPD ignored proposals for change, but
some elected officials, sensing that the atmosphere continued to be
explosive, came forward with their own approaches to ending police
brutality.
 6

John Lindsay, Racial Politics, and the Civilian

Complaint Review Board
The failure of Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, and
other prominent civil rights leaders to get the Wagner administration to take
serious action to stop police brutality revealed how very difficult it was to
even begin to influence policy on the issue. After the 1964 riots, local civil
rights and grassroots organizations, civil liberties groups, and some New
York political figures continued battling to curtail police power and calling
for an independent civilian complaint review board. However, Mayor
Wagner would not agree to such a board or take any steps that would end
the practice of the police investigating the police. Wagner had a year and a
half more in office after the riots, and it seemed that the hope for an
independent review board was doomed: the City Council decided to table a
motion made by council member Theodore Weiss in April 1964 to establish
an all-civilian nine-person review board to be appointed by the mayor;
Wagner and Police Commissioner Murphy vigorously opposed an
independent board; and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association waged a
vigorous campaign against it. Even though Murphy resigned in 1965,
Wagner’s opposition remained unchanged.1 Then, in January 1966, John
Lindsay was sworn in as mayor.
In May 1966, just five months into his term, Mayor Lindsay created a
civilian complaint review board on which only three of the seven members
were from the NYPD. This created an opportunity to mitigate the immense
power that the police had over New Yorkers by providing citizens the
opportunity to submit complaints to a board on which the majority of
members were not NYPD employees. The new board’s power was limited;
it could recommend to the commissioner the actions it felt were appropriate
to take against police officers found guilty of violating the law or infringing
on department regulations, but it could not mandate them. However, the
board could conduct investigations and hold hearings, and in the eyes of
many New Yorkers this alteration in the balance of power had the potential
to seriously address issues of police brutality. The Patrolmen’s Benevolent
Association, members of the law enforcement community, conservative
columnist William F. Buckley, and the New York Conservative Party all
opposed the new CCRB and put as many hurdles as they could in its way,
particularly by exploiting racial fear.

John Lindsay
John V. Lindsay, a Republican member of the U.S. House of
Representatives, declared his candidacy for mayor in the spring of 1965,
and boldly announced at the annual meeting of the New York County
Lawyers Association that if elected he would create a civilian-controlled
complaint review board comprising four civilians and three police officers.
For Lindsay, the purpose of government was to serve those who needed
help. He claimed that while he was in Congress from 1959 to 1965, more
than twenty-five thousand constituents had approached his New York City
office for assistance. He had created a team of volunteers to address their
needs, but felt that big government was not fulfilling its role with respect to
its citizens. As mayor he wanted to “break down the barriers” and make the
relationship between citizen and government more “human” and more
“workable.” There must, he said, “be due process in the workings of
bureaucracy” including “law enforcement.”2
Early in his political career Lindsay was attracted to the more progressive
wing of the Republican Party. He grew up in an elite eastern Protestant
household of forward-thinking Republicans in the tradition of Theodore
Roosevelt, one attribute of which was a commitment to public service.
According to Lindsay biographer Geoffrey Kabaservice, Lindsay cultivated
these values while attending school at Buckley, St. Paul’s, and Yale
University.3 Before running for Congress, Lindsay served as an executive
assistant in the Justice Department under President Eisenhower’s attorney
general Herbert Brownell (1952–57). As the president’s main counselor on
civil rights, Brownell successfully advocated that judges nominated for
federal posts in the South be pro–civil rights and willing to carry out the
Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision.4 Lindsay became Brownell’s ally
and helped to draft the Civil Rights Act of 1957, a bill for which Brownell
pushed and which Eisenhower signed. That act created a Civil Rights
Commission to investigate, among other things, allegations that people
were being denied the right to vote due to race, color, national origin, or
religion. Among other provisions, the commission was to “study and collect
information concerning legal developments constituting a denial of equal
protection of the laws under the Constitution and appraise the laws and
policies of the Federal Government with respect to equal protection of the
laws under the Constitution.”5
After joining the House in January 1959, Lindsay remained an outspoken
champion for civil rights. In an attempt to pressure President Kennedy to
keep his promise to introduce a civil rights bill, Lindsay joined with
Republican representatives William McCulloch from Ohio and Charles
Mathias from Maryland to introduce their own civil rights bill. However,
Kennedy opposed their bill because he did not think it could pass in the
House.6
Kennedy did eventually introduce his own bill, which Lindsay supported.
However, Lindsay faced a lobbying effort against that bill by fellow
Republicans and the public, which sent voluminous mail in opposition.
Lindsay stood firm, however, and publicly criticized the misinformation
campaign being waged by anti–civil rights forces. He noted that supporters
of civil rights “climbed a very high mountain on this bill in the House,
myself included. We went through the fires holding this bill together and
getting it through intact.” In both the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts, the
Senate cut key provisions that had been adopted by the House. However,
Lindsay warned that the House would not accept a 1964 bill if the Senate
watered it down. Speaking on a radio program in May of that year, he said
that the Senate could “filibuster until the cows come home,” but if the
American people were faced with accepting a compromise bill or having no
bill at all, he would find that a difficult decision.7 His public warning
against modifying the 1964 Civil Rights Act is a good illustration of the
depth of Lindsay’s commitment to civil rights. It was also evident at the
1964 Republican National Convention, where he joined Nelson Rockefeller
and other pro–civil rights Republicans to advocate that the Platform
Committee adopt a pledge in support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. More
and more the party maverick, Lindsay publicly announced in the summer of
1964 that he would not support his party’s nominee, Barry Goldwater, for
president.8
 In his May 1965 speech to the New York County Lawyers Association,
Lindsay contended that the resignation of Police Commissioner Murphy
was an illustration of the bad relationship between citizens and the City.
This, he felt, was an “urban problem of all cities across the nation,” though
New York was the “first city” and must “show the way. Our city must deal
with the problem of crime realistically, intelligently, and energetically.” For
Lindsay, the core problem was a lack of trust: “So long as we have large
numbers of our population who believe that society cares nothing for them,
we cannot hope to be successful.” But there was also, he said, a need to
“protect all our citizens from the few who will not respect the right of
citizens to go safely about their business.” This meant that the city should
provide an adequate number of police officers to safeguard citizens as well
as their property; however, for the NYPD to successfully fight crime, it
must have “law abiding people on its side.” Thus the NYPD’s lack of such
success was due to what Lindsay called the “unfortunate breakdown in the
relationship between the police and a substantial part of the people of our
city.” He characterized the current situation by saying that too many New
Yorkers had come to see the police “as an enemy rather than a friend,” and
acknowledged that the police might have reacted antagonistically on
occasion. There was “a running war which goes on day after day with no
sign of improvement,” leading to resentment and misunderstanding, which
in turn made the police officers’ jobs much more difficult and dangerous. It
was time, Lindsay said, to change “this sensitive area of human
relationships.9 At the heart of Lindsay’s argument was his conviction that
improving relations between the police and community was necessary for
effective policing.
This change would not happen until all citizens felt they were being
treated fairly and their complaints were being heard. In proposing the
creation of a CCRB during his speech to the Lawyers Association, Lindsay
said, “It is time for independent review to be joined with professional police
knowledge” and suggested that four civilians be added to the current board.
The civilian members would be selected by the mayor from a list of names
provided by a “committee made up of men and women of unquestionable
stature,” such as the presiding justices of the First and Second Judicial
Districts and the chancellor of the City University of New York. Lindsay’s
proposal, however, left the primary responsibility for taking disciplinary
action with the police department.10 His proposal offered a middle of the
road solution that attempted to appeal to those who were calling for an all-
civilian board and those who feared that such a body would be detrimental
to the police. The mayor’s plan was similar to the one advocated by a
committee of the New York County Lawyers Association.11
City comptroller and Democratic candidate for mayor Abraham Beame
supported civilian representation in the review process but seemed
noncommittal about creating a CCRB and did not publicly endorse any
form of civilian control.12 In a not particularly bold move, Beame sent a
telegram to all the mayoral candidates, asking them to meet him at his
office on July 23 to work out an agreement on a CCRB in order to take the
issue out of politics. Lindsay declined the offer, arguing that he believed in
civilian participation in the board.13

The PBA’s Appeal to Racist Sentiments

If Lindsay thought his plan would appeal to all proponents of a civilian
complaint review board, he was wrong. Civil rights leaders dismissed it,
claiming that the plan did not go far enough. James Farmer told the New
York Times he did not see a need to have any police officers on a civilian
complaint review board.14 A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters, and Bayard Rustin convened a meeting in
Manhattan of various civil rights and grassroots community and religious
organizations on May 26, 1965. Randolph told the 125 attendees that he did
not think the Lindsay plan provided citizens with enough power to monitor
police behavior; instead, Randolph called for an all-civilian complaint
review board, arguing that it would serve the interests of the public.
Randolph acknowledged that Lindsay’s plan protected the police against
false accusations but insisted that the board had to be “representative of the
total New York community, including minority groups.” Without a diverse
representation, the board would not gain the confidence of “those who most
deeply feel the need for redress of improper police behavior.” He proposed
that the mayor consult with community leaders before appointing members
to a CCRB; with the exception of this proposal, his plan was identical to the
one proposed by Councilman Weiss in April 1964.15
But the strongest criticism of Lindsay’s proposal during his campaign
came not from civil rights leaders but from political conservatives such as
his Conservative Party opponent William F. Buckley and from law
enforcement. To no one’s surprise, John Cassese, head of the Patrolmen’s
Benevolent Association, accused the candidate of using the police
department as a “political football.” Interviewed on radio station WINS’s
News Conference, Cassese said he was satisfied with the existing board
made up of three deputy commissioners and saw no reason to add four
civilians to it, since no “pattern of police brutality” had been proven. In a
sarcastic dig at Lindsay, Cassese suggested that the mayor sit down with
civil rights leaders and let them know that “the policeman is their friend.”16
In late June 1965, the PBA led a demonstration at City Hall denouncing
the City Council’s ongoing hearings on Weiss’s bill proposing a civilian-
dominated review board. Asking for public support, they marched in silence
carrying placards, one of which read “Pressure Groups Want Control of the
Police Department,” a euphemism for the claim that blacks wanted to
dominant the NYPD.17 An FBI informant who attended the event noted that
the well-organized demonstration had begun promptly at 10:00 a.m., that
the demonstrators wore armbands, and that they acted in full cooperation
with on-duty uniformed police officers. By 11:30 there were an estimated
six thousand demonstrators, including a number of women, whom the
informant assumed were the wives of police officers. Children also
participated and carried signs. The FBI informant noted that in a television
interview the day of the demonstration Cassese said “these people”
wouldn’t be satisfied until the city created an all “Negro and Puerto Rican”
review board.18
Fifty members of CORE held a counter-demonstration, marching
between police barricades on the other side of a park close to City Hall.
Although the FBI informant reported that there were no disturbances or
hostility where CORE demonstrated, some of the police demonstrators had
gone over to the CORE protesters and “hurled uncomplimentary remarks at
the group.” He reported that later there were a “number of outbursts in the
police line of demonstrators. They abused some people who were
distributing leaflets and indulged in name calling etc. They chanted remarks
against James Farmer.” The informant also heard some police officers
calling the CORE demonstrators “niggers” and “rat-packs” as well as other
derogatory terms: “Some police officers soliciting signatures in support of
their protest against the civilian review board were quite outspoken in
regard to their attitude and feelings against Negroes and other minority
groups. They used this in urging a number of people to sign their petitions.
They talked openly in an uncomplimentary manner about Harlem and other
areas where minority groups lived.” Many of the police officers carried
“William F. Buckley for Mayor” signs, Buckley being one of Lindsay’s two
opponents. The agent also pointed out that some of the police demonstrators
had approached the young people from CORE, taken their literature, and
then tossed it on the ground.19
The next day, the Reverend Gardner C. Taylor, pastor of Concord Baptist
Church, one of the largest black churches in New York City, asked mayor
Robert F. Wagner, City Council president Paul Screvane, and police
commissioner Vincent L. Broderick for an immediate investigation into
“racism” in the NYPD and specifically into the racist behavior exhibited by
police officers at the City Hall demonstration. The New York Times quoted
Reverend Taylor’s accusation that the police screamed racist insults. The
officers’ actions, he said, raised doubts about their willingness to protect the
rights of minorities. James Farmer joined Taylor in calling for an
investigation into the police demonstration.20
Cassese and the PBA did not simply express irrational racial fears; rather,
they adopted a strategy of political racism, using racism for political gains,
and they were impervious to criticism. With a larger goal of stopping any
effort to infringe on their power, Cassese and crew were aware that stopping
a civilian review board required stoking the fears of white citizens. They
did this by arguing that the objective of black New Yorkers was to weaken
the police so that black criminals would not be punished. In Cassese’s
rhetoric, if black New Yorkers and their liberal supporters had their way, it
would have a devastating impact on white citizens.
Cassese’s racist comments and the PBA’s political position divided the
police force along racial lines. On June 1, 1965, even before the City Hall
demonstration, the Guardian Society, which represented 1,320 black police
officers, voted in favor of an independent review board. In response,
Cassese said that the Guardians had voted as “Negroes and not as police
officers.”21

William F. Buckley
William F. Buckley Jr., arguably the most influential conservative political
thinker at the time, was one of Lindsay’s two opponents in the mayoral
race. Born in 1925 in New York, Buckley graduated from Yale University
in 1950 and the next year gained notoriety with the publication of his book
God and Man at Yale, which lambasted the university and the liberal and
secular bias among its faulty. Arguing that academic freedom did not exist
at Yale, he called for an uprising of conservatives to challenge the
collectivist economic thinking he had encountered there.22
In 1955 Buckley continued to further the cause of political conservatism
by founding the National Review, arguably the premier magazine of
political conservatism in modern history. Buckley attracted some of the
leading conservative thinkers of the postwar era, including Russell Kirk,
author of The Conservative Mind and former Communist turned informer,
and Whittaker Chambers, the author of Witness, a seminal work warning
Americans of the dangers of Communism.23
Buckley was not well-known outside the circles of the intellectual elite
and politically informed, but his decision to take on both Republican John
Lindsay and Democrat Abraham Beame in the mayoral race brought him
and the New York City Conservative Party fame among review board
opponents, New Yorkers who were in support of “law and order,” and those
who believed that dysfunctional black and Latino communities were a
major cause of the deterioration of life in the city. On the other hand,
Buckley’s political positions and outspoken opinions on welfare, crime, and
the civilian complaint review board brought him infamy among civil rights
leaders and liberals, who painted him as a racist.
In an August 4 campaign speech before the National Press Club, Buckley
said he decided to run for mayor because “New York is a city in crisis, and
all the candidates agree it is a city in crisis. But no other candidate proposes
to do anything about that crisis.” He accused the other candidates of
appealing to various ethnic, racial, religious, and economic groups or
“voting blocs” by promising to address their concerns instead of solving
New York’s most pressing problems. He defined those problems as crime,
welfare, economic stagnation, and the lack of an opportunity “to be
educated without weekly litmus tests administered by Milton Galamison,
leader of the campaign to integrate New York City public schools, to
determine whether the composite color of every school is exactly the right
shade of brown.”24 Buckley elected to run on the Conservative Party ticket
rather than challenge Lindsay in a Republican primary because, he told the
National Press Club, in “New York the Republican Party is dominated by
the Liberal Party,” and so he saw no difference between them and the
Democrats. Moreover, if he lost to Lindsay in the Republican primary he
would have to support him in the general election as the candidate of his
party—and he claimed he couldn’t support a person who was “engaged in
devitalizing the Republican Party.”25
His stance regarding a civilian complaint review board drew support
from certain political circles and many NYPD officers. In July 1965
Buckley denounced the review board concept before the City Council,
saying that the “problem in New York is that there is too much crime—not
that there is too much police brutality. And yet as the crime rate rises, the
hue and cry in certain quarters is, of all things, for establishing machinery to
harass not criminals, but policemen.” For Buckley, the real victims were the
police. The data, he noted, showed that crime was increasing and yet there
was “not any documented rise in the instances of police brutality.” The data
also revealed that a “disproportionate percentage of the crimes being
committed is by members of a minority group, namely New York’s Negro
population.” He accused those who professed to speak for the entire black
population of wanting to “encumber the Police,” and said they had
“succeeded in getting endorsements from men who mistakenly believe that
to endorse a civilian review board is to do a service to Negroes and Puerto
Ricans.” At a time when there was “intense concern for life, limb, and
property,” to devote so much time to “one or two or three extra cases per
year of possible undue force used by a policeman at the risk of the
demoralization of the entire force” constituted a “diversionary act.” Instead,
the police should be encouraged “to detect one thousand, two thousand,
twenty thousand murderers, rapists, muggers, junkies and thieves.” But he
also noted to the City Council that it was “relevant to remind us that the
most numerous victims of lawlessness are the Negroes themselves.” Black
“demagogic leaders,” Buckley went on, “are flogging the Negro population
in an attempt to make them believe that they are, as a race, the specially
selected victims of a concerted police brutality.”26
In addressing the City Council, Buckley tried to be careful not to point
his finger at black New Yorkers for holding anti-police sentiments, but he
did blame black leaders for creating the animosity between the police and
New York City’s black population. It was not just that the police would
suffer under a civilian review board, he claimed: “If the police find that yet
another encumbrance is put in the way of duty, all of us will suffer who live
within the reach of the criminal.” Buckley tried to convince blacks that a
review board would be detrimental to their communities, that they would
“suffer most who live in areas where lawlessness is most active; most
tragically, in those areas in which there is the heaviest concentration of
Negroes.”27
Social and economic problems, Buckley went on to claim, should not be
overlooked; however, it was not the duty of police officers to act as social
workers. The main task of a police officer was to prevent criminal acts
against innocent citizens. “That is the function of policemen. That and only
that.” Others should create ways of discharging the “debt we have to the
Negro people.” But those making the decision to pay the debt should not
succumb to “pressure, generated by the frequent exaggerations of a few
misled leaders, to render more difficult the job of the policemen.” Indirectly
lecturing black leaders while speaking to the City Council, Buckley insisted
that they should stress “racial pride” that encouraged black people to
embrace “hope, the hunger for knowledge, the appetite for industry, an
excited concern for the rights of others.” Accusing black leaders of
“berating the police,” he said they should instead encourage police officers
to arrest and “isolate the criminals in their midst.” He went on to urge city
officials not to dilute the “authority of the police to manage their own
affairs” but instead rely on the existing apparatus that consisted of the
mayor, the commissioner, the courts, and “the established review board to
which any victim of police brutality has access.”28 Later, Buckley would
argue in his position paper on crime and law enforcement that the
“proposed Civilian Review Board is nothing less than an agreement to
elevate the campaign to discredit the police to official City policy.”29
Buckley’s public condemnation of Lindsay’s proposed review board and
his focus on black crime did indeed fuel the predicted white backlash.
Despite his attempt to qualify his stance by noting the existence of “law
abiding black people” or those making “justified progress,” the message
that stood out for thousands of New Yorkers was contained in his rants
about black and Latino criminals who, he claimed, committed 80 percent of
crimes. By calling black leaders racist and accusing them of convincing
blacks that, “as a race,” they were targeted by the police, Buckley marked
black people’s grievances against the police as illegitimate. When he
warned the City Council not to “submit to synthetic pressures to cure an
imaginary evil [police brutality] at the risk of undermining the pursuit of a
demonstrated evil [crime],” he both portrayed black charges of police
brutality as fraudulent and argued that blacks were the major reason for
New York City falling into “barbarism.”30

The New Civilian Complaint Review Board and Its Challengers

John Lindsay won the mayoral election by a narrow margin, with 45
percent of the vote (1,149,109) compared to Abraham Beame’s 41 percent
(1,046,699). The 13 percent of the vote (341,226) that went to Buckley was
a considerable surprise, because the New York Conservative Party had only
been established four years earlier, and its candidates in earlier state and
city elections had never obtained more than 5 percent of the vote.31
Lindsay’s win was a triumph for the moderate wing over the conservative
wing of the Republican Party, but the vote for Buckley indicated the
growing strength of conservatives32 and reflected the power of white
resentment and anger spurred by the rioting in Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant and the numerous civil rights demonstrations throughout the
city. It was also an indication of New York City’s growing racial divide.
Nonetheless, the Lindsay/Beame totals also indicated that in 1965 New
Yorkers maintained enough faith in liberal principles, including advancing
civil rights, to provide the proponents of a civilian complaint review board
with their best chance to achieve their objective. With the Weiss bill tabled
and other such proposals needing unlikely legislative approval, as mayor,
Lindsay had the power to implement his plan for a complaint review board
comprising four civilians and three police officers.
At the same time, Lindsay appointed a Law Enforcement Task Force
headed by former judge Lawrence E. Walsh to make recommendations for
modernizing the NYPD. In its February 1966 report the task force
advocated the creation of a civilian-controlled board to review complaints
against police. It also called for appointing a special assistant to the mayor
who would coordinate the work of all law enforcement agencies, the
consolidation of the five district attorneys’ offices, the revision of the courts
and probation services, and better collaboration between the NYPD, transit,
and housing police agencies. The eight-member task force also
recommended adding four civilians to the current review board.33
Soon after these recommendations were issued, Vincent Broderick, who
served as commissioner from 1965 to 1966, launched an extremely critical
attack on Lindsay, urging him to “renounce political expediency.” In a
seven-page letter to the mayor, the commissioner accused the task force of
putting out a report that was hastily prepared, contained erroneous ideas,
and did not mention that the NYPD “should be cleared of political
interference.” The recommendations, he felt, were nothing more than an
invitation for Lindsay to take over the police force by implementing them
“as soon as possible.” Broderick asked:

Is it not time for you as Mayor to say that you know that a
civilian review board is a shadow and not substance; that
you realize the establishment of an independent board to
review complaints against police officers will not solve
problems and may create new problems? Is it not time, Mr.
Mayor for you to say that you renounce political expediency;
that you realize that the principal effect of an independent
civilian review board will be to depress the morale of your
police department and hence to impair its capacity to prevent
crime?34

Broderick’s letter, which he made public, went on to accuse the board of

“drain[ing] off energies which should be dealing realistically with basic
problems of human relations and more deeply with the underlying problems
of poverty, discrimination, slums, inadequate schooling, and unemployment
which beset our deprived communities today.” Pointing out that there were
no police officials on the eight-person panel, he said that the task force’s
decision to issue its proposals without consulting the NYPD indicated its
haste in preparing the report.35 Lindsay would later blame Broderick for
their dispute: “I did everything in my power to work with Broderick. I
could not control the decision on his part and others to make a public war.”36
Though civil rights leaders had been critical of Lindsay’s plan for a
civilian complaint review board, he gained their support when he selected
Howard R. Leary as the new police commissioner. Leary had worked well
with Philadelphia’s civilian review board when he was police commissioner
there, and the NAACP, the Urban League, and CORE all praised Lindsay
for his choice. John A. Morsell, assistant to NAACP executive secretary
Roy Wilkins, said Leary had the “experience of running a police department
in a city which has a civilian review board. This experience should serve a
constructive purpose here.” The Urban League’s Whitney Young said
Leary’s selection “opens a new chapter in police–community relations.”
Lindsay, Young declared, “has taken a significant first step.” Expressing
optimism about Leary’s selection, CORE issued a statement asserting that
Leary would “convince the mayor that an entirely civilian board as exists in
Philadelphia is superior to the mayor’s proposal.” Leary also drew praise
from Roy Wilkins, who gave him credit for walking the streets of
Philadelphia to calm people during its riot. Bronx borough president
Herman Badillo, a Democrat, said he hoped that Leary would expedite the
creation of a civilian review board.37 In a letter to the New York Times,
Thomas R. Farrell, former president of the Bronx chapter of the Catholic
Interracial Council, said he was gratified that Mayor Lindsay had appointed
a police commissioner who recognized the necessity of civilian control of
the police department and declared that the police department “should be
responsive to the needs and the rights of the entire community. It cannot be
regarded, as it is by all too many Negro and Puerto Rican citizens, as an
occupying army maintained to protect one class of citizens against another.”
However, Farrell was critical of Lindsay’s plan to add four civilian
members to the existing board. Rather, he backed Ted Weiss’s plan and
called for an all-civilian review board with its own staff to investigate
complaints.38
Lindsay announced the creation of the civilian review board on May 2,
1966, telling New Yorkers that the widespread suspicion of it by law
enforcement was unhealthy for police work, and that it was the public’s fear
that police brutality cases were not being addressed to the satisfaction of
victims that had led him to act.39
In order to address the legal challenge filed by the PBA and the
Conservative Party claiming that a CCRB was in violation of the City
Charter because the matter of disciplining police personnel was to remain in
the hands of the commissioner, Lindsay bypassed relying on the City
Council to pass his proposal and instead created it via an executive order by
the police commissioner. Commissioner Leary himself issued General
Order No. 14 creating the review board on May 17. He noted that it was the
responsibility of the NYPD to “maintain desired standards of conduct by its
officers” and that it was to their advantage to have an “impartial forum for
the review” of accusations of improper actions to determine if they were
justified or false. To this end, the department’s existing civilian complaint
review board procedures were revised to include seven members: three
police officers chosen by the commissioner and four civilians selected by
the mayor to serve a two-year term. The mayor would also designate a
chairman from among the seven members. The CCRB was given the
authority to review complaints of “abuse of authority, unnecessary or
excessive use of force, discourtesy, abusive or insulting language, or
conduct or behavior which is derogatory of a person’s race, creed or
national origin.” An investigating unit was assigned to assist the board; staff
would include an executive director to supervise the administration of
complaints, a deputy director responsible for the “scope and content of
investigations,” and an assistant director to supervise the board’s
conciliation process. All three would be appointed upon the
recommendation of the mayor. Civilian hearing officers would hold all the
hearings. Both the complainant and the officer could be represented by legal
counsel at hearings. The board would provide financial assistance to those
unable to afford to hire a lawyer. Parties and their attorneys would have the
right to cross-examine witnesses.40
Lindsay created a panel of eleven prominent New Yorkers, under the
chairmanship of former U.S. attorney general Herbert Brownell, a close
political ally, charged with recommending to him candidates to fill the
board’s four civilian slots. The panel included three African Americans and
one Puerto Rican, and the mayor remarked that for selecting civilian
members of the CCRB, “No group surpasses the achievements of the
individual members” of the panel.41

Conclusion
The New York Times praised Lindsay for creating a civilian complaint
review board: “Undeterred by bitter opposition inside and outside the police
department, Mayor Lindsay has taken a constructive step in establishing a
civilian complaint review board to pass upon charges of police brutality.
This courageous fulfillment of a pledge originally made during his election
campaign deserves the sympathetic support and cooperation of all citizens
—and of the police force.” The Times agreed with the administration that
the “assurance that a board with a civilian majority will review complaints
of abuse of authority by police officers should prove of major benefit in
overcoming fear in slum areas that the rights of suspects are sometimes
trampled upon.”42
The praise that Lindsay received from civil rights leaders for his selection
of Leary and his creation of a new review board opened the door for healing
the relationship between the police and black and Latino citizens of the
City. However, John Cassese, the PBA, and the New York Conservative
Party’s relentless, ongoing racial campaign against civilians on the review
board would all but destroy any chance of healing that relationship and
establishing trust.
 7

The Triumph of a False Narrative

On May 4, 1966, a spokesperson for PBA president John Cassese released a
statement to the press declaring that “we do not accept a review board that
is being established as a political payoff, and which caters to the demands
of minority groups because they have brought pressure against the city
government to further their own causes.”1
Foes of the new Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) proposed by
Mayor Lindsay embarked on a racist campaign to defeat it, and the
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association used civil disobedience and
propaganda as well as legal and political actions to consolidate a great deal
of political power during this time.
While the police and their supporters opposed any alteration, however
slight, of the power advantage that law enforcement enjoyed, civil rights
and civil liberties proponents generally welcomed the proposed addition of
four mayor-appointed civilian members to the board, though some said it
didn’t go far enough. It would, they felt, alter the police–citizen balance of
power by providing those with legitimate grievances a forum in which to
hold the police responsible for abuses such as verbal abuse, disrespect,
physical assault, and other forms of misconduct. A review board by and
large unaffiliated with the NYPD had the potential to determine how police
should conduct themselves in communities of color—police would be more
reluctant to step outside the law and to disrespect communities where
complaints of police abuse were already widespread. Norman Dorsen,
professor of law at New York University Law School, was quoted in the
New York Times saying that defeat of the CCRB would bestow on the police
“an exemption from public surveillance, which would be intolerable in a
democratic society.”2 Lindsay’s version of a review board would be capable
of curtailing the police power that, for many, was tantamount to a form of
state terror, and would give citizens a voice in governing the police and
making law enforcement accountable to communities, thus changing the
power dynamics between police and citizen. This was a change that review
board supporters insisted would not only benefit those claiming abuse but
the police department and its officers as well, because investigations
conducted by a board whose majority was independent of the NYPD would
not be subject to claims of a police department cover up. Just as important,
proponents claimed, a review board would improve police–community
relations, because impartial oversight would protect those officers who were
unfairly accused of wrongdoing.
Although prominent liberals praised Lindsay’s CCRB announcement, a
few civil rights leaders expressed their disappointment. Robert L. Carter,
the NAACP’s general counsel, argued that Lindsay’s proposal had “serious
inadequacies” that would result in “suspicion and hostility of minority
group communities toward police justice and policemen.” The new board,
Carter argued, would not be independent of the police: the civilian director
would be on the police payroll; the police would control practically all the
investigative process; and hearings would not be open to the public.3 Floyd
B. McKissick, the new national director of CORE, requested an “immediate
conference” with Mayor Lindsay so that he could explain his objections to
the proposed board. The New York Times carried his criticism of the eleven-
member screening panel for not including Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant
representatives or anyone from a civil rights organization. He called the
panel a “political gimmick” and insisted that it be broadened to include
representatives of the missing groups. He also declared that the CCRB
should be completely independent rather than a unit of the NYPD.4 James
Farmer, who had stepped down as the head of CORE, said the proposed
board was “right but not right enough, unfortunately,” and insisted that
Lindsay create a “board outside the Police Department entirely.” After all, if
the police had “nothing to hide, why should they hesitate to go before a
review board?”5 For some black leaders, Lindsay’s hybrid board appeared to
be a way to appease the black community but not give them an effective
means of countering the police.
Such criticisms were mild, however, compared to the response from the
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the New York State Conservative
Party. Speaking to the press in early May 1966, PBA head John Cassese
said that the CCRB proposal was both improper and illegal and stressed that
the PBA would make sure the board would not be established.6 To that end,
the PBA, the New York Conservative Party, and its 1965 mayoral
candidate, William F. Buckley, launched a campaign to derail the proposed
board, pushing their ongoing racial narrative that such a board would tie the
hands of the police and give what would later be referred to as the “black
super-predator” an opportunity to prey on the innocent. Opponents also
maintained that implementing Lindsay’s proposal would make the police
reluctant to stop black criminals out of fear that the board would unfairly
accuse them of using excessive force and brutality.

The PBA’s Campaign

The PBA’s campaign to defeat the CCRB took a multipronged approach. It
initiated legal maneuvers, such as seeking injunctions and filing lawsuits;
lobbied the New York State Assembly and New York City Council to pass
measures outlawing such a board; committed civil disobedience at
demonstrations and rallies in order to win public support; and launched an
advertising campaign using both overtly racist rhetoric and coded language
to paint blacks as dangerous criminals in an effort to galvanize white voters
to defeat the review board at the polls.
As early as February 1966, Cassese began to threaten legal action to fight
the creation of a CCRB.7 Then, on May 8, he announced that the PBA
planned to sue the city in order to abolish the revised board before it could
be implemented. The suit would be just one part of the PBA’s campaign,
Cassese claimed. Other tactics would include seeking passage of a bill in
the State Assembly to bar civilian members from the CCRB and getting a
city referendum on the ballot that would allow voters to determine whether
such a board should exist.8
To assure the success of its legal campaign, the PBA hired the law firm
of Phillips Nizer Benjamin Krim and Ballon. Charles Ballon’s first move
was to ask the New York State Supreme Court for a show-cause order
against the mayor and the police commissioner, which would force City
Hall to explain to the court why the mayor was reconstructing the review
board.9 This tactic was a long shot, but a legal ruling would make it
unnecessary to push for a referendum and would save the PBA money.
On May 10 New York State Supreme Court justice Margaret M. J.
Mangar handed the PBA a victory and ordered the Lindsay administration
to explain why it was revamping the board. Then the PBA received more
good news when former mayor Robert Wagner publicly expressed his
support for the PBA’s position in a radio interview on WOR, saying that if
the “majority of the people” had the “opportunity to vote, [they] would
probably be against the civilian review board.” Using the PBA’s own
argument, he even claimed that a civilian-dominated board would increase
the chances that the police might allow race riots to get out of control: “If
you got a riot, you got to put your hands on somebody, you can’t just blow a
whistle and say, everybody stand at attention.” The former mayor assured
listeners that police officers were going to be less efficient if a civilian-
dominated board were allowed to exist.10
After the Lindsay administration was issued the show-cause order, the
PBA filed a class action suit for a permanent injunction restraining Mayor
Lindsay and Police Commissioner Leary from “implementing and
enforcing General Order No. 14.” The PBA claimed that the creation of a
CCRB and the procedures established for processing complaints by
civilians against police officers were “invalid and illegal.”11 Ballon argued
the PBA’s case before justice Francis T. Murphy Jr., saying that the CCRB
would make decisions denying the rights of police officers and that officers
would be reluctant to do their jobs effectively: “If a policeman sees a
violent labor dispute, will he intervene to keep order if he knows that the
Civilian Review Board includes a labor leader? . . . It is becoming more and
more common for the problems of society to be blamed on the man on the
beat. He did not create the slums, or the breakdown of the educational
system, nor unemployment. But he is the nearest and must vulnerable
representative of the Establishment.”12
The PBA also focused on winning public support. It had launched a
campaign to do so almost a year earlier in its opposition to the Weiss
proposal, promoting racial animosity and fear of black people. Cassese’s
ongoing racist rhetoric did not take the form of irrational diatribes but was a
calculated attempt to appeal to white New Yorkers who resented both the
national and local civil rights movements. He portrayed himself as a person
willing to draw a line in the sand and stand up for white New Yorkers. He
constructed an image of anti-cop blacks with no respect for law
enforcement whose real objective in supporting a CCRB was to make the
NYPD ineffective. “These people,” the head of the PBA insisted, “would
never be satisfied unless there are seven Negroes and Puerto Ricans on the
board and every policeman who goes in front of it is found guilty.”13 By
portraying the proposed civilian review board as an agency that would
endanger the lives of hardworking Americans by tying the hands of the
police, Cassese hoped white voters would rally to the cause of the survival
of white people in New York and vote for the referendum.14
The PBA enjoyed broad support among police officers and claimed to
represent them all. However, the Guardians, an organization representing
1,300 black New York City police officers, backed the proposed new board
and emphasized that the PBA did not speak for them. Instead of addressing
the Guardian’s concerns, Cassese accused the group of betraying their
professional duty as law enforcement officers in the interest of racial
solidarity. He claimed that “they put their color ahead of their duty as police
officers.”15
When speaking on June 2 to three hundred PBA delegates about the
organization’s efforts to derail the CCRB, the Times reported that Cassese
was met with cheers of “Atta boy Johnny!” that revealed deep rank and file
support for the PBA leader and encouraged him to continue playing the
politics of race. Portraying black people as a danger not only to New York
but also to the entire nation, he told the delegates, “What will happen in
New York City will be a barometer for cities throughout the country.” In an
interview with the Times later that day, he reiterated that there was no need
for a civilian complaint review board: “Notwithstanding the cries of various
minority groups, there is no set pattern of police brutality.” Going beyond
simply outlining the flaws of such a scheme when it came to policing, he
continuously invoked the notion that blacks were out to destroy effective
policing, thereby giving the upper hand to criminals and thugs who
threatened the lives of white citizens.16

The Referendum and the Effort to Defeat It

In early June the PBA announced the launch of its most important effort to
defeat the CCRB: the campaign to convince New York voters to reject the
review board by referendum. Cassese pledged that the PBA would gather
enough signatures to have the referendum placed on the November ballot.17
While the PBA’s political efforts were moving forward, by late June its
actions on the legal front were falling apart. On June 23 the State Supreme
Court upheld the city’s proposed CCRB. Justice Murphy noted in his
opinion that civilian complaints against the police “reached a high pitch
during the summer of 1964 when riots erupted in the Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant areas of the city.” Since those riots, there had been a barrage of
criticism leveled at the existing review board that comprised only three
deputy police commissioners. Justice Murphy noted that the most
“consistent source of discontent” voiced by critics was that the review
board members were employees of the police department. Minority
communities in particular were disturbed that such a board was “overly
protective toward their cohorts,” he noted, and went on to observe that the
police were “servants of the people” and that those who upheld their duty
had nothing to fear from a civilian-controlled board. The justice also
rejected the PBA’s arguments that a civilian-dominated board would deter
police from doing their jobs and that General Order No. 14 usurped the
state legislature’s role, since the legislature was the only body with the
authority to create a civilian review board. He also rejected the PRB’s
argument that the order violated sections 431, 434, and 1103 of the New
York City Charter, or sections of the City Service Law of New York, or the
Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.18
Justice Murphy pointed out that it was not the mayor but the police
commissioner himself who issued the general order, so the court’s only
concern was whether the commissioner had the power to do so. “The Police
Commissioner should be permitted to operate this most critical City agency
with sufficient aid, if required and requested,” the court ruled. With respect
to the mayor appointing four civilians to the review board, that provision of
the general order was ruled valid as it was in line with subdivisions a and b
of section 434 of the New York City Charter, which provided to the police
commissioner “cognizance and control of the government, administration,
disposition and discipline of the department.” The commissioner possessed
the power to punish members of the NYPD: “The unambiguous language
contained in the above statutory provisions effectively rests broad
administrative power in the Police Commissioner.” Judge Murphy noted
that Commissioner Leary had decided that the appropriate “control and
administration of the Police Department may best be effectuated by resort
to a civilian advisory board.” The court noted that there was no legal
obstacle barring the commissioner from exercising his discretion, nor were
there devious motives in his action; rather, he wanted citizens to gain
“confidence in the impartiality of the administrative machinery” that
supervised the use of police power. In sum, the court ruled that “the
Commissioner has apparently determined that the needs of the community
mandate a change in the existing procedure to provide a review board
dominated by civilians. The decision is his alone, by statute, and this Court
may not sit in judgment upon that determination.”19 Judge Murphy’s ruling
ended the PBA’s attempt to use the courts to destroy the new board.
Having known from the beginning that the legal strategy was a long shot,
the twenty-thousand-member PBA had already focused on the referendum
and mounted an ongoing campaign of fear. Sidney Zion of the New York
Times noted that the police were relying on their “tried and true slogans”
like “don’t handcuff the police” and the “pendulum has swung too far.”20
Mayor Lindsay accused “highly organized, militant, right-wing groups” of
leading the effort to kill his CCRB. At a City Hall press conference he
promised to fight the referendum drive, saying that he “never kidded
[himself] into believing that the review board was a popular idea around the
City as a whole.” He admitted that if it got on the ballot, it would be pretty
hard going for the review board.21
Although the mayor “never kidded” himself, he really was unaware that
the formation of a citizen-majority review board would result in a full-scale
battle with the police. Jay Kriegel, who served as Lindsay’s chief of staff
and special counsel, said in an interview that they had never expected the
opposition’s fierce and virulent response to the CCRB, and he admitted that
the administration was caught off guard by the effectiveness of the PBA’s
campaign.22
Apparently unable to combat the PBA’s campaign, Lindsay simply
moved ahead with forming a review board. After receiving the names of
eight prominent New Yorkers from his review board selection committee, in
July Lindsay chose the four he thought had the best experience in human
rights, terrific reputations, and respect across racial and ethnic lines:
Algernon D. Black, head of the New York Society for Ethical Culture and
chair of the National Committee against Discrimination in Housing, to
serve as board chair; Dr. Walter Murray, an African American who was a
professor of education at Brooklyn College; Manuel Diaz, chief consultant
and acting director of the Puerto Rican Community Development Project of
New York City; and Thomas R. Farrell, also an African American, who was
a trial attorney and former president of the Bronx chapter of the Catholic
Interracial Council. Of the three police officers selected by Leary, one was
Franklin A. Thomas, deputy commissioner in charge of legal matters and
one of the highest-ranking African Americans on the force. The other two
were Edward McCabe, deputy commissioner in charge of the Division of
Licenses, and deputy inspector George P. Meagher.23
Cassese continued his race-based argument at a news conference on July
11 at the Warwick Hotel at which he implied that the new CCRB would be
in the hands of civil rights leaders who opposed the police. “They’re so pro-
civil rights and so Lindsay-thinking, I think Lindsay went out of his way to
get these four.”24 The head of the PBA also took the opportunity to deny the
existence of police brutality once again: “You show me an accelerated
pattern of police brutality, and we’ll accept a review board but not a
campaign promise by a politician.”25
Civil liberties and civil rights groups attempted to counter Cassese’s
racial narrative by condemning him. The New York Civil Liberties Union
joined others in accusing him of “injecting a thinly veiled racism” into the
debate and demanded that he “desist from demagoguery.” Roy Wilkins,
head of the NAACP, called the PBA’s criticism “irrational” and argued that
the “police, like all other civil employees, are the servants of the citizens
and thus subject to regulation by the citizenry and the law.”26
By July it became clear that despite the board supporters’ best efforts to
refute the PBA’s message, it had been quite effective—the PBA and the
New York Conservative Party each submitted petitions with more than
thirty thousand signatures calling for a referendum on the civilian complaint
review board. The PBA’s petition called for an amendment of the New York
City Charter

to require that all members of any review board established

to investigate and process civilian complaints against
policemen be full-time members of the police department,
thereby prohibiting establishment of a review board
comprised in whole or part of civilian members. . . . Civilian
complaints against members of the Police Department of the
City of New York shall be investigated and dealt with fully
and fairly by the appropriate officials regularly charged with
the governance and discipline of the Police Department
without interference by any person or group of persons not
regularly in police service.27
If the referendum passed, not even the mayor—the city’s chief executive—
would have a say in the disciplining and monitoring of police misbehavior,
for it assured that the police would be able to act without civilian oversight.
The Conservative Party submitted a similar petition, which would amend
the City Charter “in relation to the disciplinary procedures of the New York
City Police Department, prohibiting the creation or maintenance of a
civilian complaint review board composed of members who are not deputy
police commissioners.”28
In September the PBA launched its most ambitious effort to date to win
public support: it placed an advertisement in New York’s daily newspapers
depicting a young white woman leaving a subway station alone at night
with a caption that read, “Her life . . . your life may depend on it.” It went
on to claim that the CCRB could “hamper a conscientious policeman’s
decision to act. . . . With a civilian review board, it may be the police officer
who hesitates, not the criminal.”29 The coded message targeted white New
Yorkers: the CCRB would endanger wives and daughters because it would
give black and Latino criminals the green light to prey on them. Well aware
of the subtext in this message, Lindsay blamed the PBA for conducting an
“offensive” against the CCRB and referred to its racist advertisement.30
The racist appeal of the campaign was so deeply concerning to the New
York Civil Liberties Union, the Guardians, and other groups that they
created the Federated Associations for Impartial Review (FAIR), a group
that worked to defeat the referendum by countering the false narrative of
the review board’s foes. U.S. senators Jacob Javits and Robert F. Kennedy
were honorary co-chairs of FAIR, and practically every civil rights
organization appeared on its masthead. The group planned an educational
campaign in which lawyers would speak to the public, businesses, and civic
groups in order to convince them to vote against the referendum. In addition
to educating voters on the true work of the CCRB, FAIR also revisited the
1964 presidential campaign in which liberal groups had labeled Republican
presidential candidate Barry Goldwater a racist in an attempt persuade
people not to vote for him; the strategy was to shame New Yorkers into
voting against the referendum. As a FAIR spokesman said, “It will be like
the Goldwater thing all over again.”31
Proponents of the review board had good reason to be concerned. Six
weeks before the referendum, a FAIR-commissioned public opinion poll
showed that two-thirds of those surveyed saw street safety as a fundamental
concern. An overwhelming 86 percent of those New Yorkers surveyed who
identified as Irish American saw the CCRB as a threat to the police and said
that they would vote against the review board. The American Jewish
Committee maintained that Lindsay challenged the “historic Irish Catholic
hegemony in New York’s City Police Department” when he confronted the
power of the police. His dispute with the police was a reason so many Irish
Americans opposed the CCRB. Other white ethnic groups also expressed
their disapproval of the review board. Among Italian Americans, 72 percent
would also vote against the board, as would 50 percent of the Jewish New
Yorkers polled. Groups more likely to have had a conflict with the police
were more supportive of the CCRB—for instance, 30 percent of Puerto
Ricans and only 10 percent of African Americans would vote against it.32
Although the future of the civilian review board seemed bleak, the mayor
attempted to paint a positive picture. Speaking at a meeting of FAIR,
Lindsay said that despite the attacks on the review board, “we are definitely
on the upswing—I think we have a fighting chance.” He then thanked
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Frank D. O’Conner for promising to
campaign for the review board; O’Connor’s opponent, governor Nelson
Rockefeller, remained silent on the issue.33
It was clear from the FAIR poll that the Lindsay administration had to do
more to defeat the referendum. One step it took was to issue a paper titled
“Myths about the Review Board.” One of the “myths” it addressed was the
argument that the review board would not be fair to the police. The Lindsay
administration claimed that unlike under the old board, which placed all
complaints on an officer’s record, the “new procedures are fairer to the
police” given that only complaints that the police commissioner concluded
were “substantiated” would go on the officer’s record. The paper also
refuted the PBA’s claim that the board would undermine police morale,
citing the fact that since its start in July “there has been no incident of a
policeman turning away from his duty.” The PBA’s assertion that the review
board was “a give-away to the civil rights groups” was rebutted by the
assertion that the CCRB had the support of Senators Javits and Kennedy,
Mayor Lindsay, the City Council president, and over fifty civic groups such
as the American Jewish Committee and the International Ladies Garment
Workers Union.34
 Chances that the PBA’s referendum would pass increased by late
September, when the New York State Supreme Court ruled that the
Conservative Party could withdraw its petition calling for a referendum.
The party had requested the withdrawal when it became clear that having
two referenda on the November 8 ballot would confuse supporters and split
their vote. The Lindsay administration understood that it would be
advantageous for the Conservative Party’s referendum to remain on the
ballot and insisted in court that the withdrawal not be allowed. The court,
however, agreed with the Conservative Party that removing the referendum
would clarify the issue for voters.35
After that court ruling, Lindsay’s sense of urgency was evident in his
declaration that the vote on the PBA’s referendum was the most important
issue to be decided by New Yorkers in years. Attempting to appeal to New
Yorkers’ sense of fair play toward the city’s blacks and Latinos, he declared
at an October 3 press conference, “I’m terribly concerned about it and
totally committed, because it is an issue that lies at the very root of
American democracy.” The new review board’s survival was essential “if
we are to give the people who live in the troubled neighborhoods a feeling
that progress is being made in the area of police protection.” The mayor
also reached out to and received support from religious organizations,
including the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the Protestant Council of
New York, and the New York Board of Rabbis. He contended that the
rabbis’ support was vital because “there is a very large segment of the
middle-class Jewish community who have been misled into believing that
somehow the streets will be more dangerous if the [current] Review Board
is retained.” According to Lindsay, the new CCRB was as fundamental as a
“civilian check on the country’s armed forces.” To counter the PBA’s well-
financed efforts to defeat the CCRB, the mayor turned to the entertainment
industry for support. Henry Fonda, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, and other
well-known stage and screen actors joined him at the press conference.36

Defeat
The New York Times reported in October that a poll conducted by an
undisclosed group noted the review board was in trouble. It showed that 47
percent of New Yorkers polled were opposed to the CCRB, 40 percent
supported it, and 11 percent were undecided.37 The police and their
supporters collected 51,832 signatures opposing the referendum, more than
twenty-one thousand in excess of the number needed. When the council
refused to hear that request for the measure to be passed, the PBA gathered
an additional forty-five thousand signatures, though only fifteen thousand
were needed to place a referendum on the ballot.38 The PBA’s signature-
gathering prowess was a measure of the effectiveness of its campaign,
which relied not only on advertising and legal maneuvers but also on
thousands of volunteers who hit the streets. As early as June, Cassese had
been able to inform the press that more than twenty thousand volunteers
would gather signatures supporting the referendum.39
Of equal importance was that the PBA could tap into white New Yorkers’
festering resentment of the local civil rights movement. This resentment
was first revealed in the early 1960s, years before the fight over the civilian
complaint review board. Parents and Taxpayers (PAT), a group of white
New Yorkers primarily located in Queens; the Brooklyn Joint Council for
Better Schools; and Parents and Citizens of the Bronx, another all-white
parent organization, had waged an effective campaign to oppose school
integration. In the summer of 1964, PAT submitted a 42,749-signature
petition to the city requesting a referendum that would mandate
neighborhood schools. City clerk Herman Katz rejected the petition,
claiming that it sought legislation that was beyond the city’s authority to
enact. Among other reasons for Katz’s rejection were that the proposed law
was “vague and ambiguous in requiring the Board of Education to adhere to
a so-called ‘traditional concept of the neighborhood school’ without
defining the quoted terminology,” and that 8,040 of the signatures on the
petition were invalid. Thus the petition fell short of the thirty thousand
required for a referendum.40
PAT accused Mayor Wagner of ignoring the concerns of the majority by
saying that to the “wishes of any minority, he has been as weak and pliable
as clay.” Amazingly the organization was able to gather over forty-two
thousand signatures in only eight days, an indication of the magnitude of
white New Yorkers’ resentment toward the objectives of civil rights
groups.41 In addition to submitting its petition, PAT, along with the Brooklyn
Joint Council for Better Education, conducted a one-day boycott of the
city’s public schools in September 1964 to protest the Board of Education’s
plans to integrate some of the predominantly white schools in Queens and
Brooklyn. Over 275,600 white children stayed out of school, and PAT and
the Joint Council also led a demonstration of fifteen thousand protesters,
mostly white parents, in front of City Hall, proving that many white New
Yorkers rejected integrating the public schools, largely out of the belief that
including black and Latino students would endanger white children’s
education and physical safety. The vote on the CCRB referendum would be
yet another manifestation of New Yorkers’ resentment of the city’s civil
rights community.42
This resentment reflected a national trend. The summer of 1964
witnessed riots in cities across the Northeast such as Philadelphia,
Rochester, New York, Patterson, and Elizabeth.43 A year later, one of the
worse riots of the decade occurred in the Los Angeles community of Watts
—over a thousand people were injured, thirty-five were killed, close to four
thousand were arrested, and $40 million worth of property was destroyed.
To quell the riot, two thousand National Guardsmen were dispatched.44
A 1963 Gallup poll found that 78 percent of whites would move out of
their neighborhood if a black person moved in, and 60 percent of white
respondents held an unfavorable view of Martin Luther King Jr. Shortly
after the 1964 Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots, another Gallup poll
found that 60 percent of Americans considered race to be America’s major
problem.45 In October 1964, after several more riots, 73 percent of those
surveyed agreed that blacks should stop demonstrating, even if some of
their objectives had not been met. A July 1965 Gallup poll revealed that 49
percent of those surveyed expected that relations between blacks and whites
would get worse.46
Such polls indicated that a substantial percentage of whites were
demonstrably not sympathetic to the objectives of the civil rights
movement. Many felt animosity toward King and the push for integration,
and it should not have been surprising that many New Yorkers who held
such views were also opposed to a civilian complaint review board—
sentiments Cassese was likely well aware of. Thus, by linking the review
board and its supporters to civil rights activists Cassese helped to mobilize
support for the referendum.
On November 8 New Yorkers voted 3–1 to abolish the Civilian
Complaint Review Board. To no one’s surprise the heaviest vote in favor of
the referendum came from white areas in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and
Staten Island. Voters of Irish and Italian heritage voted overwhelmingly for
the referendum. The final tally was 1,307,738 for the referendum to
768,492 against, with the heaviest no votes coming from Manhattan and the
outer boroughs’ black and Latino communities. Lindsay appeared at FAIR
headquarters at the Grover Clinton Hotel after it was clear that the
referendum had passed looking “glum.” Speaking at Gracie Mansion at a
midnight news conference, he blamed the defeat of the CCRB on “emotion,
misunderstanding and fear.” Asked by a reporter if he thought that voters
had also repudiated him, Lindsay responded, “I don’t know.”47
Cassese was jubilant and declared victory while addressing three hundred
supporters at the Sheraton Atlantic Hotel. “In every campaign there is a
winner and a loser. I say tonight that there were eight million winners,” he
said. Invoking the argument that the review board was a danger to the
welfare of New Yorkers, he added, “Thank God, we saved the city.”48
Cassese’s presumption that he was speaking for all eight million New
Yorkers once again highlighted his disregard for the large number of
citizens who supported a civilian complaint review board and voted against
the referendum.

Conclusion
Accessing why voters had rejected the CCRB, Thomas R. Brooks of the
New York Times called the referendum a sign of white backlash and said the
PBA’s position originated in police resentment of the city’s civil rights
movement. According to Brooks, the police perspective was that once the
CCRB went into operation, blacks would have “won another victory, an
unjustified one based on unsubstantial claims of police brutality.”49
Brooks’s analysis was correct. Cassese’s racist rhetoric and the PBA
campaign, as well as William F. Buckley’s attacks on black leaders, his
defense of a “white backlash,” and his blaming blacks and Latinos for rising
crime rates in New York City all helped to foster a false narrative that the
interests of black people were diametrically opposed to those of whites.
Cassese, the PBA, and Buckley depicted black people as dismissive of
criminal behavior and black leaders as wanting to gain control of the NYPD
because the police stood in their way. Many white New Yorkers subscribed
to the view that the CCRB would endanger their lives by handcuffing the
police and providing criminals an opportunity to terrorize the city. The
overwhelming opposition to the CCRB demonstrates that the PBA’s
narrative helped to delegitimize the grievances of black New Yorkers in the
minds of whites by characterizing their complaints of police brutality as
simply a means of stopping the police from doing their job. The narrative
that civilians on the CCRB would give the green light to black criminals
appealed to enough of the city’s white electorate to help defeat the proposed
board before it was implemented, thus ending in 1966 and for years to come
the opportunity for residents to have a voice in determining how the police
operated in their communities.
 8

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Brutality

In 1986, twenty years after the defeat of Lindsay’s civilian complaint
review board, mayor Edward Koch (1977–89) publicly announced his
support for a City Council bill that would create a twelve-member review
board. Six would be “members of the public selected so that one resident
from each of the five boroughs of the city and one citywide representative”
would be seated. The mayor would appoint for two terms those representing
the public in consultation with the City Council. The other six would be
appointed by the police commissioner. Each of the members selected by the
police was required to have served at least one year as a full-time
administrative employee of the NYPD.1
Speaking before the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, Koch
noted that the bill expanding the civilian complaint review board “will give
more public credibility” to what he claimed was an “already effective
board. The selection of six highly qualified civilians, whose approval will
be subject to the advice and consent of the City Council, can only serve to
strengthen the public’s confidence in the police department.” Koch said that
this “moderate and reasonable proposal, should not be divisive or
destabilizing” and now was the time to act on it, “because discussion will
not be fueled by any particular incident of alleged police misconduct or
review of an incident. To wait for the next incident, when tempers will be
high, and willingness and ability to agree will be low, would only insure
paralyzation of any reform proposal.”2
For most of his tenure as mayor, Koch had opposed any effort to
restructure the police-controlled civilian complaint review board. A major
reason for his about-face had to have been the major scandal in the 106th
Precinct in Queens, which involved a number of officers who were accused
of torturing an eighteen-year-old black high school student with a stun gun
in order to make him confess to the crime of selling small quantities of
marijuana.3 On April 17, Mark Davidson was arrested and accused of
attempting to sell a ten-dollar bag of marijuana to an undercover police
officer. Davidson said they took him to the precinct and assaulted him.
After he accused the police, three other young men came forward and also
claimed that they were tortured at the 106th by police who used a stun gun.4
Koch was criticized for a number of police brutality cases, including the
1984 cases of twenty-one-year old graffiti artist Michael Stewart, who was
beaten to death by New York City transit police, and the shooting of sixty-
year-old Eleanor Bumpurs. The Stewart and Bumpurs cases, as well as
other police assaults on people of color, led to citywide protest and
condemnation of the mayor. Koch, who was seeking a third term in office,
knew that if he did not take action against police misconduct he would lose
the election.
Given Koch’s support for restructuring the review board, it may seem
that he had taken a position unfavorable to the police. This was not the case.
His “moderate and reasonable” stance was designed to fend off attempts to
create the kind of independent, all-civilian complaint review board that civil
rights activists sought, which was anathema to the NYPD.5 But by the early
1990s an all-civilian complaint review board would become a reality.
Early in his single term as the city’s first black mayor, from 1990 to
1993, David Dinkins pledged to be tough on crime. To that end, he pushed a
plan he called Safe Streets, Safe City, a form of community policing that
would place more police officers on the streets in an effort to put more
criminals behind bars. In 1990 the city hired more than six thousand
additional police officers, bringing the force to over thirty-one thousand,
making it the largest in New York’s history. Dinkins’s plan put some five
thousand of them in neighborhoods in ten-member patrol teams and also
deployed as many as 1,800 patrol cars a day. Safe City, Safe Streets also
called for diversifying the police racially, hiring more probation officers and
corrections officers, creating larger cell spaces for prisoners, and adding
more after-school centers as a way of preventing crime. Both the transit and
housing police forces were expanded and transit police officers rode the
subways between the hours of 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.6
Safe Streets, Safe City saw positive results. Rape, murder, felony assault,
and larceny rates all dropped, and by 1991 Dinkins was able to point out
that the crime rate overall had dropped by 6 percent in just one year. This
was good news for an administration that the year before had witnessed the
highest number of murders in the city history (2,245). While accounting for
just 2.9 percent of the nation’s population, New York City experienced 9.6
percent of the nation’s homicides.7 Despite these improvements, by the fall
of 1992 Dinkins was at war with New York City’s police officers.8
On September 16, 1992, a PBA-sponsored protest drew an estimated ten
thousand off-duty police officers to a demonstration against Mayor Dinkins.
Many carried signs and wore T-shirts reading “Dinkins Must Go” and “No
Justice, No Police,” and others saying Dinkins was “on crack.” Some police
protesters also carried posters displaying racist images, such as one
depicting Dinkins with a large Afro and big lips and another showing him
as a washroom attendant. The police demonstrators jumped over barricades,
climbed on top of automobiles, blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, and
swarmed the steps of City Hall chanting “Dinkins must go!” What was the
source of their anger? The mayor had decided to call for and support the
formation of an all-civilian complaint review board.9
Rudolph Giuliani, who was expected to challenge Dinkins in the next
election, encouraged the protesters’ unruly behavior and their disrespect for
the mayor by telling demonstrators at City Hall that the only reason morale
among the police was so low was “David Dinkins.” The three hundred on-
duty police officers present did nothing to stop their off-duty colleagues
from trampling cars and committing other criminal offenses. Furious,
Dinkins blamed PBA head Philip Caruso and Giuliani for egging on the
police behavior.10
Dinkins, who had close ties to the Harlem community, had campaigned
on a platform of police reform and had promised New Yorkers an
independent review board that would be citizen-controlled. Despite the
vociferous protests of the police and PBA, with Dinkins’s support the City
Council eventually passed such a bill in 1993. But Dinkins lost his bid for
reelection that year, ending any serious efforts to establish community
policing and give citizens a voice in determining how police would function
in their communities. The next administration would adopt more aggressive
ways of policing, which not only led to a growing number of complaints of
brutality but also limited the ways that black and Latino citizens could find
redress.

Making the Civilian Complaint Review Board Ineffective

The 1993 version of the civilian complaint review board was intended to
reflect the city’s diversity. It was proposed to have thirteen members, all of
whom had to be residents of New York City. The City Council designated
five members, one from each of the five boroughs, and three were selected
by the police commissioner. The final five were appointed by the mayor,
who also selected the chair. The new CCRB had the power to receive,
investigate, hear, and make findings public concerning complaints by
members of the public against the police department that alleged
misconduct involving excessive use of force, abuse of authority,
discourtesy, and use of offensive language, including, but not limited to,
slurs relating to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and
disability. The CCRB could also recommend that certain disciplinary
actions be taken against officers found guilty.11
But after winning the mayoral election in 1993, Giuliani’s new direction
regarding policing was soon evident in his administration’s treatment of the
CCRB. He refused to provide it with adequate funding to effectively
perform its duty, reducing its budget by 17 percent. According to Giuliani,
the city was facing a $2.3 billion deficit in the upcoming year’s budget, and
therefore he needed to implement a hiring freeze—to which the police
department was not subject. In fact, Giuliani was planning to hire additional
police. His administration would be characterized by special treatment for
the police, while the agency created to grant citizens a means of taking
action against police abuse would be marginalized.12
It was through the Vacancy Control Board, an agency created by Mayor
Dinkins to oversee government costs, that the new mayor attempted to
make the CCRB ineffective. Giuliani selected deputy mayor Peter Powers
to head the board, and he hindered the CCRB by not allocating sufficient
funds for it to hire an adequate number of investigators. The Vacancy
Control Board held up the appointment of the eight additional CCRB
investigators and did not fill the personnel director and budget director
positions. The CCRD also could not hire a legal investigator and chief
investigator, assuring that it could not operate effectively. By March 1994
the CCRB employed just forty people, twenty-two fewer than the previous
review board that had been under the control of the police. Although the
CCRB was expected to perform more effectively than the police-controlled
board, the denial of adequate resources guaranteed it would be ineffective.
Norman Siegel, head of the New York City Civil Liberties Union,
complained to the City Council about the subpar training of investigators,
inadequate funding and staffing, and the growing case backlog affecting the
CCRB. Siegel also described a “bias arising from the large number of
former police department employees on the investigative staff.” The CCRB,
he said, was “in crisis” and was failing both complainants and supporters of
the new, independent board. He lay the blame for the failure at the feet of
Giuliani, the City Council, the CCRB’s board members, and its supervisory
staff.13
The new CCRB’s inability to hire new investigators meant that the
existing investigatory staff was made up largely of “former police
department investigators, a number of whom have been promoted to
supervisory positions.” The small number of new investigators hired from
outside the police department filled entry-level positions and had little
experience as investigators.14
Siegel maintained that the “wholesale transfer of investigators from the
police department raises doubts about the independence and objectivity of
the new CCRB.” Moreover, he argued, there were “indications that
complaints filed with the Board are not being resolved in a timely manner.”
As an example, he noted that a complainant who was being represented by
the NYCLU was given an initial interview with a CCRB investigator on
July 15, 1993, and as of January 1994 had not heard from the review board
again. Siegel admitted that this could have been an aberration, but
NYCLU’s concern was that it “may be typical.”15
By March 1995 the CCRB had reduced its docket of cases from 5,754 to
5,203. Testifying before the City Council at that time, David Zornow, the
board’s chairperson, maintained that the investigators were overburdened,
and if the board was to continue to reduce its overall caseload, “we must
redouble our efforts to continue reducing the backlog until we have reached
the goal of completing our investigations and reaching determinations in a
timely and expeditious manner.” He called for funding the additional
resources “necessary to meet our increased responsibilities.”16
In a March letter to the City Council quoted in the New York Times,
NYCLU head Siegel pointed out that Giuliani had refused to hire at least
one-third of the CCRB investigators and a number of the administrators that
had already been allocated for in the city’s budget. He went on to accuse
Giuliani of being in contempt of the law by withholding those funds. Some
members of the City Council accused Giuliani of purposefully weakening
the CCRB by refusing to fill positions. Reminding the city’s budget officials
of the already-budgeted funds, Sheldon S. Leffler, councilman from
Queens, charged the Giuliani administration with “undermining the
credibility” of the CCRB.17
Giuliani’s hostility to the CCRB reflected his notion that any restraint on
police officers carrying out a more forceful approach to fighting crime
simply interfered with officers doing their job. The CCRB got in the way,
and to make it ineffective, the administration improperly funded it. This
effort of defunding the CCRB demonstrated that the issue of police brutality
would take a back seat in Giuliani’s more aggressive approach to crime
fighting. And that aggressive approach signaled to black and Latino New
Yorkers and others concerned about police abuse that they would have to
intensify their pressure on the mayor, elected officials, and the NYPD to
protect their civil rights.

Zero Tolerance
Giuliani selected William Bratton as the new police commissioner. Bratton
had served as head of the New York City Transit Authority Police
Department since 1990, gaining it national and state accreditation and
building a force of 4,500 police and civilian employees, making it one of
the largest departments in the country.
Together, Giuliani and Bratton moved away from Dinkins’s community
policing policy, which the new mayor complained was forcing police
officers to provide social services instead of performing their primary task
of preventing crime. At a news conference in January 1994 the mayor
attempted to redefine policing: “Social service aspects that were kind of
added on to community policing, some of that has to be done but can’t
become the primary focus of all the police aspects in the neighborhood. The
police officer’s there to make sure that the burglary doesn’t take place, the
robbery doesn’t take place, a person can walk the street safely.” Community
policing, Giuliani argued, had become a “complex, convoluted academic
science, training police officers in accessing social services.” This was
simply “inconsistent with the role of the police.”18
 Although he had been an early proponent of community policing, Bratton
had a change of heart and would later note in his book Turnaround: How
America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic that community policing
focused on the cop on the beat rather than on crime, and in particular it did
not address the quality-of-life crimes that encouraged more serious
offenses.19 Testifying before the Committee on Public Safety of the New
York City Council in May 1994, Bratton said that the Giuliani
administration “hit the ground running with new comprehensive strategies
to get guns off the streets, curb youth violence, drive out drug dealers and
stem the tide of domestic violence.” His goal was to reduce “fear, crime and
disorder in every neighborhood in the five boroughs.” In addition to cost-
saving measures such as merging the NYPD with the Transit and Housing
Police Departments, Bratton promised to implement “sweeping crime and
disorder control strategies, as well as the new technology needed to support
them.” He acknowledged that the police department was exempt from the
city’s budget cuts but said it had adopting a number of measures to become
more productive and efficient.20
Bratton served as commissioner of the NYPD from 1994 to 1996 and
during that time Giuliani increased the police force by 35 percent. Speaking
to Congress in 2000, Giuliani noted that he had added ten thousand officers
to the force since taking office.21 With an expanded police force, Giuliani
and Bratton focused on fighting crime by adopting an official policy of
“Zero Tolerance” that targeted those committing quality-of-life offenses
such as begging, panhandling, graffiti, drug dealing, and prostitution. It was
an effort, according to Giuliani, to reclaim the streets for those who obeyed
the law.
Giuliani’s Zero Tolerance policy was closely associated with the “broken
windows” theory of political scientists George L. Kelling and James Q.
Wilson, who contended that if quality-of-life crimes are not stopped,
criminals would become bolder and commit more serious crimes, and
neighborhoods could experience a “criminal invasion. Though it is not
inevitable, it is more likely that here, rather than in places where people are
confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls, drugs will
change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and cars will be stripped.” Writing in
The Atlantic in 1982, the sociologists argued that “the unchecked
panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers,
whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of
being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential
victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions. If the
neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying
passerby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to
identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes
place.”22
Under Zero Tolerance, Giuliani, a strong supporter of the broken
windows theory, moved from going after serious crimes to stopping low-
level violations of the penal codes of New York City. Bratton began
applying a broken windows policy in 1990 while he was still head of the
transit police. Writing in 2015 he recalled, “We wouldn’t ignore the little
things. Fare evasion and graffiti would no longer be considered too petty to
address. In fact we focused on them as vigorously as on the serious crimes
like robberies, if not more so.” Bratton’s reason for focusing more on low-
level offenses was that “serious crime occurred in a lawless environment
and ubiquitous low-level disorder signaled lawlessness even more than
serious crime, which was less common.” Bratton asserted that the quality-
of-life approach worked in the New York City transit system: from 1990 to
1991 crime fell by almost 36 percent.23
Bratton also introduced CompStat (short for computer statistics), a police
department management tool that relies on the most recent data on crime in
specific neighborhoods to deploy appropriate resources to those area. It
examines tactics such as stop, question, and frisk along with broken
windows, and constantly reviews and analyzes the outcomes. Using
CompStat, data are gathered quickly and studied in order to understand
crime trends in a community and take action to prevent further criminal
actions. Police and resources are quickly deployed in the troubled areas and
officers use tactics that have been proven effective. Under CompStat,
commanders are responsible for knowing the crime data in their district and
coming up with a scheme to reduce the crime rate. The program encourages
a police department to share data internally and with other law enforcement
agencies.24 Instead of responding to crime, Bratton and Giuliani adopted
CompStat as a means of crime prevention25 and it became the heart and soul
of Zero Tolerance.
There was no doubt that Zero Tolerance and CompStat dramatically
reduced crime in the city. The mayor’s management report noted that from
1993 to 1997 the number of felony complaints decreased by 44.3 percent,
murders and non-negligent homicides by 60.2 percent, reports of rape by
12.4 percent, and robbery by nearly 50 percent. Undoubtedly, the quality of
life improved throughout the city. One of the most apparent and welcome
outcomes of Zero Tolerance was the disappearance of the so-called
squeegee people, panhandlers who accosted drivers at red lights by wiping
their windshield in order to receive a tip. Prostitution and drug trafficking in
high-crime areas were also dramatically reduced because of Zero Tolerance.
Under Bratton’s leadership, police were said to be “reclaiming the streets.”26
In a jointly authored article in 2015, Bratton and sociologist George
Kelling argued that the broken windows policy required police to “address
disorderly illegal behavior, such as public drinking and drug use, fights,
public urination and other acts considered minor offences.”27 But while
defenders of broken windows point to vulgar offenses that most people
would agree should be stopped, they seldom publicize the many minor but
less vulgar offenses that resulted in police issuing a summons—for
example, selling loose cigarettes, jaywalking, spitting, walking on the
streets with an open alcoholic beverage, or riding a bicycle on the sidewalk.
The extremely broad list of Zero Tolerance crimes subjected large numbers
of people to arrest and pulled them into the criminal justice system. The
number of non-felony offenses increased from 86,000 in 1989 to 176,000 in
1998.28 For example, there were 39,000 marijuana arrests made between
1987 to 1996. However, between 1997 and 2007 the number jumped to
362,000.
The number of B-misdemeanor arrests in 1998 was double the number in
1989 and outnumbered all other 1998 arrest categories. Among the B-
misdemeanor categories are fortune-telling, possession of graffiti
instruments, refusal to aid a peace or police officer, loitering, unlawful
assembly, adultery, and possession of small amounts of marijuana.29
Blacks accounted for 50 percent of overall arrests in 1989, which did not
change in 1998; Latino arrests went from 27 percent in 1989 to 32 percent
in 1998. However, though the percentages remained the same or similar, the
actual numbers went up. Among blacks, the 1989–98 number increased by
forty-five thousand.30 Bratton has argued that critics of broken windows
ignore the fact that most of the victims of criminal activity were black and
Latino, therefore those demographics benefit from the policy. African
Americans and Latinos accounted for 53 percent of the city’s population in
2013 and were the victims in 74 percent of the reported rapes and 71
percent of assaults. In that year, 83 percent of the murder victims were
black or Latino.31
Judith Greene, a criminal justice policy analyst, maintains that while
Bratton’s reforms were innovative, “at the neighborhood level, his crime-
fighting strategies were grounded in traditional law enforcement methods
and in relentless crackdown campaigns to arrest and jail low-level drug
offenders and other petty perpetrators.” Greene accuses Bratton of taking
the “handcuffs off the police department” and “unleashed patrol officers to
stop and search citizens who were violating the most minor laws” on
record. She points out that in a four-year period (1994–98) new civil rights
suits against the police for abusive conduct increased by 75 percent and
police brutality got worse under Giuliani. The percentage of “general patrol
incidents,” or ordinary police contacts with citizens with no arrest or
“suspension of criminal activity,” increased from 29 percent in 1993 to 58
percent during the Giuliani years. The vast majority of complaints came
from black and Latino communities. The New York City public advocate
during these years, Mark Green, is quoted as noting that over 50 percent of
the complaints came from nine of the seventy-six precincts, and that all nine
were in black and Latino communities.32

Fighting Police Reform: Giuliani’s Response to the Mollen

Commission
In July 1992 Mayor Dinkins had created both a Commission to Investigate
Allegations of Police Corruption and the NYPD’s Anti-corruption
Procedures. He selected Milton Mollen, a former judge of the New York
City Criminal Court and former deputy mayor, to head what became known
as the Mollen Commission to investigate police corruption. The
commission examined thousands of NYPD documents, held dozens of
hearings, analyzed hundreds of personnel files, and interviewed current
officers, private citizens, defense attorneys, victims of corruption, and
police informants.33 It shared in its official 1994 report that it found while
the vast majority of police officers were honest, police corruption was a
serious problem that extended far beyond the individual corrupt cop:
 It is a multi-faceted problem that has flourished in parts of
our City not only because of opportunity and greed, but
because of police culture that exalts loyalty over integrity;
because of the silence of honest officers who fear the
consequences of “ratting” on another cop no matter how
grave the crime; because of willfully blind supervisors who
fear the consequences of a corruption scandal more than
corruption itself; because of the demise of the principle of
accountability that makes all commanders responsible for
fighting corruption in their commands; because of hostility
and alienation between the police and the community in
certain precincts which breeds an “Us versus Them”
mentality; and because for years the New York Police
abandoned its responsibility to insure the integrity of its
members.34

The corruption uncovered by the Mollen Commission differed from the

type described by the Knapp Commission as having occurred in the 1960s.
According to the Mollen Commission, police officers were not only taking
bribes from drug dealers but some became dealers themselves, and gangs of
cops sold narcotics raided from drug dealers. To cover up their crimes,
police officers falsified reports and committed perjury. The NYPD had
“allowed its systems for fighting corruption to virtually collapse.” Internal
Affairs, the agency delegated to investigate corruption, did almost nothing
to uncover such behavior: “Most Internal Affairs investigators and
supervisors embraced a work ethic more dedicated to closing corruption
cases than to investigating them. . . . Weak corruption controls reduced the
chances of uncovering serious corruption and protected police
commanders’ careers.”35
The Knapp Commission Report, issued in 1970, had investigated police
corruption but ignored police brutality. Although most of the Mollen Report
dealt with police corruption, it also included police brutality and contended
that the two could not be separated: “We found that corruption and brutality
are often linked in a variety of ways and should no longer be artificially
separated by managers, corruption fighters and policy makers.” It identified
police brutality as the “implicit or explicit threat of physical harm or the
actual infliction of physical injury or pain.” Police brutality, according to
the report, took place in crime-ridden areas of widespread corruption with a
large black and Latino populations.36
An explanation for some instances of police brutality, the commission
maintained, was the implementation of “officers’ own brand of vigilante
justice,” though for others there seemed to be “no apparent reason at all.” It
found that brutality was a “means to accomplish corrupt ends and
sometimes it was a gratuitous appendage to a corrupt act.” Cops did not just
become corrupt; they became “corrupt and violent.” The commission
asserted that the corruption it found “sometimes involved abuse of authority
and unnecessary force, and the violence we found sometimes occurred to
facilitate thefts of drugs and money.” It also maintained that officers who
are corrupt were “more likely to be brutal.”37
According to the Mollen Commission, “brutality also occurred
independently to show power, out of fear or hostility towards a person or
the community that person represents, to vent frustrations and anger, or in a
misplaced attempt to compel respect in the community.” Officers who were
interviewed by the commission told its members that it was not unusual “to
see unnecessary force used to administer an officer’s own brand of street
justice: a nightstick in the ribs, a fist in the head, to demonstrate who was in
charge of crime-ridden streets they patrolled.”38
The Mollen Commission recognized that brutality was not limited to
criminals: “Unlike serious corruption, which most cops outwardly tolerate
but inwardly deplore and resent, officers seem fairly tolerant—both
outwardly and inwardly—of occasional police brutality.” Supervisors also
tolerated police brutality: “This is because many supervisors share the
perception that nothing is really wrong with a bit of unnecessary force and
because they believe that is the only way to fight crime today.” Supervisors
did not question the stories reported by their officers.39
One factor the Mollen Commission did not take into consideration was
racism. It placed the overall blame for police brutality on past commanders.
Despite the Knapp Commission’s report twenty years earlier, corruption had
remained. Even though it was the CCRB that was responsible for
investigating police brutality, that should not have taken commanders off
the hook for taking action to prevent and eradicate abuse. In previous years,
the NYPD had refused to see police brutality as a serious problem and to
see its “link to corruption,” and the commission maintained that the NYPD
itself should be primarily responsible for both problems. However, if left
entirely on its own, the report maintained, the NYPD would not be able to
completely root out corruption, so it also called for a number of reforms.
These included improving screening and recruitment, upgrading education
for recruits, “attacking corruption and brutality tolerance,” and “enhancing
sanctions disincentives for corruption and brutality.”40 An external review
would assure the success of these recommended measures.
One recommendation was that the “Police Academy and In-Service
Integrity training . . . address issues of brutality and other civil rights
violations, which have traditionally been ignored in integrity training.” Also
pertaining to brutality, the Commission recommended that “Internal Affairs
should immediately establish a Civil Rights Investigations Unit dedicated to
the investigations of brutality, perjury, false arrests, and other types of civil
rights violations.” This unit should also work along with the CCRB to
investigate charges of brutality.41 A further recommendation was that police
officers must be required to live in the city. It was assumed that if officers
lived in the community where they worked, they would have a better
understanding of the people and their social conditions.42
The commission also recommended a number of changes in the laws that
helped to shield police from prosecution, including amending “New York
City Administrative Code, Section 13-246 to provide for a minimum of
ninety days’ notice to the Department before an officer is permitted to retire
with full pension.” The existing thirty-day requirement failed to allow
sufficient time to complete a disciplinary investigation before an officer
could retire in order to escape punishment. It also called for amending
“Public Officers Law Section 30(e) to allow for the revocation of lifetime
pension benefits for officers convicted of a felony or federal law equivalent
committed while in the performance of their duties.43 The commission
further suggested increasing “the statute of limitations for Department
disciplinary proceeding to three years from the current eighteen months.”
The statute of limitations had been reduced from five to three years in 1962
and from three years to eighteen months in 1982 due to pressure from the
PBA and other state and municipal unions.44
In order to assure that the department was following through on the task
of reforming itself, the Mollen Commission also recommended a dual-track
strategy. The first track would strengthen the NYPD’s anti-corruption
apparatus and improve recruiting and training, thus improving supervision
and internal investigation and advancing ways of preventing corruption and
brutality. The second track would be to establish a permanent police
commission independent of the NYPD. Its duties would include performing
“continuous audits of the Department’s systems for preventing, detecting
and investigating corruption.” It would also assist the NYPD to implement
“programs and policies to eliminate the values and attitudes that nurture
corruption.” The proposed police commission would guarantee a
“successful system of command accountability” and when necessary
conduct “its own corruption investigations.”45
In April 1994, just before the Mollen Commission issued its final report,
Bratton, in a television interview, voiced his opposition to the
recommendation for an outside agency to monitor corruption. While noting
that the Mollen Commission did good work, the police department under
Giuliani had already strengthened its Internal Affairs division, he said.
Mayor Giuliani agreed with Bratton that there was no need for an outside
agency or special prosecutor. He favored giving responsibility for
investigating corruption to the City’s Department of Investigation, headed
by his close friend Howard Wilson, who had served under Giuliani when he
was a U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Wilson had served as the chairman of the
selection panel that recommended Bratton for police commissioner. By
farming out the investigation of police corruption to the agency that
investigated corruption in all other city agencies, the mayor was sending the
message that police corruption was no different than other forms of
corruption. Giuliani had no intention of placing the power to investigate
police corruption in the hands of an outside agency with subpoena power.46
For its part, the City Council was concerned that once the publicity
generated by the Mollen Commission died down the NYPD’s commitment
to rooting out corruption would diminish. It decided to act, and on
November 23, 1994, it adopted legislation creating the Police Investigation
and Audit Board, which would have the authority to explore and audit the
NYPD’s anti-corruption efforts and at the same time independently
investigate corruption. It would also have subpoena power. To avoid
duplication or interference with ongoing investigations, the Police
Investigation and Audit Board would have to coordinate with the police
commissioner, the CCRB, and district attorneys. The City Council, acting
under Local Law 13, would appoint two members of the board, the mayor
would appoint two members, and the fifth member would be appointed
jointly by the mayor and City Council.47
Giuliani opposed the new board, arguing that it interfered with the power
to appoint nonelected officers as granted to the mayor under City Charter
section 6(a). On December 23 he vetoed the bill. On January 19 the council
overrode his veto. Not giving up, Giuliani took the City Council to court in
an effort to have the board declared illegal. In June 1995 the New York
State Supreme Court ruled that creating the board under Local Law 13 was
invalid, because the City Council did not have the power to appoint
members of such a board. Only the mayor had the authority to appoint
“officers of the City,” according to the City Charter. The City Council
appealed, but in January 1997 the First Department of the Supreme Court
Appellate Division upheld the New York State Supreme Court’s decision
that Local Law 13 was invalid because it interfered with the mayor’s
appointment powers. Moreover, the New York State Court of Appeals
refused to allow the City Council to appeal the Appellate Division’s
decision.48
While fighting the battle in court, Giuliani countered the efforts of the
City Council by creating his own investigation board. On February 27,
1995, he issued an executive order establishing a Police Commission to
combat law enforcement corruption. The mayor would appoint the five
members tasked with monitoring for corruption within the police
department and evaluating the NYPD’s anti-corruption systems. Specific
allegations of police corruption would continue to be investigated by the
NYPD, with no interference from the Police Commission without
permission from the mayor, the police commissioner, and the commissioner
of the Department of Investigation.49
The City Council criticized the Police Commission because it was not
independent of the mayor, who created it and appointed all its members. A
further indication of its lack of independence was the executive order
provision that allowed it to investigate specific allegations only with the
permission of the mayor and the commissioner of the DOI, who is
appointed by the mayor.50
Speaker of the City Council Peter Vallone remained committed to
creating an independent Investigation and Audit Board, maintaining that
such a body would be beneficial to the NYPD and would enhance public
trust in the police. He offered an amendment to Local Law 13, Local Law
91, which gave the mayor power to appoint the Investigation and Audit
Board’s five members. However, two of those members would be
“designated” by the City Council. Local Law 91 also declared that the
mayor would also appoint the chair of the board, but only “after
consultation with the Speaker of the Council.”51
The amended bill still gave the independent board the power to “perform
assessments and audits of the police department’s internal systems for
detecting, investigating and preventing corruption among uniformed and
civilian members of the police department.” But to further assure that the
board would not interfere with the powers of the mayor, it could only
“make recommendations to the police department in relation to the
formulation and implementation of policies and programs to detect and
eliminate corruption.” Although it could undertake investigations of
possible corruption within the NYPD at the request of the mayor or
commissioner, it could also simply conduct investigations on its own
accord. If during its investigation it believed it had uncovered corruption,
the board had to report it to the police commissioner and the “appropriate
prosecuting attorney.” In addition, the amended bill granted the independent
board subpoena power.52
Giuliani reacted as he had to Local Law 13. From his perspective, it
ceded authority to a board that was not solely appointed by the mayor and
infringed on the mayor’s sole right, granted to him under City Charter
section 8(a), to guarantee the efficiency of city government operations. It
also infringed on the investigative and prosecutorial powers of the district
attorney.53
The New York Supreme Court ruled that the mayor’s complaints were
unfounded. Local Law 91 did allow the mayor to appoint the five members
of the board, thus it did not violate the New York State Constitution or the
New York City Charter. The court did find that the independent board’s
subpoena power and other powers interfered with the mayor’s power but
not with the district attorney’s, and according to the City Charter, the City
Council had the legal right to delegate powers to an administrative agency
in the executive branch. The court ordered Giuliani to implement Local
Law 91.54
 Conclusion
The defunding of the Civilian Complaint Review Board early in the
Giuliani administration, the increasing number of police brutality
complaints due to Zero Tolerance, and the fight between Giuliani and the
City Council over the Investigation and Audit Board all demonstrated the
mayor’s determination to oppose any attempt to allow an independent body
to investigate police corruption or brutality. In large part this was because
he did not want to derail his objective of fighting and preventing crime. It
was also due, however, to the fact that Giuliani did not think that police
brutality was a serious issue.
The mayor’s dismissal of the seriousness of police brutality was reflected
in a speech he made before the U.S. House of Representatives in 1999
asserting that the number of police brutality cases was lower during his
administration than during the Dinkins and Koch administrations. Noting
that there had been 62 percent fewer shootings by police officers the
previous year than during the final year of the Dinkins administration, he
went on to claim, “In every single year of my administration the police
officers have grown more restrained in their use of firearms, even as we
have added 10,000 police officers and given them automatic weapons.”
Admitting that there were difficulties and a lot more that needed to be done,
he expressed his sympathy not for the victims of police violence but for
police officers: “I said to the 800 police officers [at graduation ceremonies]
last week that what we expect of them is restraint, almost an inhuman
ability to be restrained when they have to be.”55
Giuliani’s downplaying of the extent of police brutality during his
administration revealed his refusal not only to see the issue as a serious
problem but also to recognize that the victims of police abuse had a
legitimate claim to redress. His determination to snub all who called for
earnest measures to stop police brutality would lead to a number of
sensational brutality cases that rocked his administration and all of New
York City.
 9

Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, and the

Resistance to Giuliani
Asked by the Washington Post in a January 1997 interview to defend his
record when it came to black New Yorkers, Giuliani said sarcastically,
“They’re alive, how about we start with that.” The mayor was making the
argument that his policing policies were keeping black New Yorkers safe,1
but the remark pointed to his insensitivity to the growing problem of police
brutality during his terms. As we have seen, throughout his tenure he
defended cops accused of brutality, denied the Civilian Complaint Review
Board the funding to properly investigate acts of police brutality, and fought
diligently against police reform efforts.
Giuliani’s paramount goal was crime prevention, and he promoted
aggressive forms of policing, including Zero Tolerance, that targeted low-
level offensives but led to a dramatic increase in the number of unjustified
police attacks on New Yorkers, especially blacks and Latinos. Giuliani
turned a blind eye to such attacks, sending a message to police officers that
they could assault people of color with impunity, and his continued
devotion to undermining efforts by city officials to address the problem had
tragic results. There was both a dramatic increase in complaints filed by
civilians alleging police brutality, and a number of particularly brutal
assaults, two of which would eventually horrify the entire nation and lead to
massive demonstrations. The brutality exposed by press accounts of the
police attacks on Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima would expose on a
global scale Giuliani’s indifference to the issue of police violence to black
New Yorkers. Elected officials and grassroots activists alike organized
street protests that put a spotlight not only on police brutality but also on
Giuliani’s unrelenting efforts to protect the police and denigrate those
protesting police brutality. Eventually, the effective organizing and
protesting made it extremely difficult for Giuliani to ignore or dismiss the
existence of police brutality and its devastating impact on black and Latino
New Yorkers.
 Brutal Cops
While many have claimed that Giuliani’s major achievement was the
dramatic decrease in violent crime, it is impossible to ignore the heavy price
New Yorkers paid to achieve it. The number of police brutality complaints
soared under Giuliani. A report by public advocate Mark Green submitted
to the Public Safety Committee of the City Council in September 1997
noted that between 1992 and 1996 civilian complaints concerning police
misconduct “increased from 3,437 complaints to 5,596 complaints.” One
reason for the almost 60 percent increase was the merger of the NYPD with
the Housing and Transit police forces. Another reason was the hiring of an
additional ten thousand police officers, with the result that 25 percent of the
force had less than five years’ experience. Moreover, more aggressive
policing may have led to the increasing number of confrontations between
citizens and the police, and the creation of an independent CCRB (Local
Law 91) may have encouraged more people to come forward and file
complaints. According to Green’s report, the CCRB data showed “Brooklyn
North and Queens have far out-paced increases across the City,” with a 46.7
percent increase in Brooklyn North and a 61.4 percent increase in Queens.
Manhattan South, the Bronx, and Staten Island also experienced increases
in the number and percentages of complaints of police brutality.2
As we have seen, Giuliani’s usual stance was to defend the police in
brutality cases, including shootings, and express little sympathy for the
victims. A case in point was the shooting death of sixteen-year-old Kevin
Cedeno in early April 1997 by officer Anthony Pellegrini in Washington
Heights, a neighborhood in northern Manhattan. The police said that
Cedeno had a machete and was ready to confront the officer, who had no
choice but to shoot him. However, witnesses said Cedeno was running
away from the police, and it was later determined that Cedeno was shot in
the back.3 Giuliani declared that he would always support the police unless
there was proof to the contrary. At a news conference about the Cedeno
shooting he emphasized that officers would always have his support
because they were sworn to protect the public. Asked if he thought that
police brutality should be an issue in his reelection campaign, he said that
teens running around in the streets at 3:00 a.m. carrying machetes should be
the focus.4 The officer eventually admitted that he was chasing Cedeno
because he thought the boy had a gun, and Manhattan district attorney
Robert Morgenthau ruled that Pellegrini did not act inappropriately when he
shot the teen.5
Another Giuliani tactic when police were involved in killing people of
color was simply to remain silent. For example, in the early morning of
December 22, 1994, twenty-nine-year-old Anthony Baez was playing
football with his three brothers when for the second time the football hit a
parked police car. Officer Francis Livoti got out of the car, cursed at the
brothers, told them to stop playing, and reentered the vehicle. The brothers
continued throwing the football; Livoti again got out the car and began
arguing with them. When David Baez, one of the brothers, began to
verbally protest Livoti’s behavior, the police officer arrested him. Anthony
Baez protested his brother’s arrest, Livoti attempted to arrest him, Anthony
resisted, and Livoti placed him in a chokehold. The boys’ father came down
from his apartment begging the officer to let his son go. Livoti finally
released Anthony, who fell to the ground and was handcuffed.6
According to an Amnesty International report, Anthony Baez “was left
face-down on the ground in a prone position for around ten to fifteen
minutes before being dragged into a police car, with no attempt made to
resuscitated him.” He was taken in the police car to a hospital, where he
was pronounced dead about an hour later. The medical examiner concluded
that he died of “asphyxia due to compression of the neck and chest,” as well
acute asthma, and classified the death as a homicide. Officer Livoti had
fourteen prior complaints of brutality on his record yet remained on the
force.7 Giuliani remained silent, expressing no words of condolences to the
Baez family and never apologizing to them for Anthony’s death.8

Amnesty International
The growing number of police brutality cases in New York and the mayor’s
refusal to address the problem in any serious way led Amnesty International
(AI) to investigate. AI’s Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New
York City Police Department was one of the most critical reports issued on
the topic. After an eighteen-month investigation, AI found the NYPD
responsible for the “ill treatment, or excessive use of force” that resulted in
“ill treatment or death” in ninety cases from the 1980s to early 1996. By
that time, the NYPD employed over thirty-eight thousand officers, making
it the largest police department in the nation: “The allegations include
people being repeatedly struck with fists, batons, or other instruments, often
after minor disputes with officers on the street; death in police custody; and
shootings in apparent violation of the NYPD’s own very stringent
guidelines. The victims include men and women, juveniles and people from
a variety of social, racial and ethnic backgrounds.” But the report noted that
“evidence suggests that the large majority of the victims of police abuse are
racial minorities, particularly African-Americans and people of Latin
American or Asian descent.”9
AI was not able to draw conclusions about the accuracy of all the case
reports because the events were in dispute and there was a “lack of public
disclosure surrounding investigations into police misconduct. . . . However,
the information gathered suggests that police brutality and unjustifiable
force is nevertheless a widespread problem, with a pattern of similar abuses
occurring over many years.”10
The largest number of cases reviewed by AI involved accusations of
excessive physical force being used during arrests, disputes, or other
incidents on the streets: “The most common forms of ill-treatment alleged
were repeated kicks or punches by officers using fists, batons, or other
instruments such as police radios or flashlights, sometimes while the
suspect was handcuffed or otherwise restrained. In most cases injuries were
sustained which required medical treatment, and in at least a dozen cases
the injuries were severe enough to require the victim to spend some time in
the hospital.” AI gathered information on ninety cases of alleged ill-
treatment or death of citizens by the police. Its sample included fifteen
cases in which the victim died “after being forcibly restrained.” In some of
these cases death was caused by asphyxia after pressure was applied to the
person’s neck or chest. AI also claimed that in “many of the cases
examined, the alleged victims were not involved in or suspected of criminal
activity prior to their contact with the police but were reportedly ill-treated
after they questioned police authority or became involved in relatively
minor disputes.” Several victims were bystanders who were “allegedly
brutalized after taking photographs or criticizing police treatment of
others.”11
It was also quite common for police who committed brutal acts to charge
their victims with a crime as a way of justifying the use of force. Over two-
thirds of the cases researched by AI involved African American and Latino
citizens; most of the officers involved were white. The majority of victims
killed were from minority groups. The Civilian Complaint Review Board’s
biannual reports note that minorities were disproportionately the victims of
police brutality. From January to June 1995, 75.9 percent of those who filed
complaints with the board were black and over 25 percent were Latino. A
little more than 21 percent were white. Of the officers accused of brutality
between January and June 1995, just over 69 percent were white, 17.5
percent were Latino, and 12.5 percent were black.12
The NYPD did not cooperate with AI, which turned to other sources,
including the victims’ attorneys, to learn that very few of the officers in
their study were ever punished for their actions—in fact, many of them
were later promoted. Rarely was a police officer accused of abuse indicted
and even more rarely were those indicted found guilty. One reason was the
“high threshold for proving criminal charges against police officers”;
another was the “code of silence among police officers.”13
Complaints of police brutality rose sharply in the first year of Giuliani’s
mayoralty, 1994, when the CCRB received 4,920 new complaints, up by
37.43 percent over 1993. Commissioner Bratton asserted that the CCRB
figures did not take into account the merger of the NYPD with the Transit
and Housing Authority Police, but AI noted that the mergers would only
account for a small proportion of the increase. Police officials suggested
that the sharp rise in complaints was because of the increase in “arrests and
police activity during an intensive anti-crime drive in the city during the
past two years.” Thus the Zero Tolerance and broken windows policies
were cited as a major reason for the increase in arrests.14
One of the most noted cases during the Giuliani period was the January
1995 police murder of nineteen-year-old Anthony Rosario Jr. and his
cousin, twenty-two-year-old Hilton Vega, and the wounding of Freddie
Bonilla Jr., all of whom were accused of attempting to rob the elderly
occupants of a Bronx apartment. Expecting Rosario and Vega to show up,
one of the apartment’s occupants called the police. When Rosario, Vega,
and Bonilla arrived, officers Patrick Brosnan and James Crowe were on
hand and confronted them. The cops later claimed that Rosario reached for
his gun, so they fired at them. A March 1995 grand jury did not indict the
officers, although the CCRB found their story implausible because forensic
evidence proved that Rosario and Vega had been shot in the back of the
head, torso, back, and underarms, indicating that they had raised their hands
to surrender. A pathologist hired by one of the families concluded that the
victims had been lying on the floor when shot. The CCRB sent its report to
Commissioner Bratton, who criticized the agency for conducting an
investigation while a federal inquiry was in progress. The CCRB
maintained that it had completed its investigation before the federal inquiry
had gotten underway. AI examined the autopsy report of Hilton Vega and
reported that he had been “shot in the back from two sides with different
bullets, both coming from behind.”15
The Justice Committee of the New York City chapter of the National
Congress for Puerto Rican Rights reported that Officer Brosnan was a
friend of Giuliani’s and had headed his security team during his campaign
for mayor. In February 1996, thirteen months after the Rosario and Vega
murders, Brosnan was awarded a line of duty disability pension, having
claimed that he experienced hearing loss after he and Crowe fired so many
shots at Rosario, Vega, and Bonilla.16
The Amnesty International report noted that the CCRB received 3,961
complaints between January and June 1995 but only 1,285 (less than a
third) proceeded to a full investigation, only 119 (less than a tenth) were
substantiated, and three-quarters were “unsubstantiated” due to lack of
sufficient evidence. For a case to be substantiated, there needs to be
sufficient credible evidence that the officer was involved in misconduct.17
AI expressed its concern that the CCRB lacked its full quota of
investigators despite the increase in complaints—rather than the eighty-
seven investigators it was required to receive in 1987, it had only fifty-one,
thanks to Giuliani’s cut in the board’s budget. AI pointed out that the CCRB
may not receive a number of complaints about brutality and other abuses
that take place between midnight and 8:00 a.m. because even though CCRB
officials met regularly with precinct commanders, most commanders were
not on duty during that time period to take complaints. Also, AI pointed
out, a number of people claiming police brutality just filed civilian
complaints rather than complaints before the review board, indicating a lack
of confidence in the agency.18
Moving on to the relationship between the NYPD and the CCRB, AI
characterized it as “increasingly strained,” noting that even as late as 1994
the NYPD might still have been “reluctant in practice to accept a
completely independent police complaints machinery.” In addition to its
ongoing undermining of the CCRB, the NYPD specifically objected to the
board’s initiating of its own investigations in cases where there were
concurrent investigations by the NYPD and Internal Affairs. While Internal
Affairs wanted to conduct joint investigations with the CCRB, the CCRB
wanted to remain completely independent of the police agency. As a
consequence, Internal Affairs and the CCRB interviewed the same
witnesses in any given case, causing confusion. Although the CCRB was
willing to cooperate with Internal Affairs, it refused to share information
with it, insisting that because its investigations had to remain independent
the board was opposed to joint reports with any arm of the police
department. Agreeing with the CCRB’s stance, AI asserted that it “believes
that it is important for the CCRB to be seen to retain its independence and
that joint investigations and joint findings with the NYPD are not consistent
with an independent investigative body.”19
In addressing many misconduct complaints, the police department
ignored the work of the CCRB. From July to December 1994, according to
AI, the police commissioner resolved eighty police officer misconduct
complaints that had been substantiated by the CCRB: an administrative trial
was held for thirty-two cases; twenty-two cases had the charges dismissed;
and in seven cases the accused officers were found innocent. Only in three
cases were the officers found guilty.20 AI noted the dramatic drop from the
1992 findings, in which 63 percent of the officers accused of misconduct
were found guilty.
According to AI, the CCRB claimed that data for 1995 also indicated that
the police commissioner dismissed a high percentage of cases. Under David
Dinkins the commissioner had acted on 60 percent of the CCRB’s
recommendations for disciplinary action; Commissioner Bratton only acted
on 19 percent of analogous recommendations for the period from January
1994 to June 1995. One reason AI gave for this decline was that the Office
for Administrative Trials often moved to have cases dismissed because the
statute of limitations had expired. However, a CCRB executive informed AI
that there was no statute of limitations on police conduct that constituted a
crime, so assaults and other offences considered criminal offenses “could
still be tried administratively even if no criminal charges had been filed.”21
The CCRB, AI asserted, was quite limited when addressing police brutality
because it could not investigate an act unless a formal complaint was filed.
It was also restricted only to investigation and providing recommendations
to the police commissioner.22
AI recommended, among other things, an “independent inquiry into
allegations of police brutality and excessive force by the NYPD,” and it
also called on the city administration and the NYPD to support the CCRB
as an independent investigative agency: “The CCRB should maintain its
independence in its investigation of complaints by members of the public
against the police.” AI also agreed with the Mollen Commission’s
recommendation for the establishment of an independent oversight agency
to monitor corruption and for a thorough review of police training policies
and programs.23
Giuliani criticized AI’s work as a “scattershot report” and not a “real
analysis.” And while the document grabbed headlines, it did not seem to
hurt Giuliani’s popularity. Crime was down dramatically and his poll
numbers were up. In early November 1996 his overall approval rating was
54 percent. Among black voters, however, his disapproval rating was 58
percent.24
Despite the Amnesty International report and the CCRB’s report noting
the increase in complaints of police brutality, Giuliani did nothing to
address the problem at a systemic level. Instead, the administration just
threw money at it. Between 1990 and 1995, New York City spent $87
million to settle lawsuits concerning police brutality: $12 million in 1990,
$24 million in 1994, and $9 million in the last three months of 1995 alone.
According to the CCRB, there was a 37.4 percent increase in police
brutality complaints in 1994 compared to 1993, and personal liability
claims (rather than civil rights violations) against police officers increased
80 percent over the last decade. Between June 1996 and June 1997 the city
settled in court 503 cases of brutality.25 In most of those cases, police
officers involved in the crimes were not punished. Giuliani’s refusal to
address either the skyrocketing number of police brutality cases or the
financial impact on the city indicated that he was willing to accept that this
was just the price of doing business. This approach would be sorely tested
by the cases of Abner Louima in 1997 and Amadou Diallo in 1999.
 The Torture of Abner Louima
In the early morning of August 9, 1997, police were called to a disturbance
at the Club Rendez-Vous, a popular night spot on Flatbush Avenue between
Farragut and Glenwood Roads. Several officers rushed to the scene where a
crowd of about two hundred people stood outside of the club and two
women were fighting. Haitian immigrant Abner Louima was among those
in the crowd. According to Louima, he attempted to break up the fight but
was confronted by officer Justin Volpe, who began arguing with him and
eventually struck him. According to Volpe, Louima punched him, so he
attempted to arrest him. Both Louima and eyewitnesses denied that he
struck Volpe. Instead, Louima said, he was knocked to the ground and then
hit by several cops, handcuffed, arrested, placed in a police vehicle, and
taken to the Seventieth Precinct.26 According to later court testimony, en
route to the precinct the car stopped at a secluded section on Glenwood
Road where police officers Tommy Wiese and Charles Schwarz, who were
escorting Louima, began beating him. One of them even hit him in the head
with a radio. Afterward they proceeded to another secluded area, where
officers Volpe and Tom Bruder, who arrived in a separate police car, began
beating him while also using offensive insults against his race and his
Haitian origins. By the time he arrived at the police station, his face was
covered in blood and he could not swallow. Louima claimed that while
being booked the officers pulled down his pants and walked him through
the station naked from the waist down.27
According to Louima, Volpe and other officers took him to a restroom,
where Volpe called him a “fucking Haitian” and threw him to the ground.
While Schwarz held Louima down and stepped on his mouth in order to
stop him from screaming, Volpe penetrated his rectum with the handle of a
toilet plunger. According to Louima, Volpe then removed the handle, which
was covered in feces and blood, and forced it into his mouth. There were
other officers in the area who heard him screaming, Louima said, but they
did nothing to stop the torture or report the situation. In addition, Louima
claimed that Volpe threatened to kill him and his family if he told anyone.28
Louima was then taken to a cell—in handcuffs and with his pants still
down—where he remained for several hours before being taken in an
ambulance to the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital. Although he
told the EMS technicians what had taken place, they filed a false report that
covered up the crimes committed by the police.29 In the hospital, Louima
was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest,
obstructing governmental administration, and third-degree assault.30 Tests
revealed that he had a torn sphincter, which resulted in the loss of bowel
control, a punctured colon, and a torn bladder.
After learning that he had been arrested, members of Louima’s family
attempted to see him in the hospital but were denied access by the police.
Eventually family members, along with lawyers who had been contacted,
did manage to see him. Members of the Haitian American Alliance, a New
York City–based organization that advocated for Haitian immigrants and
Haitian Americans, as well as others familiar with the incident, called the
local news channel NY1, the New York Times, the New York Daily News,
and other media outlets that could make the public aware of what took place
at the Seventieth Precinct on the night of August 9.
In his suit against the city, Louima accused the PBA of taking part in the
cover-up of his torture by colluding with the four police officers who were
charged with brutality. When PBA representatives received incriminating
information about the four officers’ criminal behavior, they did not bring it
to light: “Instead of coming forward and promptly reporting this
information as they are obligated to do as police officers, the PBA and its
police officer agents suppressed it and instead, adopted and orchestrated an
affirmative strategy of obstruction and falsification.” Based on his
“information and belief,” Louima accused the four officers of meeting with
a representative of the PBA on August 13 in the basement of the precinct
station house to “devise a common story, inconsistent with the truth” of
what took place. To bolster their chances that he would not press charges,
they planned to publicly defame Louima by claiming he sustained his
injuries in a homosexual affair at the Rendez-Vous. The PBA representative
was also accused of asking other officers at the precinct not to come
forward and to remain silent on the incident.31

Giuliani’s Response to Louima

In an unusual move for him, Giuliani acknowledged the severity of the
incident. The “charges are shocking to any decent human being,” he said.
“These charges, if substantiated, should result in the severest penalties,
including substantial terms of imprisonment and dismissal from the force.”
The mayor and police commissioner Howard Safir then organized a
meeting with leaders of the Haitian community, civic groups, clergy, and
elected officials in an attempt to defuse the situation. In addition to
promising to arrest the culprits, Giuliani pledged to look at the management
of the entire Seventieth Precinct to see why the Louima incident took
place.32 The commissioner reorganized the Seventieth Precinct in August by
reassigning its top command, suspending the desk sergeant who was in
charge on the night of the incident, and assigning a number of officers to
desk duty. Giuliani asked police to put aside their allegiance to their fellow
officers and come forward with any information concerning the Louima
case: “If you really are a police officer of the City of New York, if you
really understand what it means to be a police officer, if you really
understand what it means to protect the lives of other people, then you will
be among the most revulsed and repulsed by what happened here.” Yet
police at the Seventieth Precinct continued their efforts to cover up the
incident—for instance, the plunger handle disappeared and therefore could
not be used as evidence.33
Though Giuliani publicly acknowledged that a “horrible and terrible”
crime had been committed and offered Louima the city’s support and
sympathy, community leaders, municipal officials, civil rights groups, and
others criticized him for not doing enough to stop police brutality. In
response, the mayor created a twenty-eight-member task force to explore
police–community relations. Its members included City Council member
Una Clark; Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal
Defense and Education Fund; Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the
Anti-defamation League of B’nai B’rith; author Stanley Crouch; Christine
Quinn of the New York City Anti-violence Project; Michael Meyers,
executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition; and Norman
Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.34
While some of its members were hopeful that the task force could be
productive, others were skeptical.35 Giuliani requested they develop a
curriculum for establishing a structured dialogue between the police and the
community and also set up forums in various communities to give citizens
the opportunity to meet members of the NYPD in order to improve police–
citizen interactions. The strong civil rights advocates on the task force,
including Siegel, Fung, and Meyers, insisted that the body also address the
causes of police brutality and offer solutions. They challenged the mayor’s
push for the group to limit its scope to police–community relations “instead
of urging us to investigate how police officers who have abused citizens
were able to become cops in the first place, what kind of training they
receive, why officials who are accused of excessive force are rarely
disciplined, and what can be done to break the blue wall of silence.”36
Giuliani did not take the work of the task force seriously; rather, it was a
publicity maneuver to demonstrate to the public that he was taking action.
He never provided it with the full-time staff or the $12 million to $15
million he promised. And although he promised to be involved in its work,
between September 16, 1997, and January 20, 1998, he failed to attend any
of its functions, including the five public hearings. Moreover, although he
assured the members of the task force that the NYPD would be available to
them to answer questions, that was never the case. Most alarmingly, he
actually reprimanded the task force for not having a “more respectful
attitude” toward the police and accused it of going after the NYPD, arguing
that “cop bashing was analogous to racism and anti-Semitism.”37
Giuliani finally attended a task force meeting on January 20, 1998, at
which he told the members that they had sixty days to complete their work.
Members were under the impression that they had a year to investigate and
produce a report; Giuliani had limited them to seven months. Despite the
obstacles, they did submit a final report. Some of its most significant
suggestions included eliminating the rule that prohibited prosecutors from
interrogating police officers accused of police brutality within the first
forty-eight hours of the alleged event; adopting an affirmative action plan;
establishing a residency requirement for police; creating a police–
community relations training program; and increasing officers’ pay.38
Individuals and community groups concerned with reform would
increasingly reiterate most of these recommendations.
Siegel, Meyers, and Fung did not think the task force recommendations
went far enough, so they produced a minority report highlighting a number
of recommendations that the majority members had refused to consider.
These included the “establishment of a permanent special state prosecutor
for police corruption and brutality,” the formation of an independent body
to “execute a top-down investigation of the practices of the NYPD Training
Academy,” the establishment of “elected police Advisory Boards,” and
greater cooperation between the Guardians, the organizations representing
black police officers, and the Latino Officers Association. The authors of
the minority report also accused the mayor of pushing a public relations
stunt to center stage instead of addressing police brutality. What the authors
meant by stunt was that Giuliani was trying to portray the real problem with
police and communities of color as one of public relations. If his effort to
focus attention away from brutality were successful, they wrote, it would
“mask the pervasive lawlessness among a significant percentage of police
officers. New Yorkers will be in danger from those sworn to serve and
protect them from crime and from those who are obliged to uphold their
constitutional liberties.”39
Angered by the task force’s final report, at a March 26 press conference
Giuliani went on record as opposing some of its recommendations. Later, a
spokesperson for Giuliani pointed to the residency requirement as an
example. It was untenable because the state legislature would never approve
it. The reality was that Giuliani had no interest in the work of the task force.
He even took the opportunity at his news conference to call some of the
members “police bashers” who did not bother to recognize that his
administration had reduced the crime and murder rates. Una Clarke
responded in the New York Times by asserting that she joined the task force
because she thought Giuliani was serious about addressing the problem of
the perception among some in the black and Latino communities that the
police were an “occupying force rather than a friend.” The mayor’s
criticism of the task force’s hard work, she said, meant that now
“everything is as it was before Louima.”40

The City Council Responds

Una Clark overstated somewhat. Although Giuliani himself had no
intention of addressing police brutality, Louima’s torture moved others to
act. The extensive media coverage and the protests triggered by the Louima
case persuaded the City Council to form the Committee on Public Safety,
which would hold public hearings in August and September 1997 in an
attempt to not only get at the root of the problem but to seek solutions. The
hearings attracted a wide spectrum of individuals and groups, including the
Latino Officers Association, the Center for Law and Social Justice, attorney
Colin A. Moore, the Coalition of Harmony, 100 Blacks in Law
Enforcement Who Care, congressman Major Owens, the Legal Aid Society,
New York City public advocate Mark Green, Manhattan borough president
Ruth Messinger, the Fortune Society, and a representative of District
Council 1707 of American Federation of State, County, and Municipal
Employees (AFSCME), a labor union representing twenty-five thousand
members working in day care, home care, the Head Start program, and
private nonprofit agencies.41
Giuliani faced opposition from public advocate Mark Green. The public
advocate is a citywide elected position that serves as a watchdog for
citizens by making sure they receive the city services to which they are
entitled. The advocate, who also assures that New Yorkers have a voice in
shaping city policy, is an ex officio member of the City Council who can
introduce legislation.42 In his testimony before the committee, Green
maintained that the “torture of Abner Louima is part of a pattern of police
abuse, brutality and misconduct that is an unfortunate part of the history of
our city.” He pointed out that despite the growing number of incidents, the
Giuliani administration had failed to address the problem and the NYPD
had failed to “initiate disciplinary action against the majority of police
officers who are the subjects of substantiated complaints, rendering the
civilian complaint process a sham. In 1995, out of 196 substantiated
complaints, 62 were not even prosecuted by the Police Department.” Of the
247 police officers about whom the commissioner reached a final
disposition, 135 (close to 60 percent) faced no charges.43
Green criticized Giuliani’s broken promise to spend $12 million to $15
million for the task force, which he characterized as a purely investigative
body that ended up having no clear mission. He was also critical of the
mayor for not properly funding the CCRB. The absence of a role for the
CCRB in Giuliani’s response to the Louima incident was “striking,” Greene
said, and the fact that no CCRB member was on the mayor’s task force
demonstrated he was not going to deal seriously with police violence.44
Esmeralda Simmons, executive director of the Center for Law and Social
Justice (CLSJ), was even more critical of Giuliani. The CLSJ, founded in
1985, is a department in the School of Continuing Education and External
Programs at Medgar Evers College whose objective “is to meet an existing
need within the borough of Brooklyn and the City of New York for a civil
rights, social justice and legally oriented community based advocacy
institution.” From the start CLSJ addressed police brutality. In 1988 it
created a Police and Racial Violence Project to provide free legal assistance
to victims and help them file complaints with the CCRB. It also sponsors
educational and training workshops on issues related to police brutality.45
Simmons emphasized that Louima’s experience was no aberration,
especially for New Yorkers of color, and that the reason for such attacks
was that racism was pervasive in the NYPD. In a pointed criticism,
Simmons blamed Giuliani for stoking racist sentiment among the police.
The “mayor’s behavior and its implications have not been lost on New York
City police officers. If the commander in chief behaves in such a fashion,
why shouldn’t police officers feel that it’s okay to have a violent and racist
perspective towards New Yorkers of color? Why shouldn’t they believe that
racist, violent behavior is permissible?” In addition to noting the increase in
brutality cases, she found it almost more alarming that the number of deaths
of suspects killed by police also increased. While the number between 1992
and 1996 was 187, 115 were killed between January 1994 and December
1996; all happened under Giuliani’s watch. “The Louima case and dozens
of others like it underscores the urgent need to address racism in the NYPD
as well as deficiencies in the hiring, training, supervisory and disciplinary
practices.”46
Simmons, too, called on the state to enact a residency law for all police
officers, asserting that “police officers are public servants and, as such,
should be subject to public scrutiny.” Police, Simmons insisted, should be
required to carry and show when requested “business-like identification
cards, including a picture of the officer, a physical description of the
officer,” and the badge number. “I also called for cops to carry the number
of their immediate supervisor and phone number of the CCRB,” Simmons
declared. Simmons’s recommendations that police use several measures,
including carry cards for identification, would become an essential
component of the Right-to-Know Act (discussed in chapter 11). She also
proposed that video cameras with audio and time codes should be installed
in every precinct and in cars. Other recommendations included an
independent, all-civilian complaint review board that was fully funded and
staffed. To assure its independence, all civilians on that board should not be
civilian NYPD employees or appointed by the mayor: “It also must have
the power to determine the form of disciplinary action that should be
taken.” Cops who commit racist acts, including using racist slurs, should be
“immediately subjected to disciplinary action, including suspension or
dismissal.” CLSJ called for the appointment of an independent special
prosecutor to “investigate and prosecute criminality, incidents of police and
racial violence.” And it also called for the U.S. Department of Justice to
monitor the NYPD because of “continuous unlawful violations of persons’
civil rights, particularly people of color.”47
The group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, established in 1995 and
consisting of men and women throughout the field of law enforcement, also
spoke to the City Council’s committee on the torture of Louima and police
brutality in New York. It claimed that police brutality was “rooted in the
difficulty involved in controlling human behavior.” Police departments
recruit from a public that is “bombarded with negative stereotypes and
racist views. Law enforcement had become more complex because of the
difficulty of identifying those who harbor racist views: “Many of the
citizens who possess these aggressive and racist views find themselves in a
blue uniform with the responsibility of policing the same public they do not
respect.” A racist cop is not exposed until he commits an act of brutality.
The problem cannot be addressed simply by discussing whether a
sensitivity course should be required. The solution required a “successful
marriage between community leaders and police personnel”—and police of
color must be part of that endeavor.48
Among specific solutions, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement called for
identifying and monitoring precincts with high levels of police brutality
allegations and officers who have a tendency toward abuse, and monitoring
areas with a high percentage of arrests. The group also called for the
creation of a specialized unit that would answer to the police commissioner
and comprise high-ranking officers. The unit should have an investigatory
component, including an Immediate Abuse Response Team that would
maintain around the clock coverage. Further, the unit should keep a list of
types of incidents that lead to complaints, respond to such incidents, and
evaluate the climate at the scene. Each unit member should receive training
in conflict resolution, community tensions, and precinct-level cultural
concerns.
The Latino Officers Association, New York City, Inc. (LOA) also
expressed its concerns to the City Council Committee. LOA represented
1,500 police officers, the majority of whom were Latino and African
American. All police officers, the association said, should be required to
“attend community meeting or events in the communities on a regular
basis.” This would permit police officers to “identify with the community
they’re providing services for and enable them to interact with the residents
independent of peer pressure.” The NYPD, LOA said, needed to allow
officers to seek help for stress without penalizing them or destroying their
careers. It should provide confidential services outside the department
through a trust fund. Just as important, the NYPD “must move away from
the traditional paramilitary approach and mentality.” Police should adopt a
“corporate, service-oriented approach to assist and provide services to our
community residents.”49
The LOA insisted that the department’s racial makeup should reflect that
of the city as a whole, yet 70 percent of the force was white while 60
percent of city residents were people of color: “A police force which is not
reflective of the communities in which it serves resembles an ‘army of
occupation.’” The LOA also mentioned the issue of residency, saying that
the NYPD should recruit officers from the city because nonresident cops
“see themselves as having authority over the very lives of the people they
are paid to protect and serve.” Regarding the community, the group
proposed allowing community “leaders input in assignment of police
personnel,” having an outside body to “investigate complaints with
subpoena powers,” and creating a hotline independent of the NYPD to take
calls from the public.50
Labor also had a place at the table. Ray LaForest, staff representative for
DC 1707 AFSCME, told the Public Safety Committee that the Abner
Louima torture had sparked outrage and anguish among his union’s
members, the vast majority of whom were African American, Latino, and
African Caribbean. He highlighted other cases of police assault against
African Caribbean residents of Brooklyn: Haitian Clement Bien-Aime had
his knee smashed so badly by a Seventieth Precinct cop that he was unable
to walk; Patrick Antoine, also from Haiti, and who was arrested along with
Louima, was beaten by the police as well; Shawn Anderson Walters, of
Trinidadian origins, claimed that on April 29 he was pulled over for not
wearing a seatbelt by two cops who called him a “fucking nigger,” then
punched him in the eye, beat, and kicked him.51
 Taking It to the Streets
In addition to sparking impassioned testimony before the Public Safety
Committee, Abner Louima’s torture helped to unleash a flurry of
demonstrations. Few blacks had the opportunity to speak directly to the
mayor or voice their outrage at City Council hearings, so they took to the
streets in an attempt to pressure those with the power to effect change. For
black activists, Abner Louima’s fate was part of a long history of police
abuse and violence against people of color—which they were well aware
had intensified under Giuliani’s more aggressive policing and indifference
to the consequences. Louima’s torture was simply additional proof that
blacks and Latinos were under siege and that those in power were not going
to take any serious action to halt police brutality. So people of African
origins and Latinos joined with the religious community, labor groups, and
others and organized to put pressure on the mayor and police department.
On August 17, just a week after Louima was arrested, Haitian activists in
New York staged a massive demonstration in Brooklyn. Telling the press
that they were “not satisfied with the way the mayor is handling the
situation,” John Alexis of Haitian Enforcement against Racism, a grassroots
organization, marched with thousands of others from Club Rendez-Vous to
the Seventieth Precinct on Lawrence Street.52 Spectators along the route
cheered the marchers who chanted, “Seven-oh, shut it down.” Haitian
demonstrators drew comparisons for the press between police repression in
New York and in Haiti, where the Tonton Macoute, a special force created
in 1959 by dictator François Duvalier, regularly captured and tortured
people who opposed the leader.53
The Haitian American Alliance and the Haitian Enforcement against
Racism also organized a protest at City Hall on August 29, with support
from Haitian clergy and other groups.54 A few days before that
demonstration, Giuliani sent his only black deputy mayor, Rudy
Washington, to the organizing committee in an effort to convince them to
call it off. Speaking to the press after the demonstration, Tatiana Wah,
chairperson of the Haitian American Alliance, accused Giuliani of ignoring
the Haitian community.55 Like so many other groups, the Haitian American
Alliance—made up of about eighty professionals, including doctors,
lawyers, accountants, and teachers—demanded that the mayor make the
CCRB more effective by hiring additional investigators and staff, and
granting it subpoena power and the right to hold officers in contempt. In
addition, officers found guilty of brutality should be dismissed, denied their
pensions, and not transferred to desk duty or simply denied vacation pay.56
Wah was among a group of younger leaders of New York’s Haitian and
Haitian American communities who were more invested in American
politics and distinguished themselves from older, Haitian-born community
leaders who were both more closely drawn to events in their native country.
Wah and her peers advocated for an independent course for their
community, and instead of turning for leadership to conventional
organizations such as the NAACP or well-known protest leaders such as the
Reverend Al Sharpton they insisted that people of Haitian decent were
capable of articulating their own grievances and should, therefore, lead their
own struggle.57
The August 29 “Day of Outrage” protestors gathered at Grand Army
Plaza, near the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and marched
through downtown Flatbush and across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall to
meet up with throngs of other protesters. The press reported that the
demonstrators were overwhelmingly Haitian Americans, but flags from
Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic were also in
evidence. Ten thousand protesters, the largest demonstration the city had
seen in years, carried signs targeting the mayor––one read simply
“Brutaliani”—and chanted, “Shame on you,” among other things, to the
police officers assigned to monitor the crowd. Many demonstrators carried
toilet plungers as symbols of Louima’s torture. While it was mostly a
peaceful event, a number of demonstrators taunted and scuffled with the
police and some blocked traffic. The NYPD reported arresting 110 people,
some of whom claimed that officers had physically and verbally abused
them. One protester told the press that the “police have too much authority”
and were “overusing it.”58
Giuliani was upset by the Day of Outrage, claiming that while he agreed
with the call for justice, the demonstration sent another message that was
“nasty and vicious.”59 At a press conference at City Hall, his focus was on
praising the 2,500 officers assigned to the march “for their exceptional
work”: “They were in fact at various times provoked, and they didn’t take
the bait in any way, shape or form.”60
 Almost two years after Louima’s arrest and torture, in late May 1999
Officer Volpe, age twenty-seven, pled guilty in federal district court to
sodomizing Louima with a stick from a toilet plunger.61 In December he was
sentenced to thirty years and ordered to pay Louima $277,499 in
restitution.62 On June 8, 1999, Officer Schwarz was found guilty of violating
Louima’s civil rights. On March 6, 2000, Officers Weise and Bruder were
convicted in federal court of conspiring to obstruct a federal investigation
into the assault of Louima.63 Schwarz, Weise, and Bruder appealed their
sentences, and in February 2002 a federal appeals court overturned their
convictions on the grounds that there was no evidence that they obstructed
justice.64 The only police officer who was punished for the Louima torture
was Volpe.
After Schwarz’s conviction, Giuliani praised the NYPD for “breaking
down the appearance that there is some kind of reluctance on the part of
police officers to testify against other police officers when they have
knowledge of serious criminal conduct.” The mayor was referring to
detective Eric Turetzky and officer Mark Schofield, who testified during
Schwarz’s trial that they saw Schwarz walk Louima, handcuffed and with
his pants down, into the restroom.65 Giuliani’s choice of words indicated that
he remained in denial regarding the pervasiveness of police brutality, and
his subsequent nonaction proved that he planned to do nothing to change
his policies of over-policing black people.

Amadou Diallo
The ghastliest police brutality case during the Giuliani years took place in
December 1999, and it would finally leave Giuliani no choice but to act to
address police violence. Twenty-two-year-old West African immigrant
Amadou Diallo was a Guinea national who was born in Sinoe County,
Liberia, in 1975 and came to the United States in 1996 seeking a better life.
Like many other African immigrants, he eked out a living as a street
peddler in Lower Manhattan, selling items as diverse as videos, socks,
gloves, and umbrellas. His goal was to earn a college degree and climb the
ladder of economic success. However, on February 4, 1999, at about 12:40
a.m. he encountered four members of the NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit
(SCU).
 Diallo had entered the vestibule of his Bronx apartment after a long
workday and a late-night dinner when SCU officers Edward McMellon,
Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, and Richard Murphy pulled up in a Ford
Taurus. Giuliani had created the 138-officer SCU as a component of his
Zero Tolerance policy, and its mission was to confiscate illegally held guns
from New Yorkers. The SCU slogan, “We own the night,” carried the
message that the most dangerous individuals on the streets were not those
breaking the law but members of the unit.66
The four officers who spotted Diallo in the vestibule claimed during their
trial in February 2000 that he resembled a serial rapist they had been
seeking for over a year and said they had identified themselves as police
officers and demanded he put his hands in the air. When he reached into his
pocket and pulled out what they thought was a gun, they fired forty-one
shots, striking him nineteen times and killing him. During his opening
statement, the attorney representing Officer Murphy said that when his
client “looked into that vestibule and saw Mr. Diallo standing . . . with his
left hand up and in his right hand . . . a black object, which he saw to be a
gun, which he believed to be a gun, which he perceived to be a gun, he had
that sick feeling in his stomach that he was about to be shot. And he
reacted. He fired four times.”67 However, an eyewitness said that the cops
did not identify themselves but simply opened fire. A police investigation
found that Diallo did not have a gun and had simply pulled out his wallet.
The four SCU officers took advantage of the controversial forty-eight-hour
rule and refused to come forward and give their version of events. They
were put on desk duty and not suspended. Soon thereafter a Bronx district
attorney announced he would convene a grand jury.68
Giuliani asked the outraged public to be patient until he could uncover
the facts.69 He also claimed, falsely, that all four officers had “good
records,” failing to mention that three of them had previous complaints
lodged against them. McMellon, Boss, and Carroll had shot suspects, and
Boss had shot and killed an unarmed man in October 1997.70
Despite the mayor’s plea for patience, protests erupted throughout the
city. There was one on February 7 outside the murder scene where over one
thousand protested, but the most intense demonstrations took place at the
NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. The latter began in early March and
were organized by the Reverend Al Sharpton, a longtime political activist
from Brooklyn who has been in the forefront of a number of campaigns
against police brutality. Sharpton declared on March 12 that “5 to 12”
people a day were going to be arrested in front of 1 Police Plaza “because
we want the world to see the city is willing to arrest nonviolent protesters
but not willing to arrest police that would shoot an unarmed man 41
times.”71
Sharpton managed to mobilize people across racial, class, and ideological
lines to lead the largest protest in New York City history. The Diallo
demonstrations started in early March with fifty protesters led by Sharpton;
twelve were arrested, and Sharpton promised daily protests until the officers
who shot Diallo were themselves arrested.72 By mid-March, an average of
two hundred demonstrators a day were arrested in front of 1 Police Plaza.
By the twelfth day of the protest, 820 people had been arrested, far
surpassing the previous record for civil disobedience arrests (seventy
protesters during the two-week Downstate Medical Center campaign in
1963). By the last day of the Diallo demonstrations 1,200 people had been
arrested.
Sharpton was able to articulate the collective outrage at the rain of police
terror falling on New York City, and he was a primary reason for the
success of the Diallo demonstrations. He characterized the city
administration as uncaring, even when it was evident that the police had
committed murder. He masterfully orchestrated events by placing high-
profile celebrities and political figures in the front lines, fully aware that the
arrest of notables such as actors Susan Sarandon, Ruby Dee, and Ossie
Davis along with the Reverend Jesse Jackson would draw massive media
attention.73
Sharpton and the National Action Network’s success was largely due to
their efforts to build a broad coalition across racial lines. Sharpton had
created NAN in 1991 as a way to move from strictly street demonstrations
to broader-based work that included lobbying, coalition building, and
electoral politics. Claiming to be in the tradition of Martin Luther King in
that it uses nonviolent methods, NAN asserts that it has brought into a
national discussion on racial profiling “the continued battle for police
accountability, coalescing Black and Brown to fight for immigrant rights
and education and labor reform.” The organization insists that it maintains
strong platforms when it comes to law enforcement, election reform,
prisoner rights, workers’ rights, and a host of other social justice issues, but
its biggest issue is police brutality. It was not unusual during the Diallo
protest to see political figures and representatives from black, Latino, Asian
American, and white communities together at a National Action Network
meeting.74
Labor played a significant role in the Diallo protests. Dennis Rivera,
president of the 150,000-member Local 1199, United Healthcare Workers
East of Service Employees International Union, said many of his members
were victims of police brutality in their communities. Members of the union
made signs for the demonstrations and phoned their fellow asking them to
join the demonstrations; the union also donated over $100,000 to the
campaign.75 Other unions and union leaders joining Local 1199 included the
National Health and Human Services Workers / SEIU; Anna Burger of the
SEIU International executive board; Lee Saunders, administrator of
AFSSCME District 37; and the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys / UAW
Local 2325.76
Students and faculty from the City University of New York (CUNY) also
joined the movement, carrying signs that read “Books Not Bullets” and
shouting “CUNY against police brutality!” One professor told the Baruch
College student newspaper, “The Diallo case is a catalyst for change in city
policy.” Another faculty member called for the firing of police
commissioner Howard Safir, and a third said Diallo could have been any
typical CUNY student—a young, hardworking immigrant who was an avid
reader.77 Columbia University’s Black Student Union, along with other
Columbia student groups, held a memorial service for Diallo.78
One effect of the Diallo protests was to catapult Sharpton into a
leadership position in the broader civil rights movement. In 1999 Sharpton
met with president Bill Clinton and attorney general Janet Reno to discuss
police brutality. That meeting would eventually lead to a presidential order
instructing federal law enforcement agencies to gather data on the race,
ethnicity, and gender of the people they question and arrest.79
After the Diallo killing and the wave of protests, Giuliani announced that
from February 4 to March 24, 1999, the number of arrests by the Street
Crimes Unit fell dramatically to 291 arrests, down from 705 during the
same period a year earlier and 735 in 1996. Moreover, the number of stop,
question, and frisk reports fell from 27,061 in 1998 to 3,502 in the ten
weeks after the killing of Amadou Diallo.80
Under pressure from the protests, the NYPD decided to highlight its
cultural sensitivity training for rookies, which had been in place before the
Diallo killing. “Streetwise: Language, Culture, and Police Work in New
York City,” funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, provided new police
officers with a manual that included common expressions in Spanish,
Haitian Creole, Russian, and several Chinese dialects in an attempt to help
them become more familiar with the city’s diverse population.81 The course,
one of twenty-seven such courses nationwide, offered training in
community-oriented policing and cultural diversity.82
Despite Giuliani’s post-Louima task force and the NYPD’s post-Diallo
efforts at sensitivity training, the mayor took a beating in public opinion.
Only 26 percent of those polled by the Daily News thought the mayor dealt
fairly with blacks and Latinos.83 According to the New York Post, in
February 1998 the mayor’s approval rating was 74 percent. However,
fourteen months later a Quinnipiac University Poll noted that his approval
rating had dropped to 40 percent. Although 89 percent of blacks
disapproved of how Giuliani handled the Diallo incident, only 52 percent of
white New Yorkers shared that feeling.84

The Dorismond Shooting

The Louima and Diallo incidents drew into sharper focus the mayor’s
intransigent position that police brutality was not a problem in the NYPD.
The protests organized around those two cases raised awareness of the
police tactics promoted by Giuliani’s policies and the complaints from
blacks and Latinos of the violence they faced at the hands of the police. But
even though the Louima and Diallo cases wounded Giuliani politically, he
still refused to back away from his aggressive policing campaign. The
Patrick Dorismond case is a case in point.
On March 15, 2000, at about 12:30 a.m., twenty-six-year-old Patrick
Dorismond, a security guard for a business improvement district at
Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden, was waiting for a cab in
front of the Wakamba Lounge on Eighth Avenue near Thirty-Seventh Street
in Manhattan when an undercover police officer attempted to engage him in
a drug transaction. According to the cop, who was part of a drug crackdown
effort that led to over eighteen thousand arrests, Dorismond was outraged
by the attempt and attacked the officer. Anthony Vasquez, a twenty-nine-
year-old detective who was also on the scene, came to the rescue of the
undercover officer being beaten. According to Vasquez’s attorney, when
Dorismond attempted to go for his client’s gun it went off, hitting
Dorismond in the chest and killing the unarmed man.85
Dorismond’s was the third shooting of an unarmed black man by the
police in thirteen months, following Amadou Diallo in February 1999 and
twenty-five-year old Malcolm Ferguson, shot in the Bronx while fleeing
from police earlier in March 2000. Dorismond’s death sparked citywide
condemnation. His funeral at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Brooklyn drew
a crowd of thousands that came out to pay homage and protest his killing.
Giuliani and the NYPD claimed that a number of those in attendance were
disruptive, and twenty-seven people were arrested. Eyewitnesses, including
media sources, asserted that the police were beating people without
provocation while yelling for the crowd to “leave the area or you will be
subject to arrest.” One of the people beaten was Errol Maitland, technical
director and producer at New York’s WBAI Radio. He was thrown to the
ground, beaten, and arrested despite his attempts to let the police know he
was a reporter on the scene. He audiotaped the arrest as it was happening,
and on the recording one can hear him reporting that the police were saying
“Fuck him up.” Maitland was taken to the Coronary Care Unit at Kings
County Hospital in serious condition.86
The mayor did not send his condolences to Dorismond’s family. Instead,
in an unprecedented and illegal move, he ordered the release of
Dorismond’s sealed juvenile arrest record. In an interview on the
conservative news program Fox News Sunday, the mayor said, “People do
act in conformity very often with their prior behavior.” The media “would
not want a picture presented of an altar boy, when in fact, maybe it isn’t an
altar boy, it’s some other situation that may justify, more closely, what the
police officer did.”87
Dorismond’s juvenile record showed that he had been arrested on charges
of robbery, attempted robbery, assault in a driving dispute, and criminal
possession of a weapon. Mark Green, public advocate and mayoral
candidate in the 2001 election, petitioned the New York County Supreme
Court requesting a summary judicial inquiry into the mayor’s statements to
the press and his decision to release Dorismond’s juvenile records. Green
claimed that the mayor violated section 1109 of the City Charter:

A summary inquiry into any alleged violation or neglect of

duty in relation to the property, government, or affairs of the
City may be conducted under an order to be made by any
justice of the supreme court in the first, second, or eleventh
judicial district on application of the mayor, the comptroller,
the public advocate, any five council members the
commissioner of investigation, or any five citizens who are
taxpayers supported by affidavit to the effort that one or
more officers employees or other persons therein named
have knowledge or information concerning such alleged
violation or neglect of duty.88

Dorismond’s juvenile’s criminal record had been sealed pursuant to the

criminal procedure law and the Family Court Act, and the mayor, Green
asserted, did not have the legal authority to release it. The inquiry that
Green sought would reveal how Giuliani got a hold of the sealed record,
how he illegally released it to the public, and how the release was in
violation of sections 166 and 375-1 of the Family Court Act and section
1109 of the City Charter.89
Giuliani did not bother to submit an affidavit responding to the
allegations in Green’s petition. Instead, he sought dismissal of Green’s
petition, arguing that the sealing requirement of juvenile records under the
Family Court Act and criminal procedure law did not apply to deceased
persons. He also claimed that an inquiry went beyond the scope of section
1109 because that law only dealt with corruption and misapplication of city
funds. However, writing the opinion of the court, judge Louise Gruner Gans
asserted that section 1109 did not just apply to misapplication of funds and
corruption but also gave a number of city officials, including the public
advocate, the right to seek a summary inquiry into “any violation of the
provisions of law.”
Green was not on a freewheeling expedition. He wanted to know
whether, for each “disclosure, was the information obtained from records of
the New York City Family Court, the New York Criminal Court, the New
York City Police Department, the New York City Probation Department
and/or files of the State Division of Criminal Justice Services?” If so, had
these records been sealed by court order or by operation of statute or both?
Just as important, was the “Mayor’s disclosure of information from sealed
records a violation of court orders and/or statutes?” The court granted
Green his application for a summary inquiry.90
In the summer of 2000, a Manhattan grand jury refused to indict officer
Anthony Vasquez, declaring that Dorismond’s shooting was an accident.91 In
the early spring of 2003, the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with
Dorismond’s family for $2.25 million. However, the city’s attorneys refused
to admit guilt in his death, saying that “the City continues to feel deep
sympathy for the Dorismond family on the accidental death of their son and
father.”92
Even in his last year in office, Giuliani refused to address police brutality
in any serious way. The mayor’s management report for fiscal year 2001
did not indicate any change of direction when it came to policing. When
discussing the NYPD, Giuliani’s report declared that the “Police
Department’s mission is to reduce crime, disorder, and the fear that these
problems generate throughout the City.” Under the category of police goals
and objectives, the report listed the following: “Reduce the occurrence of
felony crimes, murder, rape, robbery, burglary, felonious assault, grand
larceny, and grand larceny motor vehicle”; “enforcement against felony and
misdemeanor drug crimes and quality of life offenses”; reducing illegal
gang activity; and reducing crime in schools.93

Conclusion
Despite the mayor’s continued emphasis on fighting crime, the massive
social protest movement that erupted after the Louima, Diallo, and
Dorismond atrocities eventually forced him and the NYPD to take action.
Even as early as 1997 Giuliani had begun to increase the CCRB’s budget.94
By 2000 the protests forced him to take steps to reduce the tension between
the police and the city’s black and brown people. Under the heading
“Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect, Strategy,” the mayor’s management
report noted that the State Regional Community Policing Institute’s
“Streetwise” program had expanded cultural diversity training for recent
New York City police academy graduates and field training supervisors.
Although there was no detailed description, the report claimed that they had
developed a curriculum that covered Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Haitian,
African, and African Caribbean cultures. It soon would add Indian,
Bangladeshi, and other South Asian cultures to the mix. According to the
mayor’s report, “Between October 23 and November and 17, 2000, over
2,300 police officers from the March and October 2000 police academy
classes received ‘Streetwise’ training.”95
To help promote such measures, the NYPD received in the summer of
2000 a Cultural Awareness and Diversity Training Program grant from the
Bureau of Justice Assistance. Moreover, the police department was working
with the Citizens Committee for New York City to develop interactive
workshops for youth and police officers: “A Police/Youth Team Building
Workshop was piloted in Washington Heights in Manhattan between
October and December 2000, involving officers from the local precincts
and neighborhood youth group, the Fresh Youth Initiative.” The purpose of
the program was to foster good relationships between the police and young
people. In February and March of 2001 the program was expanded to
include the Crown Heights Youth Collective and officers from the Seventy-
First Precinct.96
By 2001 the Giuliani administration had made commanding officers
responsible for “establishing and maintaining positive relationships with the
community they serve.” To this end, commanders had to be involved in
outreach efforts and communications with “members of the community.”
Also by 2001, as part of the CompStat process, to assure accountability all
commanding officers had to submit reports on their efforts to improve
community relations. That same year, the NYPD also developed its
Community Relations Protocol to improve information sharing between the
police and community leaders and organizations, requiring the police share
such information in a timely matter.97
These attempts at improving relationships with the black and Latino
communities on the part of Giuliani and the NYPD demonstrated the impact
of the mass demonstrations, but they fell short of addressing police
brutality. In fact, police brutality was not even mentioned in the mayor’s
management report. At the heart of Giuliani’s efforts to improve police and
community relations was better crime fighting. This is not to say that
making officers more aware of the cultures of the racially, ethically,
religiously, and sexually diverse communities they served was not
beneficial to the police and those communities. Better understanding and
improved communication are valid steps in a campaign to better relations
between the police and black and Latino communities. But these efforts
alone fell short of addressing a police culture that tolerated, maybe even
promoted, violent physical attacks on citizens.
 10

The Campaign to End Stop, Question, and Frisk

Four years before Mayor Giuliani made even token efforts in the direction
of improving police–community relations, public advocate Mark Green
made several well-thought-out recommendations on that and other matters
pertaining to police misconduct in his September 11, 1997, testimony
before the Public Safety Committee of the City Council, which was
exploring solutions to police violence. Green strongly recommended that
the CCRB create a subcommittee to hold community forums at which the
community and police officers could meet to discuss how to get along.
According to Green, the mayor and NYPD could empower precinct
councils and community-based organizations to gather the participants
together, and “every officer in the precinct—not just the commander or the
community affairs officers—would be required to attend one or more of
these meetings a year.” Green maintained that such a meeting would be a
form of community policing that allowed police and communities to work
in a partnership. He also pointed out that Giuliani had abandoned
community policing, labeling it “social work.”1
Giuliani’s 2001 effort to promote better police–community relations
required only commanders to participate in any meaningful way. Green’s
plan required that all officers in the community to take part. Although
attending a meeting a minimum of once a year, as Green suggested, was not
substantive enough to lead to any change in attitude, it did provide members
of communities throughout the city an opportunity to have direct contact
with those who patrolled their neighborhoods so they could express their
grievances and concerns about how these individuals were functioning in
their communities. Moreover, Green’s proposal could provide community
leaders and organizations an opportunity to help set the agenda at
community meetings.
Green also recommended that the NYPD should track civilian complaint
trends, in order to help identify police officers who needed “retraining or
should be dismissed.” If tracking had been implemented, he said, officer
Francis Livoti, the killer of Anthony Baez (discussed in chapter 11), would
have been off the force. He also informed the council that state law might
have to be changed in order to allow the NYPD to discipline those who
have a pattern of abusive action, “even if some of those activities may have
occurred beyond the [contractual] 18-month statute of limitations.”2
Calling for “swift and certain punishment” of police who take part in acts
of misconduct, Green said, “The potential sanctions for abusive or brutal
police officers must be expanded and clearly set forth in the City
Administration Code. The police need to have clear sentencing guidelines
for misconduct.” In addition, he called for reforming the CCRB or creating
a new civilian oversight body, one that “should have jurisdiction over all
forms of police abuse, including both brutality and corruption.” It must be
independent in order to ensure public confidence, and “it should be
structured and staffed so that its recommendations, both as to individual
cases and recommendations for systemic change, are highly likely to be
adopted.”3
Implementing Green’s far-reaching recommendations would have been
an important step toward providing citizens with some power to curtail
police abuse; but there was no hope for that plan under Giuliani. The
mayor’s successor, Michael Bloomberg, was far more interested than
Giuliani was in easing racial tension in the city, but he embraced a “stop,
question, and frisk” policy that targeted mainly blacks and Latinos, which
did nothing to improve relations between the police and citizens of color.
The NYPD’s ongoing racial targeting of blacks and Latinos led to a fierce
community-based campaign to end the stop, question, and frisk policy.
Organized by civil rights and civil liberties organizations, community
activists, and victims of the policy, the campaign led to one of the greatest
victories in the struggle to end police abuse of people of color.

Stop, Question, and Frisk

In January 2002 the newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg, selected
Raymond Kelly as his police commissioner, a post Kelly had held under
mayor David Dinkins as well. In April 2002 Kelly announced that he was
dismantling the Street Crimes Unit and that four hundred officers would be
transferred to either precinct detective squads or plainclothes anti-crime
teams. Even before Giuliani left office in January 2002, he had cut the
Street Crimes Unit by half in response to the Diallo killing. Although Kelly
insisted that disbanding the SCU was not due to any particular case, an
attorney for the Diallo family, which had filed a $1 million wrongful death
suit against the NYPD, called it an admission that the SCU
disproportionally targeted blacks and Latinos. Attorney Anthony Gair, who
had also filed an $81 million wrongful death suit against the city, told the
New York Daily News that the Diallo shooting “constitutes an admission on
the part of the New York City Police Department that the street crime unit
was out of control and was stopping individuals, predominantly African
Americans, with nothing even approaching reasonable suspicion.”4 The unit
had become notorious for stopping innocent young black men—in
December 1999, for example, for every sixteen African Americans stopped
there was one arrest.5 As a result, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed
a class action lawsuit against the SCU in 1999.6
Kelly’s dismantling of the SCU signaled a new direction in policing in
the city and, by extension, a new direction in community relations. He and
Bloomberg even reversed Giuliani’s policy of not meeting with the
Reverend Al Sharpton at City Hall (Giuliani had claimed that doing so
would signal recognition of Sharpton as a legitimate civil rights leader).
Bloomberg said he was willing to meet with “anybody” who was a
community leader. In 2002 he spoke at the Harlem headquarters of
Sharpton’s National Action Network during the Reverend Martin Luther
King Jr. Day celebration—an event sponsored by Sharpton’s organization
which Giuliani had never attended.7
Bloomberg’s response when police officers unleashed a hail of bullets at
Sean Bell on his wedding day, killing the twenty-six-year-old as he and two
friends sat in their car, also set him apart from Giuliani. Bloomberg publicly
stated that it seemed to him that that “excessive force was used.”
Bloomberg told a group of black ministers and black elected officials at a
City Hall meeting he organized to quell racial tensions, “I can tell you that
it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots
fired.”8 In response, the right-wing publication American Spectator accused
the mayor of “going out of his way to condemn the cops.”9
Despite attempts to improve race relations in the city, the Civilian
Complaint Review Board noted a disturbing trend in its annual report for
January–December 2002: 50 percent of the substantiated complaints
concerned young black men, even though blacks made up just 25 percent of
the city’s population. The disproportionate number of verified complaints
made by blacks was unique; by way of contrast, 26 percent of substantiated
complaints were filed by Latinos, which reflected their overall population
ratio.10 In the CCRB status report for 2003, its chair, Hector Gonzalez,
pointed out that the agency had not been able to keep up with the growing
number of complaints, and it had no explanation for the 36 percent increase
in complaints since 2002. The “dramatic complaint increase” was a
disturbing trend, Gonzalez declared, and noted that through the “first third
of 2004, complaints rose 18 percent in comparison to the same period in
2003.” Despite the increases, “the number of investigators the CCRB is
authorized to hire has remained static.”11
By the end of 2005, the CCRB had witnessed five consecutive years of
increasing numbers of complaints. One explanation was that beginning in
2001 people could call in a complaint by dialing 311. In particular, the
number of complaints resulting from police abuse of Stop, Question, and
Frisk program had “risen at rates higher than complaints in which force,
discourtesy, or offensive language allegations are lodged.” It is difficult to
pinpoint a date when New York City began the policy of stopping and
questioning people they suspected of crime. However, retired police captain
Ernie Naspretto recalled that it was not until the 1990s, with the creation of
CompStat, that Stop, Question, and Frisk was extensively used by the
NYPD. The police department “also began to keep meticulous track of such
stops through paperwork that was alien to us back in the day. Although the
procedure had been on the books since the beginning of time, it was now
embraced like a child holding a new toy on Christmas morning.”12 In 2005,
abuse of authority allegations made up more than half of all allegations
lodged with the CCRB.13 So, despite Bloomberg’s public stance, which was
far less hostile than Giuliani’s, and despite the fact that he sought
collaboration with civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton, his advocacy of
stop, question, and frisk opened a new door for widespread police abuse of
blacks and Latinos.
By the late 1960s stop, question, and frisk had become one of the
techniques used in large cities to fight crime. It was challenged all the way
up to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1968, in Terry v. Ohio, that a police
offer has the right to stop, question, and frisk a suspect if the officer has
reason to suspect the person is or has been involved in a criminal offense—
that is, if there is a “reasonable suspicion of criminality.” Stop, question,
and frisk was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment, the court ruled,
because stopping is not an arrest and frisking is not a search.14 When he was
head of the New York City Transit Police, William Bratton was already
using stop and frisk tactics. When Giuliani picked him as police
commissioner, Bratton noted that under CompStat, precinct commanders
use a number of strategies to fight the various types of crime affecting their
area, including stop, question, and frisk, and on a number of occasions
Bratton would refer to the policy as an essential crime-fighting tool.15
But under Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly, both of whom served
from 2002 to 2013, stop, question, and frisk was elevated from being one of
many tactics to the city’s primary approach. The New York Civil Liberties
Union analyzed 2002–11 data gathered by the NYPD on the number of
stops officers made. In 2002, 97,296 people were stopped, questioned, and
frisked. Nearly 82 percent (80,176) were innocent of any crime. The
following year the number jumped to 160,851, 87 percent (140,442) of
whom were innocent of any crime. In 2004, there were 313,523 individuals
stopped, 89 percent (278,033) of whom were innocent; and in 2005,
398,191 were stopped and 352,348, or 89 percent, were innocent. The peak
was reached in 2011 with 685,724 stops, 88 percent of which turned up
innocent citizens.16
Both black and Latino communities were targeted by the NYPD under
stop, question, and frisk, and therefore made up the great majority of those
stopped. In 2004, 54 percent (77,704) of those stopped were black and 31
percent (44,581) were Latino. Only 12 percent (17,638) were white. The
overwhelming majority (83,937) were between the ages of fourteen and
twenty-five. The racial percentages were similar for other years. From 2004
to 2015, 53 to 55 percent of those stopped were black, and the percentage of
Latinos stopped ranged from 27 percent to 34 percent. From 2003 to 2015
the percentage of whites stopped ranged from 9 percent to 12 percent.17
Under this policy, officers could stop anyone walking on the street, then
interrogate and search them based simply on an officer’s suspicion that they
might be in violation of the law. The targeted citizens had no recourse,
especially given Commissioner Kelly’s insistence that officers were not
racially profiling. Speaking before the City Council on January 24, 2007,
Kelly asserted, “Officers are stopping people they reasonably suspect of
committing a crime, based on descriptions and circumstances and not on
personal bias.”18
Soon after the Amadou Diallo incident, and years before the NYCLU
compiled its statistics on the practice, state attorney general Eliot Spitzer
launched an investigation into New York City’s use of stop, question, and
frisk in response to “concerns about the . . . tactics upon minority
communities and individuals in New York City.” At a hearing in January
1999, most of the complaints the attorney general heard were not about the
sensational cases of police brutality but “revolved around lower-level police
involvement in the everyday lives of minority residents.” The investigation
looked at 175,000 UF-250 forms, which officers were required to complete
for every stop, filed between January 1, 1998, and March 31, 1999. The
forms revealed figures that stayed relatively static into the next decade.
Whites made up 43.4 percent of the population and accounted for 12.9
percent of the stops. The figures for the Street Crimes Unit, however, were
more dramatic: “Blacks comprised 62.7 percent of all persons ‘stopped’ by
the NYPD’s Street Crime Unit.”19
The attorney general’s investigation also revealed that in neighborhoods
where blacks and Latinos made up less than 10 percent of the population,
blacks accounted for 30 percent and Latinos 23 percent of those stopped.
Blacks “were ‘stopped’ 2.1 times more than whites on suspicion of
committing a violent crime and 2.4 times more often than whites on
suspicion of carrying a weapon.” Latinos “were ‘stopped’ 1.7 times more
often than whites on suspicion of committing a violent crime and 2.0 times
more often than whites on suspicion of carrying a weapon.”20

Building a Movement: Richie Pérez and the National Congress

for Puerto Rican Rights
One of the fiercest challenges to police brutality and stop, question, and
frisk emerged when Richie Pérez of the National Congress of Puerto Rican
Rights contacted the Center for Constitutional Rights. Pérez was born in the
South Bronx, where he attended the public schools and then earned a
bachelor’s degree from the City University of New York and a master’s
degree in business economics from New York University. He also
completed course work for a PhD in bilingual education. Pérez taught at
Monroe High School and at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and the
College of New Rochelle, where he offered courses on the civil rights and
labor movements, the Puerto Rican urban experience, and social policy. He
became politically active during the “community control” struggle of the
late 1960s when he joined the Young Lords, a revolutionary group of
mainly Puerto Ricans who modeled themselves after the Black Panther
Party.21
Pérez was also a key member of the Black and Latino Coalition against
Police Brutality, formed in Brooklyn after the killing of twenty-nine-year-
old Luis Baez by police in August 1979. The police claimed that Baez, who
was mentally disturbed, lunged at them with a pair of scissors so they had
no choice but to shoot him twenty-one times. Demonstrations erupted in
Brooklyn to demand the arrest of the five officers involved in the shooting,
but a grand jury decided not to bring charges. After that decision, the Rev.
Herbert Daughtry of the Black United Front joined with Latino activists
from Brooklyn College to form the Black and Latino Coalition. Its goal was
to educate black and Latino communities on police brutality and “to build a
mechanism against this rising brutality.” The coalition organized
demonstrations in Bedford-Stuyvesant and set up a hotline for people to
report police brutality cases.22
Pérez was also a founding member of the National Congress for Puerto
Rican Rights (NCPRR), a “mass base” civil rights organization attempting
to end racial discrimination against Puerto Ricans by employing several
strategies, including direct action and electoral politics. The NCPRR’s goal
was to pull people of different political bents under one umbrella; as Pérez
put it, “Everyone has something to contribute to the liberation movement.”
To keep from alienating moderates and thus help to build a broader
movement, issues such as independence for Puerto Rico, which is in the
group’s platform, were not highlighted. Since the NCPRR’s founding,
Pérez’s focus remained on the issues of police brutality and racially
motivated violence against blacks and Latinos.23 The New York City chapter
of the NCPPR formed a Justice Committee in the late 1980s with the
objectives of documenting police brutality incidents, giving support to
victims and their families, and establishing a network of private lawyers to
provide free or discounted legal assistance.24
 The Anthony Baez incident of 1994 provides an example of the
organizing skills Pérez and the NCPRR employed to address police
brutality against people of color. They reached out to Iris Baez, Anthony’s
mother, to offer support, and when she realized that no help would come
from conventional sources to obtain justice for her son’s death, she and the
Baez family turned to Pérez and the NCPPR, which put them in contact
with other families that had similarly lost loved ones so they would not feel
isolated. The Justice Committee then built a coalition movement in which
Iris Baez became a champion against police brutality. Her outspokenness
attracted others to the campaign, and the Justice Committee’s coalition
eventually comprised groups as diverse as Latino youth gang / youth group
members who had been harassed by police officers along with construction
workers from East Harlem.25
In March 1995 officer Francis Livoti was indicted by a grand jury on
charges of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Anthony Baez. In a
1996 speech, Pérez characterized the indictment as a major victory because
cops are so rarely indicted for killing blacks and Latinos. In an effort to
ensure Livoti’s conviction, the NCPPR reached out to community
organizations to “pressure the criminal justice system into responding with
a guilty verdict.” One NCPRR tactic was what it labeled “Adopt a Day in
Court,” which urged schools to send at least five teachers and guardians
with at least fifteen students to observe the court sessions. The thinking was
that since students were the major victims of the quality of life measures,
they would be more than willing to go to court to show their support for the
Baez family and, just as important, demonstrate their outrage at police
brutality.26
However, in September 1995, before the court could convene, acting
justice Gerald Sheindlin of the New York State Supreme Court division in
the Bronx dismissed the case on the grounds that the district attorney’s
office had submitted papers with the wrong charges.27 The Baez family then
organized the Committee to Remember Anthony Baez to continue the legal
battle.28 The NCPPR led a sit-in demonstration at the Bronx district
attorney’s office to pressure on him to reindict Livoti and invited a number
of journalists to record the civil disobedience campaign, which involved
twelve people, including Iris Baez and other mothers who had lost children
to the police. Apparently deciding that images of Iris Baez in handcuffs
protesting his office’s clerical error would be bad PR, the DA reindicted
Livoti in December 1995. His trial got underway in September 1996 in New
York State Criminal Court in the Bronx.29
Staying true to its mission, the NCPPR kept the community informed by
launching a “Justice for Anthony Baez” campaign and publishing Justicia, a
daily report providing a detailed account of the actions of both the
prosecution and the defense, including opening statements, motions, and the
testimony and examination of witnesses.30 Judge Gerald Sheindlin acquitted
Livoti, who had waived his right to a jury trial, ruling that the prosecution
had not proved its case. Mayor Giuliani’s response was to say that although
he sympathized with the family, the verdict was a “well-thought-out, legally
reasoned opinion.”31
Not giving up hope, the Baez family and their lawyers pressed for the
federal government to hear the case,32 which it did nearly two years later, in
the summer of 1998, bringing charges against Livoti for violating the civil
rights of Anthony Baez. In a two-week trial in the U.S. Court of Appeal of
the Southern District of New York, Livoti was convicted33 and later
sentenced by judge Shira Scheindlin of the U.S. Circuit Court of the
Southern District of New York to seven and a half years in prison.34
Pérez maintained that the Anthony Baez case had to be seen in the
context of Giuliani’s policing policies. It was connected to Zero Tolerance,
under which, “anything goes, the police . . . will be supported . . . no matter
what attitude.” Giuliani’s policies were criminalizing even children of color,
he stressed, “and now we had to worry about police officers who view our
kids as criminals.” The community’s reaction to the killings of Anthony
Baez and other people of color was due in large part, Pérez maintained, to
the daily humiliation they faced at being stopped, questioned, and frisked,
and the black and Latino communities could not “have the stopping and
frisking of everyone, because that’s against the law.”35 The killing of
Amadou Diallo triggered a burst of activism and mass actions that Pérez
felt strongly would increase policy makers’ willingness to address the
grievances of the black and Latino communities, and soon the NCPPR
advanced the next phase of its struggle by suing the City, accusing the
Street Crimes Unit of widespread racial profiling when it came to stop,
question, and frisk.36
Pérez and the NCPRR convinced the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) to take on the legal challenge. Founded in 1966 by lawyers who
represented civil rights activists and organizations in the South, the center is
dedicated to protecting both rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and
those listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Some its goals include
“litigation, education, and advocacy” to “empower poor communities and
communities of color” and “to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest
protections and least access to legal resources and to strengthen the broader
movement for social justice.”37
In 1999 the CCR filed suit in the United States District Court, Second
Circuit, on behalf of Kelvin Daniels, Poseidon Baskin, Djibril Toure, Hector
Rivera, Raymond Ramirez, Kahil Shkymba, Bryan Stair, Tiara Bonner,
Theron McConneyhead, and Horace Rogers. The plaintiffs accused all the
members of the Street Crimes Unit, Mayor Giuliani, and Police
Commissioner Safir of violating the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, and
the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which outlaws
racial discrimination, when they were stopped and frisked by the SCU.
They sought damages and a judgment asserting that the SCU’s operation
was unconstitutional.38
The city attempted to have the case dismissed, claiming that the plaintiffs
lacked standing to sue for equitable relief unless they claimed they faced
threat of future inquiry from stop, question, and frisk. However, the district
court denied the motion and also refused to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claim that
their right to equal treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment had been
violated. The court ruled that the SCU had a policy of stopping,
questioning, and frisking individuals “solely based on [their] race.” The
NYPD decided to disband the SCU while the case was being litigated. After
reviewing thousands of cases and completing depositions by a number of
high-ranking NYPD officials, the CCR eventually forced the city to settle.39
Judge Shira Scheindlin, who was overseeing the case, approved the
settlement agreement in December 2003.
Under the agreement, the city was required to maintain an anti–racial
profiling policy that complied with the United States and New York State
constitutions. The city also had to audit all cops who carried out the stop,
question, and frisk policy and their supervisors in order to determine if the
stops were based on reasonable suspicion and to what extent they were
being documented. The results of the audits were to be provided to the CCR
quarterly. The NYPD also had to take part in educating the public by
holding public meetings on its racial profiling policy and operating
workshops at fifty city high schools on the legal rights of those stopped,
questioned, and frisked. It also had to create informational handouts on
stop, question, and frisk to be distributed at the workshop and other events.40
Not only did the city ignore the terms of the settlement in the Daniels et
al. case, it dramatically increased the number of stop, question, and frisk
incidents. In response, on January 31, 2008, the Center for Constitutional
Rights filed a second federal class action lawsuit, again accusing the city
and NYPD of racial profiling. The plaintiffs—David Floyd, David Ourlicht,
Latit Clarkson, and Deon Dennis—were representing the “thousands of
primarily Black and Latino New Yorkers who have been stopped without
any cause on the way to work or home from school, in front of their house,
or just walking down the street.”41
In addition to Floyd et al. v. City of New York et al., in January 2010 the
City also faced a suit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on behalf of
residents of and visitors to New York City housing developments who were
stopped, questioned, and frisked and charged with criminal trespass without
ample evidence for the arrests. Davis et al. v. the City of New York et al., a
class action suit against the city, the New York City Housing Authority, and
the NYPD, charged that the police were racially profiling because a
disproportionate number of arrests were of blacks and Latinos. According
to the suit, the NYPD used a “vertical patrol” to sweep the hallways,
stairways, rooftops, and elevators and “indiscriminately stop and question
every person they observe, without objective individualized suspicion of a
crime, and unlawfully arrest individuals for trespass without probable
cause.” The number of arrests dramatically increased because of these
practices, which the lawsuit alleged that the city and housing authority
“implement and apply . . . in an intentionally and discriminatory and race-
based manner by focusing the patrols and trespass arrest practices entirely
on communities of color, such as NYCHA residences, where historically
entrenched racial segregation ensures that African Americans and Latinos
will bear the brunt of Defendants’ unlawful actions.”42
All thirty-six plaintiffs were African Americans and Latinos who either
lived in New York City Housing Authority buildings and were arrested or
subjected to unlawful stops and searches, or were visitors or guests
subjected to the same treatment. For example, after plaintiff William Turner
left the apartment of his friend, plaintiff Kelson Davis, he was approached
by four officers when exiting the elevator. They told him to produce
identification and state why he was in the building. He complied but was
still arrested for trespassing. None of the officers contacted Davis to verify
Turner’s story.43 In another example, plaintiffs Roman Jackson and Kirstin
Johnson, who were friends, were approached outside of Jackson’s
apartment by the police, who asked their purpose for being there and
demanded identification. Johnson produced her identification, and Jackson
asked the police to allow him to go to his apartment to retrieve some form
of ID. The police refused and arrested both Jackson and Johnson.44
An additional challenge to the stop, question, and frisk policy came in
March 2012, when the New York Civil Liberties Union represented twelve
African American and Latino New Yorkers in a class action suit in the
United States District Court of the Southern District of New York against
New York City, Commissioner Kelly, and a number of NYPD officers.
Jaenean Ligon et al. v. the City of New York et al. accused the NYPD of
violating the Fourth Amendment by stopping, frisking, and arresting
citizens for trespassing near buildings that had been enrolled by their
landlords in the Trespass Affidavit Program (TAP). TAP, formerly known as
Operation Clean Halls, was launched by the city in an attempt to fight crime
in and around residential buildings. However, residents complained that the
police were targeting blacks and Latinos for TAP stops: “Each year this
program results in thousands of illegal stops, searches, summonses, and
arrests of those buildings’ residents and their invited guests without
cause.”45
The NYCLU argued that residents leaving their apartments experienced
stops, interrogations, and searches by cops in vestibules, stairways,
hallways, lobbies, and exterior courtyards as well as on public sidewalks
outside their building. In some cases, the stops led to summonses or arrests
if the person could not justify his or her presence in the building to the
satisfaction of the police. To avoid arrest, residents were forced to carry
identification when exiting their apartments, as they were “frequently
stopped and forced to produce identification while engaged in completely
innocuous activities like checking their mail or taking out their garbage.”
The NYCLU suit also accused the NYPD of conducting hundreds of
thousands of vertical patrols annually. “Residents of some Clean Halls
Buildings,” the NYCLU claimed, “are stopped, questioned, and searched by
NYPD officers on a regular basis—sometimes multiple times a week. For
many young men of color in particular, being searched and seized by NYPD
officers in and around their homes has become normalized and is simply a
routine part of their lives.”46
The buildings in the Operation Clean Halls program housed residents of
many races, but blacks and Latinos were the targets of the stops, the suit
charged. The NYPD did not bother to determine if a building in the
program had “substantial or sustained criminal activity,” and the ACLU
claimed the police could not justify the disproportionate number of stops of
blacks and Latinos.47
Jaenean Ligon, the lead plaintiff, was a forty-year-old African American
women who argued that she and her three sons were frequently stopped,
questioned, and searched in or near her residence without cause. She
described one terrifying incident when her son was returning from the store
after purchasing a bottle of ketchup and was stopped by four police officers.
Even though he told them he lived in the building and produced
identification, the cops insisted that his mother come to the vestibule to
identify her son. When she arrived and saw her son surrounded by four
cops, she collapsed. One cop responded by laughing. Other plaintiffs also
provided the court with numerous similar stories of unconstitutional stops,
searches, and arrests.48
On September 24, 2013, the plaintiffs filed a motion requesting a
preliminary injunction to halt trespass stops at enrolled buildings in the
Bronx.49 U.S. Circuit Court judge Shira Scheindlin, who heard the case,
argued that the “plaintiffs offered more than enough evidence at the hearing
to support the conclusion that they have shown a clear likelihood of proving
at trial that the NYPD has a practice of making of unlawful trespass stops
outside of TAP buildings in the Bronx.” Scheindlin ordered the NYPD to
stop conducting trespass stops at that site and also to “develop and adopt a
formal written policy specifying the limited circumstances in which it is
legally permissible to stop a person outside a TAP building on a suspicion
of trespass.” Such stops must not violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution. A draft of the written policy had to be submitted to Judge
Scheindlin. Moreover, she ordered the city to assure that UF-250 forms
were completed for every trespass stop and to implement a review system.50
The NYPD was required to set up a training program and issue training
materials to conform to the court’s opinion. The city agreed to be observed
by a court-appointed monitor.51 These court orders were what the plaintiffs
had hoped for when filing for the injunction in the first place.
While Ligon et al. was narrowly focused on TAP, Floyd et al. directly
addressed stop, question, and frisk, and on August 12, 2013, the U.S.
District Court of the Southern District of New York issued its findings in
that latter case: the NYPD did practice racial profiling, and the practice was
unconstitutional. Judge Shira Scheindlin, writing for the court, noted that
between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD had stopped 4.4 million
people, over 80 percent of whom were black or Latino: “In each of these
stops a person’s life was interrupted. The person was detained and
questioned, often on a public street. More than half of the time the police
subjected the person to a frisk.” One of the most important pieces of
evidence that targeted blacks was the fact that between 2004 and 2009, 30
percent more blacks were arrested than whites who were suspected of
having committed the same crimes. In her opinion, Judge Scheindlin wrote
that her duty was not to judge stop, question, and frisk’s effectiveness as a
police tool; her job was to rule on its constitutionality. The plaintiffs in
Floyd et al. claimed that they were stopped by police without reasonable
cause, violating the Fourth Amendment, and also because of their race,
violating the Fourteenth Amendment. According to the judge, “Each stop is
a demeaning and humiliating experience. No one should live in fear of
being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the daily activities
of daily life. Those who are routinely subjected to stops are
overwhelmingly people of color, and they are justifiably troubled to be
singled out when many of them have done nothing to attract the
unwarranted attention.”52
A major rationale for the stop, question, and frisk policy was that it
removed illegal guns from the streets. But Judge Scheindlin noted that in
the 4.4 million stops between 2004 and 2012, a “weapon was found after
1.5 percent of those frisks.” Only 6 percent of those stops led to an arrest,
and 6 percent resulted in a summons; 88 percent of the 4.4 million people
stopped were innocent. Almost a quarter of the stops of blacks (23 percent)
and Latinos (24 percent) resulted in the use of force. Between 2004 and
2009, incidents in which the officer failed to note a specific suspected crime
that triggered the stop increased from 1 percent to 36 percent.53
 The judge rejected the city’s argument that the number of blacks and
Latinos stopped was high because it was proportional to the number of
blacks and Latinos who commit crimes. The judge characterized that
reasoning as “flawed because the stopped population was overwhelmingly
innocent—not criminal. There is no basis for assuming that an innocent
population shares the same characteristics as the criminal suspect
population in the same area.”54
Judge Scheindlin concluded that the “City is liable for violating
plaintiffs’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The City acted with
deliberate indifference toward the NYPD’s practice of making
unconstitutional stops and conducting unconstitutional frisks.” She also
ruled that the city “adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling by targeting
racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data. This has
resulted in the disproportionate and discriminatory stopping of blacks and
Hispanics in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.” In addition, the
“City’s highest officials turned a blind eye to the evidence that officers are
conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner.” City officials were so
convinced that the policy was effective, they were willing to ignore
“overwhelming proof that the policy” of targeting who they thought were
the “right people” was racially discriminatory and a violation of the
Constitution.55
The court ruled that a stop can only be made when there is “reasonable
suspicion that criminal activity may be afoot,” in compliance with the
Fourth Amendment. A stop cannot be made on a hunch; rather, the police
must be able to “point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together
with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant intrusion” on a
person’s constitutional rights. The court maintained that a “reasonable
suspicion standard” was objective and not based on a police officer’s
subjective intentions. According to the judge, “There is no exception for
stops of pedestrians for the general purpose of controlling crime.”56
Scheindlin also accused city officials of ignoring the fact that they were
violating the Fourth Amendment despite their having been made aware of
the violation as early as 1999. Instead of addressing the problem, the city
had escalated “policies and practices” that led to a greater number of
arrests. It also hindered the collection of the necessary data concerning the
constitutionality of the stops.57 Furthermore, the NYPD leadership ignored
the fact that better training was needed for those conducting stops. The
NYPD’s practice of targeting the “right people” to stop constituted “indirect
racial profiling,” the judge ruled, because “officers are directed, sometimes
expressly, to target certain racially defined groups for stops”—a clear
violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The department directed cops to
carry out stops in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods because
those groups were heavily represented in the crime suspect data, but the city
went beyond the law in using race as a determining reason for the stops.58
In a separate ruling, Judge Scheindlin ordered a number of remedies for
the city’s stop, question, and frisk program. The remedies included creating
a monitoring program to ensure that the NYPD did not violate the
Constitution when carrying out stop, question, and frisk, and the revision of
policies and training materials used for the program to prevent racial
profiling. She ordered that the UF-250 form officers were required to
complete for every stop be revised to include a detailed explanation of why
the stop was made and why a frisk was done. A new tear-off portion of the
form should be provided to the person who was stopped stating the reason
for the stop and including an improved check-box system noting common
reasons for stops. In addition, officers in each precinct of the five boroughs
would start wearing a body camera to monitor how stops and frisks are
executed.59
Soon after a decision was made in the Floyd et al., a settlement was
reached in the Davis case as well. On January 7, 2015, the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund signed an accord with the city and the New York Housing
Authority agreeing to a number of stipulations, including that the NYPD
change its Patrol Guide, the manual that contains the rules that city police
must follow when carrying out their officials duties, to instruct police on
how to conduct vertical patrols lawfully and with respect for the rights of
tenants and their guests. Those conducting the vertical patrols had to
complete a trespass crime fact sheet after the arrest of a suspect. All police
patrolling city housing had to be involved in the monitoring process ordered
under Floyd.60
Clearly upset that the judge in Floyd called stop, question, and frisk
“indirect racial profiling,” Bloomberg attempted to make his case to the
general public. In a 2013 opinion piece in the Washington Post he attacked
the judge for being “ideologically driven” and having a “history of ruling
against the police.” The mayor made the claim that “if New York City had
the murder rate of Washington, D.C., 761 more New Yorkers would have
been killed last year. If our murder rate had mirrored the District’s over the
course of my time as mayor, 21,651 more people would have been killed.”
Stop, question, and frisk, he insisted, was keeping New York City safe. He
included black and Latino lives among those saved: “We know that more
than 90 percent of those 21,651 individuals would have been black and
Hispanic. Some of them would have been children.” He took the judge to
task for not mentioning the lives that police officers saved by stop, question,
and frisk and for demonstrating a “disdain for our police officers and the
dangerous work they do.”61
Bloomberg continued by insisting that under his administration the city
had banned racial profiling in 2004; he and Commissioner Ray Kelly had
“zero tolerance for it” and “worked hard to strengthen police–community
relations, which are better today than at any point since the 1960s.” Part of
the work to improve police–community relations, he wrote, was to provide
the service that the black and Latino communities desired: “stronger police
presence.”62
Bloomberg promised to appeal, arguing that the ruling would lead to
more gun violence in the city and make it a “more dangerous place.”63 On
August 27, 2013, the Bloomberg administration moved in District Court to
stay Scheindlin’s decision in Floyd et al. Scheindlin ruled against the
request. On September 23, 2013, the city filed an appeal in the U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals for the Second District requesting a stay in both Ligon and
Floyd. In late October, a three-judge panel in that court ruled that Judge
Scheindlin’s conduct seemed improper. She may have violated the judicial
code of conduct by appearing to be partial in the litigation in Floyd et al.
Judges John M. Walker Jr., Jose J. Cabranes, and Barrington G. Parker
accused her of steering the case to her courtroom when it was first filed
almost six years earlier, and they criticized her for speaking publicly on the
case, including granting media interviews. They stayed her decisions in
Ligon and Floyd and stopped the city from implementing her remedies to
reform stop, question, and frisk, including appointing a monitor. The panel
then removed Scheindlin from Floyd and ordered that it be randomly
reassigned. The new judge was ordered to postpone all proceedings and
wait for further action by the three-judge panel. However, the federal court
did not at this point hand down a decision on whether Scheindlin was
correct that the NYPD’s practice of stop, question, and frisk violated the
constitutional rights of the plaintiffs. The panel set a schedule for the
appeals process that extended beyond January 2014, which was the end of
Bloomberg’s term in office.64
Commissioner Kelly was elated by the panel’s decision, claiming that it
was “an important decision for all New Yorkers” and saying he had always
been concerned about the “partiality of Judge Scheindlin.” His jubilation
was short-lived.65 During his campaign to succeed Bloomberg as mayor, Bill
de Blasio promised to drop the city’s appeal of the Floyd decision. After de
Blasio was elected on November 4, 2013, on November 9 Bloomberg asked
the Court of Appeals to vacate Judge Scheindlin’s decision. After making
the request, the city’s corporation counsel told the press that Judge
Scheindlin’s ruling created an unfair perception of the NYPD.66
Bloomberg’s purpose, however, was to avoid having the incoming mayor
drop the appeal.
However, on November 21 the three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals
made it clear that it did not make any “findings of misconduct, actual bias,
or actual partiality on the part of Judge Scheindlin. . . . We now clarify that
we did not intend to imply in our previous order that Judge Scheindlin
engaged in misconduct.”67 In the interest of the “fair and impartial
administration of justice,” the panel denied the request by attorneys
representing New York City to overturn Judge Scheindlin’s sweeping ruling
in the Floyd case.68
Bill de Blasio won the 2013 race for mayor largely due to his much more
left-leaning position on a host of issues, including policing. On the
campaign trail he promised that if elected, he would end racial profiling in
stop, question, and frisk and create an inspector general position.69 In his
campaign literature he called for greater transparency and accountability for
police officers, and supported greater prosecutorial authority for the civilian
complaint review board.70 In an effort to convince the mayor-elect to take a
tough position on stop, question, and frisk, in December 2013 the Black,
Latino/a, and Asian Caucus (BLA) sent him a letter asking that he drop the
city’s appeals of Floyd and Ligon. On January 21 BLA sent the now-seated
mayor another letter noting that it had not received a response to the
December request: “As a former member of the legislative body, you are
keenly aware that the better a representative is able to engage his or her
constituents, the better he or she can address the needs of the community.
The longer this wedge between communities and police exists, the longer
these issues of engagement persist.”71
Speaking in Brownsville, Brooklyn, on January 30, de Blasio said, “We
are here today to turn the page on one of the most divisive problems in our
city.” Referencing a theme of his campaign—“one city where everyone
rises together”—the new mayor continued, “We believe in ending the
overuse of stop and frisk, which has unfairly targeted young African
American and Latino men.” Declaring stop and frisk a broken policy that
does not keep New Yorkers safe, de Blasio maintained that neither he nor
police commissioner William Bratton, who had first served under Rudolph
Giuliani, believed that a policy was acceptable when nearly 90 percent of
the people stopped were innocent of any crime: “So we are taking
significant corrective action to fix what is broken.” He announced that the
city was ending the years-long battle over stop, question, and frisk and had
reached a settlement with the plaintiffs in the Floyd case: “We are doing it
through a collective commitment to fix the fundamental problems that
enabled stop and frisk to grow out of control and violate the rights of
innocent New Yorkers. . . . What we are doing here today will increase the
quality of policing in New York City.”72
Mayor de Blasio insisted that he and the new police commissioner Bill
Bratton were going to adopt effective policing without violating the
constitutional rights of citizens: “The agreement we are announcing today
accepts the facts and the roadmap laid out in last August’s landmark federal
court ruling.” The first step of the agreement was “a joint and ongoing
reform process with direct community and police dialogue ensuring the
policies which are driving police and community apart are raised through a
direct line of communications with the police leadership.” The second step
will be three years of “a court appointed monitor to assure the police
department’s compliance with the United States Constitution and that
limited period of oversight is contingent upon us meeting out obligations.”
Step three was to have a monitor, “assuring that the police department
would carry out the orders of the decree.” Monitoring would be done by an
independent NYPD inspector general. The last point assured New Yorkers
that “once the federal district court confirms the accord, the City will
officially drop its appeal of the Floyd case.”73
 Bratton agreed with the mayor regarding his steps to reform stop,
question, and frisk and was happy to help implement Judge Scheindlin’s
decision. He also agreed that the first obligation in a democracy was to keep
people safe and that the policy had failed in that regard. Instead of creating
confidence in the police, the program had even raised doubts within the
NYPD. Not only were young men of color asking why they were being
stopped when crimes were at historic lows, but police officers, too, were
asking why, given the drop in crime, they were being encouraged to make
more stops and arrests. The “public and police . . . shared a commonality of
concern.” Bratton characterized the resolution that the city was seeking as
something essential to “assure that the fabric of society that must exist
between the police and community is in fact rewoven so we come out of
this process stronger than before.”74
Bratton, however, created a false equivalency when he portrayed the
police as also being victims of the city’s earlier practice of stop, question,
and frisk in being required to do as they did. Black people, as Judge
Scheindlin rightfully noted, were humiliated and in some cases traumatized
by stops made in broad daylight when simply going to school, work, the
store, or other destinations.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional
Rights, praised the new administration at a gathering at the Brownsville
Boys’ Club, saying it was a “major step that de Blasio accepted the district
court’s decision and was willing to adopt important steps to end racial
profiling.” Pointing out that the city was approaching the fifteenth
anniversary of the Amadou Diallo murder, Warren noted that that incident
had crystalized the relationship between the police and communities of
color; now, he said, community activists would have a say in shaping the
reforms with de Blasio.75
Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union characterized
the Brownsville gathering as a good day and said she was happy to be in the
same place with the mayor, the commissioner, the attorneys, and the
advocates. It was a good day because the changes that New Yorkers fought
for were actually taking place; because New York was “closing the book”
on the “tale of two cities”; because the city was withdrawing its appeal of
Floyd and Ligon. Lieberman was excited that the communities that
experienced racial profiling were to have a hand in solving the problem.76
 Conclusion
One important step toward advancing the police reform agenda was taken
during Bloomberg’s administration, and its impact is ongoing. The measure
was spearheaded by a very old New York City organization, the Citizens
Union (CU), which was founded in 1897 as a political party and became a
watchdog group advocating good government practices. Among the issues
the CU campaigns for are voting rights, “working to reduce the corrosive
impact of money in politics,” and pressing for “stronger ethics and
oversight.”77 One area of success has been in curbing police brutality. After
doing its own research and meeting with representatives of Mayor
Bloomberg’s administration, members of the City Council, district
attorneys, and CCRB members, the Citizens Union produced a number of
recommendations for overseeing the NYPD, including strengthening the
CCRB. In March 2012 mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker
Christine Quinn, and police commissioner Raymond Kelly signed a
memorandum of understanding accepting the CU’s recommendation that
the right to prosecute police officers for misconduct in cases that the CCRB
has substantiated should be taken away from employees of the NYPD and
put in the hands of the CCRB.78 CCRB lawyers would prosecute cases for
which the recommendation was that the most serious internal or
administrative discipline should be applied.
As the CU’s research noted, between 2002 and 2010 the CCRB had
recommended severe punishment in 2,078 of the cases it had reviewed, but
the NYPD had only followed through on 151 of them. In praising the
memorandum of understanding, the CU said that “giving the CCRB
prosecutorial powers is an important milestone in the ongoing march
forward to bring greater accountability to the way in which the NYPD
polices itself.”79 Civil rights and civil liberty organizations, activists, and
City Council members have to be given credit for the relentless pressure
they put on the Bloomberg administration. It was their efforts that finally
got the city’s administration to agree—after decades of resistance—to the
terms in the memorandum of understanding.
The Bloomberg administration should also be credited for ending the
Street Crimes Unit, the group regularly accused of violating the
constitutional rights of black and Latino New York and for the horrendous
killing of Amadou Diallo. Mayor Bloomberg also changed the tone of City
Hall from the confrontational one adopted by Mayor Giuliani to a
conciliatory attitude, especially in the administration’s public reactions to
police shootings.
However, Bloomberg’s unquestioned support for stop, question, and
frisk, which targeted mainly innocent blacks and Latinos, demonstrated his
willingness to accept a policy that violated the constitutional rights of
hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. Thanks to the monumental efforts
of grassroots, civil rights, and civil liberty organizations as well as
individual New Yorkers challenging stop, question, and frisk, the most
significant curtailing of police abuse and dominance of black and brown
people in the long struggle against police brutality was achieved.
The Ligon and Floyd decisions handed down by the U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York managed to end the city’s sanctioned
policies that were racially discriminatory. Mayor de Blasio’s decision not to
appeal the Floyd decision demonstrated that he was going forward with his
police reform agenda. The January 30 event in Brownsville, Brooklyn, at
which Mayor de Blasio announced his decision to drop the city appeal of
judge Shira Scheindlin’s rulings was a “Kumbayah” moment. For some, the
hopeful sentiment expressed on that day was not going to last for long.
 11

The Limits of Mayor de Blasio’s Police Reform

Agenda
Since 2013 the work of civil rights and civil liberties groups, grassroots
organizations, elected city officials, and political leaders has led to
measures to ensure greater accountability and monitoring of the NYPD.
Mayor Bill de Blasio made police reform a hallmark of his election
campaign, and his agenda for improving relations between the police and
communities of color had some success. But after the murder of two police
officers in the winter of 2014, coupled with police protests against his
reforms, de Blasio proved unwilling to implement a more in-depth agenda
to limit police power. The mayor’s reluctance to support efforts that would
help to make police officers more accountable to citizens, such as the Right
to Know Act, indicated his concern about being labeled “anti-police.” The
mayor’s reluctance to substantially curb police power also signified the
NYPD’s political influence.

Advances in Accountability Made by de Blasio

After the Floyd decision a federal monitor was assigned to ensure that the
city and the NYPD took meaningful steps to end racial profiling. The City
Council added additional oversight in 2014 when it passed Local Law 70,
authorizing the Department of Investigation (DOI) to oversee the NYPD via
an Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD (NYPD-OIG). Local Law
70 was passed in response to public outcry over the abuses of stop,
question, and frisk, the revelation that the NYPD was spying on Muslim
groups (including student groups at CUNY), and other police department
abuses. The DOI is an independent city agency created in the 1870s to
investigate corruption among city officials and those doing business with
the city. As a law enforcement agency, the DOI can arrest individuals who
are discovered to be violating anti-corruption laws; it issues its findings on
“systematic government failure” to the mayor and City Council.1 Local Law
70 mandates that the DOI “investigate, review, study, audit, and make
recommendations relating to the operations, policies, programs and
practices, including ongoing partnerships with other law enforcement
agencies, of the New York City Police Department with the goal of
enhancing the effectiveness of the department, increasing public safety,
protecting civil liberties and civil rights and increasing the public
confidence in the police force, thus building stronger police–community
relations.”2
In addition to the law imposing regulations aimed at stopping the city’s
use of racial profiling when it came to stop, question, and frisk, in
November 2016 Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bratton took a
major step toward cutting the number of arrests by announcing that people
carrying twenty-five grams or less of marijuana would just receive a
summons rather than be arrested. The mayor hailed the change as another
example of how the city was keeping New Yorkers safe and “building a
closer relationship between the police and community.” Many in the black
and Latino communities had been arrested for possession of small amounts
of marijuana, thus hurting their chances of getting a job, completing their
education, and finding housing. The following month, de Blasio took the
first step toward having all police officers wear body cameras. He selected
the six precincts with the highest number of stop, question, and frisk
incidents and instructed a total of sixty officers from those precincts to wear
the devices.3
Another important change happened in 2015 when an NYPD-OIG
investigation noted that the Police Patrol Guide did not contain a definition
of force or of “what actions constitute force,” though the guide maintained
that excessive force would not be tolerated. The NYPD lacked a “separate,
centralized, and mandatory use of force form for documenting when
physical force has been used.” And while de-escalation strategies “have a
proven record of not only limiting force but also ensuring officer safety,”
the “investigation suggests that NYPD officers rarely use de-escalation and
that the Department’s policy and training currently do not adequately
address de-escalation as a useful tactic for officers in the field.” CCRB
reports also showed that “officers too often did not de-escalate encounters.”4
To his credit, within hours of the OIG’s report Commissioner Bratton
announced that the NYPD acknowledged the deficiencies in police policy
and said the department was overhauling its manual to create a “state of the
art” approach on all “elements of use of force by officers in this
department.” The commissioner told the press that the department would
need to overhaul its use of force policies. He maintained that many of the
reforms he announced were already in progress and were intended to better
track and investigate police officers’ use of force. For example, officers
would now be required to fill out a “Force Incident Report.” The changes,
Bratton said, were not just reacting to the OIG’s report, in which he claimed
the general inspector was “grandstanding.”5
In 2015, NYPD chief James O’Neil proposed a neighborhood policing
program.6 O’Neil, who became police commissioner in September 2016,
has implemented a program that splits precincts into four or five
subdivisions or sectors that resemble the boundaries of neighborhoods.
Each sector is fully staffed with two cops in a patrol car, along with officers
and supervisors. Police officers assigned to the precincts are required to
work the same beat, allowing them to become familiar with the
neighborhood and people who live in the areas. The officers work with
radio dispatchers and supervisors only in those sectors. They maintain
“sector integrity,” keeping the patrol cars in the sectors to which they are
assigned.7 The NYPD asserts that neighborhood policing seeks to foster a
sense of ownership among sector officers for the police, the problems, and
even the perpetrators in a particular sector, along with a sense of geographic
responsibility and accountability. A significant amount of time is provided
to the sector officer to interact with residents and learn about the crime
problems of the neighborhood. The NYPD and de Blasio have asserted that
neighborhood policing has closed the divide between the police and the
community.8 De Blasio and O’Neil have credited the program for the
decrease in violent crime, including the drop in murders to their lowest rate
since the 1950s: “We are giving our cops the opportunity to make
relationships and build on those relationships.”9
Enacting another aspect of his police reform agenda, in October 2016
Mayor de Blasio called for the New York State Assembly to amend section
50a of the New York State Civil Rights Law to make the disciplinary
records of law enforcement officers and other uniformed personnel subject
to public disclosure. Under the law as it stood, those personnel records
could only be made public pursuant to a court order or with the written
permission of the person to whom the records pertain. Mayor de Blasio
released a statement maintaining that his administration “is committed to
bringing greater transparency to the disciplinary records of law enforcement
and other uniformed personnel.” He called for the removal of
“confidentiality protections currently applicable to disciplinary records,
including all cases prosecuted by the New York City Civilian Complaint
Review Board (CCRB) in the trial room, thereby subjecting the full public
record of the disciplinary proceeding and the result of such disciplinary
proceeding to public disclosure.”10
Police reform advocates criticized de Blasio for not taking stronger
action to create more transparency regarding the records of police who had
been charged with misconduct. Communities United for Police Reform
issued a statement declaring that de Blasio’s call for the state to take action
was “not substantive reform or a genuine commitment to full transparency.”
Christopher Dunn of the American Civil Liberties Union complained that
“we’ll all be dead and buried” before the state amends the law.11

Modifying the Reform Agenda

Despite the quite meaningful advances made toward increasing police
accountability under de Blasio, they were not nearly as far-reaching as
many people had surmised when listening to him make the historic
announcement in Brownsville that he was dropping the city’s appeal of the
Ligon and Floyd decisions. Just five months after that event, the reform
movement would be put to the test when another black man died at the
hands of white officers.
On July 17, 2014, forty-three-year-old Eric Garner was walking on Bay
Street in Staten Island when two officers, Justin Damico and Daniel
Pantaleo, got out of their police car and approached him. They suspected
that he was selling “loosies,” single cigarettes from a pack, which was
illegal and for which he had been arrested twice the previous May. As the
two white officers approached Garner, who was African American, and
attempted to arrest him, Garner’s friend Ramsey Orta began filming the
incident on his phone. Garner told Orta that he was not selling cigarettes
and he was tired of the police harassing him, and then he told the cops, “I’m
minding my own business, please leave me alone.” When Pantaleo
attempted to handcuff Garner, he raised his arms in the air to evade the
cuffs. The video shows that several more officers came on the scene when
Pantaleo placed Garner in a choke hold, cutting off his oxygen. At least four
of them forced Garner to the ground, at which point Pantaleo released the
choke hold and pushed Garner’s face to ground. Other officer moved in to
restrain Garner on the ground.12
While held there, Garner said eleven times, “I can’t breathe.” Eventually
he lost consciousness. Although emergency medical technicians arrived on
the scene, neither they nor any of the police officers attempted to perform
CPR on the unconscious man or tried to assist him in any way other than
when officers turned Garner on his side in an attempt to help him breathe,
apparently not grasping how serious the situation was. Eventually an
ambulance arrived and Garner was taken to the emergency room, where he
was pronounced dead an hour later.13 Millions of people saw the horrific
event thanks to Orta’s video and were outraged.14
New York did not explode the way Ferguson, Missouri, did just three
weeks later, after police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed eighteen-
year-old Michael Brown. Brown had recently stolen packets of cigarillos
when Patrolman Wilson pulled up beside him and attempted to exit his
police car, but when he opened the door it bumped into Brown. Wilson,
along with witnesses, claimed that the teen reached into the SUV and began
punching him. Wilson reached for his gun, and Brown grabbed his hand,
but Wilson managed to shoot Brown in the hand. No witnesses saw Wilson
shoot Brown, who then ran about 180 feet away and turned to face Wilson,
who fired at least ten shots, killing Brown.15 Ferguson erupted into days of
protests and eventual rioting, which were calmed after the governor sent in
the National Guard but reignited on November 25 when a grand jury
decided not to indict Wilson.16
That New York did not experience a similarly violent reaction after
Garner’s death was likely one of the fruits of de Blasio’s emphasis on police
reform. Commissioner Bratton’s immediate response was to order retraining
for every police officer when it came to making arrests. On July 23, just
five days after Garner’s death, Bratton said he would implement the Los
Angeles Police Department’s modified use of force protocols, noting that
they were the best in the country. The emphasis, Bratton said, had to be
placed on training, and he stressed that the NYPD was learning from the
“Staten Island incident and [would] move forward.”17
 Another contributing factor to New York’s relatively calm reaction was
that Staten Island district attorney Daniel Donovan met personally with the
Garner family to assure them that he was moving forward with an
investigation into Eric’s death.18 And there were additional indications that
the city would, indeed, seek justice. In August the medical examiner
declared that Garner died from compression of his neck, caused by the
choke hold, and compression to his chest when he was being restrained.
When he classified Garner’s death as “homicide,” Mayor de Blasio released
a statement expressing his “deepest sympathies to the family of Eric
Garner” and promised to work with District Attorney Donovan to “ensure a
fair and justified outcome.”19
Donovan wasted little time. Just a month after Garner’s death, he made a
strongly worded announcement designed to convince doubters that he was,
indeed, committed to seeking justice: “Based upon the investigation that my
office has conducted to date regarding the July 17, 2014, death of Eric
Garner, and after a careful review of the recent findings of the Medical
Examiner regarding the cause or manner of Mr. Garner’s death, I have
determined it is appropriate to present evidence regarding the circumstances
of his death to a Richmond County Grand Jury. . . . Mindful of the solemn
oath to enforce the law I took when I was first sworn into office as District
Attorney in January 2004, and with a full appreciation that no person is
above the law, nor beneath its protection, I assure the public that I am
committed to conducting a fair, thorough and responsible investigation into
Mr. Garner’s death, and that I will go wherever the evidence takes me,
without fear or favor.”20
The focus of the grand jury’s probe was Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who
applied the choke hold. The jury met for nine weeks, hearing testimony
from witnesses. Four police officers involved in the incident were given
immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.21 It seemed to
many that Pantaleo was going to pay for essentially strangling Garner.
That hope evaporated when the grand jury decided in early December not
to bring charges against Pantaleo due to lack of sufficient evidence to
indict.22 Street demonstrations erupted immediately. In Brooklyn, protesters
conducted a “die-in,” lying in the street on Atlantic Avenue in the
downtown hub and stopping traffic. Other protesters carried cardboard
coffins symbolizing the numbers of innocent black people killed by the
police; some marched to the Brooklyn Bridge and occupied the eastbound
traffic lines. In Manhattan, there were demonstrations on Broadway and
clashes with police near the West Side Highway on Fifty-Ninth Street. A
common chant was “I can’t breathe”—Eric Garner’s last words.23
Despite the Eric Garner incident and subsequent protests, the very
policing approach that led to his death—broken windows—was not in any
danger of being abandoned. In an August television interview for NBC,
Commissioner Bratton said, “Stop, question and frisk did not go away. It is
here to stay. I’m sorry. It is part of what we do. Quality of life focus did not
go away. It’s what we do.” On several occasions right after Garner’s death,
the commissioner argued that the city black and Latino communities
demanded broken windows–type policing because more calls came from
residents in those neighborhoods complaining about low-level criminal
activity. “It is the law abiding” residents of black and Latino communities
who wish “to be free of some of the disorders that are disturbing their
lives.” So the police, he explained, were not targeting those areas but
simply responding to the demand from residents to end annoying or quality-
of-life offenses. Bratton went so far as to blame Garner himself for the
tragic confrontation, maintaining that such quality-of-life acts are criminal
or city ordinance offenses and the job of police is to enforce the law: “If
people would obey the law, they would not draw the attention of the
police.”24
Mayor de Blasio also defended broken windows. Speaking on a radio
program in the fall of 2015, he said he associates the program with
“successful policing.” He elaborated by explaining that “Bill Bratton is the
person who brought in CompStat and Broken Windows and the strategies
that turned around the crime situation, and we’re going to continue with
those strategies because they work.”25
The de Blasio administration’s primary response to Garner’s killing was
not to address the negative effects of broken windows on communities of
color but to offer improved training to police officers. In December 2014,
after the grand jury cleared Officer Pantaleo, de Blasio again announced the
retraining plans that had first been touted in July, and Bratton said that
twenty-two thousand officers would be required to complete a three-day
course. The course included de-escalation techniques that Bratton admitted
had already been taught to the officers at the police academy, such as
assuming a nonjudgmental posture.26 First deputy commissioner Ben
Tucker, in charge of the retraining, told reporters that the “Partner Officer
Program” training had actually started in March, months before Garner’s
death, and was designed to raise “community trust and confidence and
collaboration.” Senior officers would serve as mentors to “new graduates”
and community members would “host” officers new to their command.
Those citizens would help the officers understand the “culture of the
community, have an understanding of the issues of that community—in
those communities—work on and attend events in those communities, get
to know the business community as well as the schools and so forth.”27
The training for patrol officers would also include instruction on how to
talk suspects “into compliance, as opposed to taking people down, going to
physical, hands on use of force, if there’s a possibility that that can be
avoided.” Another element of the training would “strengthen their problem-
solving skills,” which would help officers “think through how to approach a
particular challenge that they face while they’re on patrol.” Tucker declared
that the department wanted patrol officers to be “positive and have positive
social engagements.” At the heart of “smart policing techniques,” he said,
was the need for police officers to “exercise discretion.”28
According to a February 2015 article in the New York Post, 80 percent of
the police who went through the retraining thought it was “a waste of time.”
The Post reported that a high-ranking police official, who noted that some
officers fell asleep during the three-day session, called the $35 million
program a failure and said that eight out of ten cops gave it a negative
rating. Instead of the hands-on training the officers thought they were going
to get, they had to sit through hours of lectures.29 The Reverend Al Sharpton
voiced his own criticism of the training program shortly after the mayor
first announced it. In the wake of Garner’s death, at a conference the mayor
arranged at City Hall on July 31, Sharpton told Bratton that while training
was important, “I also think, Commissioner, that the best way to make
police stop using illegal chokeholds is to perp-walk one of them that did.”
Such a step would “send a lesson that ten trainings will not give them.”30
Mayor de Blasio gave another indication that he was modifying his
reform agenda when he reversed his position on hiring additional police
officers. Initially, in April 2014, when the crime rate was at a record low,
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced the council’s
support for hiring an additional thousand police officers. Police reform
advocates maintained that adding more police to the force was not needed
when crime was decreasing in this period. The money to hire more police,
police reform advocates argued, could be used to address the social
conditions that cause crime. Siding with those who contested hiring more
cops, the mayor opposed the personnel increase, and he told recruits at the
police academy that the NYPD was doing a fine job with the existing
force.31 As late as June 15, 2015, speaking on WNYC, he noted that while
murder rates had increased, overall crime had dropped and there were 25
percent fewer complaints to the CCRB compared to a year earlier. New
York was the safest big city in the United States and getting safer, he said.
Despite the dramatic curtailment of the stop, question, and frisk policy, the
police force had gotten better at reducing crime, due in large part to the
reduction in stops that had nothing to do with violent crime, which freed
officers to concentrate on more serious offenses. Improved technology also
had led to better policing, and therefore there was no need to add a thousand
police officers to a force of 34,500.32 Taking this position sent a clear
message to New Yorkers that he was on the side of police reform.
By the end of June 2015, however, the mayor announced that he had
“come to a plan that allows us to strengthen our police force while
encouraging a deepening of reform.” The plan allowed for the hiring of
nearly 1,300 police officers.33 Bratton was elated and reported at his
monthly news conference that the new budget plan allowed for the hiring of
“1,297 additional officers, 415 civilianized positions that we will be
implementing, coupled with the funding for technology, for capital
improvements. I can safely say that I think this is probably one of the best
budgets that this department has ever had.”34
Advocates for police reform were understandably upset. Monifa Bandele,
head of the Committee United for Police Reform, told the press that it was
“disappointing and perplexing that the city budget will increase the NYPD
head count when systemic problems with police accountability and culture,
that allow New Yorkers to be abused and killed, have yet to be fixed.” For
“this to happen in this liberal, progressive administration is the most tone
deaf response they could have had,” said Josmar Trujillo, an organizer for
the Coalition to End Police Brutality. “This is beyond disappointment. This
is a national embarrassment.”35
 Why did de Blasio reverse himself? The pressure to do so was slow to
build. On July 30, 2014, Michael Goodwin wrote an opinion piece in the
New York Post that accused de Blasio of slandering the police when he
claimed that for twelve years under Bloomberg there had been a “growing
tension and a growing disconnect” between the police and New Yorkers,
which his administration had fixed. But according to Goodwin, de Blasio
did not recognize that “thousands of black and Latino young men are alive
today because they were not killed by their peers, thanks largely to
aggressive policing.”36 The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) also
saw the mayor’s reform measures as an attack on the police and revived the
old narrative that such measures tied the hands of the police and endangered
their lives and the lives of New Yorkers. Then, in December 2014, two
police officers were shot and killed while sitting in a patrol car by a man the
New York Daily News characterized as a “career criminal who was seeking
revenge for the killing of Eric Garner.”37 Patrick Lynch, the head of the
PBA, claimed that there was “blood on many hands,” including the street
demonstrators protesting the deaths of Eric Garner and other deaths caused
by NYPD officers: “The blood on hands starts at the steps of City Hall in
the office of the Mayor.” Hundreds of police officers turned their backs on
de Blasio as he eulogized the two slain officers at their funeral.38
A November 17, 2015, article in the New York Times asserted that
according to a poll conducted by the paper and Sienna College, de Blasio
had lost support among white New Yorkers. Only 28 percent of them
approved while 59 percent disapproved of his performance. Among the
white New Yorkers polled, 51 percent thought the city was less safe and 62
percent thought it was heading in the wrong direction under de Blasio’s
leadership.39 The mayor’s negative ratings were highest in a March 2016
survey conducted by the PBA: 87 percent of police officers polled felt that
under de Blasio the city was less safe, and 96 percent felt that the police
relationship with the public had gotten worse.40
The PBA protests in particular made the mayor move more cautiously
with his reform efforts, but he also was facing a perception problem. The
false narrative that crime was on the rise and the city was less safe was
harming de Blasio’s image; especially if he wanted a second term, he
needed to be seen as a crime fighter.41
 Encouraged by his advisers, de Blasio challenged the perception that he
was anti-cop. One adviser, Phil Walzak, maintained that the mayor was
“absolutely focused on strengthening the quality of life for every New
Yorker.”42 Although de Blasio and Bratton claimed that broken windows
was effective because there had been a dramatic decrease in the number of
arrests and summonses, the Department of Investigation’s Office of the
Inspector General (OIG) for the NYPD released a report titled An Analysis
of Quality-of-Life Summonses, Quality-of-Life Misdemeanors, Arrests, and
Felony Crime in New York City that examined the relationship among those
elements from 2010 to 2015.43 After months of looking at the data, the OIG
declared that there was “no empirical evidence demonstrating a clear and
direct link between an increase in summons and misdemeanor arrest
activity and a related drop in felony crimes.”44
Confronted with the report’s evidence, de Blasio responded that he
“believes in Broken Windows as a strategy because it is part of what has
made us so safe as a city.” Along with CompStat, he insisted, Broken
Windows made New York one of the safest big cities in America and
“we’re going to stick by them.” He did state that the policy was not static
and should be updated, but he insisted that “Broken Windows not only
helped in terms of decreasing quality-of-life offenses, but also helped to
reduce the atmosphere of disorder and violence that pervaded the City a
couple of decades ago.”45
Mayor de Blasio’s adamant defense of broken windows predicted
ongoing harassment of black and brown people. The Police Reform
Organizing Project (PROP) and its founder, Robert Gangi, responded by
turning their attention to the everyday abuse that blacks and Latinos face
from broken windows–type policing. In an October 2016 report, PROP
documented the number of “punitive actions” that took place between the
police and New York residents in 2015. PROP defined punitive action as an
interaction between a police officer and a citizen that results in a moving
violation summons, criminal summons, juvenile arrest, Transit Adjudication
Bureau summons, felony arrest, misdemeanor arrest, or stop, question, and
frisk. The number in 2015 was 1,783,414. This was down slightly from the
1,913,015 recorded in 2014, but PROP stressed that this was not progress,
as there were still far too many incidents overall. In terms of monthly
averages, moving violation summonses totaled 85,587, misdemeanor arrests
18,897, and Transit Adjudication Bureau summonses 11,602.46
 PROP noted that 94.9 percent of juvenile arrests involved blacks and
Latinos. Of the 297,413 criminal summonses that police issued, 104,859
were for open alcohol container charges—and one judge noted that in his
experience, the NYPD specifically singled out blacks and Latinos for such
alcohol-related summonses. The city paid $202.6 million to settle claims
against the NYPD in 2015, compared to $154.1 million the previous year.47

Right to Know
In an attempt to assure that police would not abuse their power in
interactions with citizens, in March 2014 city councilmember Ritchie Torres
introduced a bill that would require police officers who make a stop and
wished to frisk a person to provide their rank, command, and a specific
reason for conducting the search. Thirty-seven of the fifty-one council
members cosponsored Torres’s bill.48
Also in 2014, in November, city councilmember Antonio Reynoso
introduced a bill that would require police officers to receive a person’s
consent before carrying out a search on the person if the officer or officers
had no legal right to search. The searcher would be obliged to inform the
person that he or she had the right to refuse to be searched and/or to
withdraw consent during the search. If consent is given, the police officer
would have to produce an audio or signed record of consent. Thirty-two
members of the council joined Reynoso in sponsoring the bill.49
The main objective of the bills would curtail the ability of the police to
randomly stop, question, and frisk people, and they were jointly referred to
as the “Right to Know” legislation. In addition to its overwhelming support
in the City Council, Right to Know received support from over two hundred
racially, religiously, and politically diverse organizations, including the
NAACP, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York City Congress
of Puerto Rican Rights, the National Latino Officers Association, the
Council on Islamic Relations, and Jewish Voice for Peace NYC.50
In response to the media coverage of and protests against police killings
of unarmed black people throughout the United States, in December 2014
president Barack Obama created the Task Force on 21st Century Policing
and charged it with finding solutions to end police brutality and improve
relations between law enforcement agencies and communities of color. Its
objective was to find ways for better collaboration between law
enforcement and communities in order to reduce crime while building trust.
In its final report, released in May 2015, the task force made far-reaching
recommendations that could dramatically decrease police brutality. Like
Right to Know supporters, the task force advocated that law enforcement
throughout the country “should be required to seek consent before a search
and explain that a person has the right to refuse when there is no warrant or
probable cause.” Furthermore, officers should ideally obtain written
acknowledgment that they have sought consent to a search in these
circumstances. Moreover, it recommended that “law enforcement agencies
should adopt policies requiring officers to identify themselves by full name,
rank, and command (as applicable) and provide the information in writing
to individuals they have stopped.” One way of providing those who are
stopped with the identity of the officer would be for police to carry and
distribute business cards.51
Despite the broad support for Right to Know and de Blasio’s rhetoric
about police reform, the mayor joined the PBA, Commissioner Bratton, and
City Council Speaker Mark-Viverito in opposing the proposed legislation,
which Bratton referred to as “unprecedented intrusions.” In a closed-door
meeting in July 2016, Mark-Viverito told City Council members that the
provisions in the Right to Know legislation would be handled internally by
the NYPD and therefore there was no need for legislation. The de Blasio
administration, the speaker, and leaders of the NYPD struck a verbal deal
and agreed to require that police officers who wish to search a car, a home,
or a person request permission. They would have to confirm that the person
agreed to the search and provide a business card after it was completed. The
new rules would be added to the Police Patrol Guide. Though the NYPD
agreed to require police officers to identify themselves before carrying out a
search, this was not backed up by law and would be left solely to the NYPD
to enforce. The police would monitor their own behavior. When criticizing
the agreement among the mayor, police commissioner, and leaders of the
City Council, Ritchie Torres observed, “Legislative reform is protected by
law, whereas administrative reform can be reversed at will.”52
The verbal deal Torres referred to did little to change the power
relationship between citizens and the police. As the New York Times noted,
the power was with the NYPD, and the commissioner gained far too much
of it under the deal because he could “impose, enforce, change or reverse
the rules at will—and rank-and-file officers could ignore them with
impunity.”53 Communities United for Police Reform summed up its reaction
to the “unwritten deal” by saying it was not “accessible to the public” and
“stripped of meaningful changes,” and that it “removed any reliable
measures of police accountability and the most important protections of the
Right to Know Act, including policies explicitly prioritized by President
Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.”54 These two bills were part
of the police reform effort that the mayor initially supported, but he later
asked the City Council not to vote on them.55
The call for the City Council to approve Right to Know from dozens of
organizations, including Communities United for Police Reform, the New
York Civil Liberties Union, and the Center of Constitutional Rights, as well
as Councilman Reynoso and other members of the City Council, placed a
great deal of pressure on the body to act. In December 2017 the City
Council leadership, in a closed-door meeting, worked out a compromise on
Right to Know. The agreement brokered between council president Mark-
Viverito, Councilman Torres, the Mayor, and the NYPD, amended the
Torres bill by excluding car stops and nonemergency or low-level
interactions, allowing police officers to question someone without suspicion
that the person committed any crime.56
The New York Civil Liberties Union, one of the supporters of the original
bill, pointed out that there was no systematic accounting of nonemergency
encounters: “We do know of countless reports of officers responding to a
request for their name and badge number as an affront or challenge to their
authority.” According to the NYCLU, women were more likely to
experience sexual harassment by police officers. The revised bill would put
women who encounter such harassment at a disadvantage because police
officers would not have to identify themselves.57
Monifa Bandele—of Communities United for Police Reform and vice
president of and equity officer at MomsRising.org, a group of over one
million members dedicated to ending discrimination of women and mothers
and promoting economic security for families—accused Torres of allowing
his bill to be gutted by the NYPD and City Council leaders. Writing in the
Huffington Post on December 17, 2017, she asserted that the new bill “has
removed the core protections of the legislation and allowed loopholes that
ensure it will provide no change for New Yorkers in their abusive policing
interactions.” The revised bill was dangerous and “increased the likelihood
of escalation and even violence in the majority of low-level encounters
where New Yorkers most frequently experience abuse.” Bandele declared
that none of the two hundred groups that supported the original bill was in
support of the compromise.58
On December 18, 2017, the City Council passed Intro 541-C by an
overwhelming 37–13 vote. Despite widespread opposition from anti–police
brutality groups, the council in a close vote, 27–20, also adopted Intro 182-
D.59 Although Mayor de Blasio withheld his support for the original version
of Intro 182-D, he supported the revised one. Brooklyn council member
Jumaane Williams said in his opposition to the vote on Intro 182-D, “It’s a
shame and sham.”60 The mayor’s support of the revised Intro 182-D as well
as his unwavering backing of broken windows demonstrated that he would
only go so far when challenging police power. Even after he was easily
elected for a second term de Blasio was unwilling to oppose the NYPD’s
attempt to undermine measures to curtail its power.

Conclusion
By 2017 Mayor de Blasio’s police reform agenda had produced positive
results. His withdrawal of the city’s appeal of the Floyd decision, allowing
the NYPD to be federally monitored to assure that it would not practice
racial profiling, was a major victory. The city’s decriminalizing of
marijuana possession decreased the number of arrests. Moreover, the city’s
announcement in July 2017 that it would support the district attorneys of
Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens in their decision to dismiss
750,000 outstanding warrants for minor offenses that are a decade or more
old was also a major victory for those opposed to broken windows,
resulting in hundreds of thousands of people, mostly black and Latino, who
would no longer face arrest if stopped by a police officer who ran their
name through a database. Those minor offenses included riding a bike on
the sidewalk, drinking an alcoholic beverage in public, and urinating in the
street.61
However, the mayor still embraced broken windows, the very policy that
is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of warrants he supported
dismissing. When Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance announced in
late June 2017 that he would no longer prosecute people trying to beat
paying the fare to ride on city trains and buses, in an effort to scale back on
the number of people criminally prosecuted for what is considered a minor
offense, Mayor de Blasio objected. “There is no way in hell anyone should
be evading the fare,” he said, because that “would create chaos.”62 De Blasio
has argued that many of those apprehended for fare evasion “have a lot of
money on them so the issue is not poverty.63 Joseph Lhota, chairman of the
Metropolitan Transit Authority, agreed with the mayor. In a letter to Vance,
Lhota wrote, “Allowing ever more widespread fare-beating by adopting and
touting a policy of non-prosecution in most cases unquestionably sends a
loud a loud and clear signal to those who would flout the law.”64
Vance objected to the claim that not prosecuting fare beaters would lead
to more crime on the subways: “Police officers may continue to enforce the
law exactly as they always have; when an individual is observed jumping a
turnstile, that person may be stopped, questioned, and if found to possess
weapons or contraband, or to haven an open bench warren, he or she will be
arrested, brought to court, and prosecuted by my office.”65
Prosecuting fare beaters was a major focus of the broken windows policy.
In his announcement of the end of criminally prosecuting fare beaters,
Vance argued that “the criminal prosecution of these low-level, non-violent
offenses should not be part of a reformed 21st-century justice system.
Absent a demonstrated public safety risk, criminally prosecuting New
Yorkers accused of these offenses does not make us safer.”66 Even though
tens of thousands are apprehended and many are prosecuted, de Blasio
insisted on maintaining this broken windows policy.
While the NYPD has dramatically decreased the numbers of people who
are stopped, questioned, and frisked, federal monitor Peter J. Zimroth
reported that the department underreported the number of stops. According
to Zimroth, in the second quarter of 2017 auditors were able to identify 154
arrests that seemed to have been initiated by a stop. However, only in “13 of
those instances, a stop report was on file.” The “commands” were ordered
to investigate, and they determined that 104 cases “did not require a stop
report.”67 The auditors identified in the second quarter of 2017 sixty-two
arrests in NYCHA buildings that required a stop report. However, the police
failed to file the required report.68 Zimroth also reported that the team of
auditors heard from some officers that they do not fill it the required stop
report forms because it “is not worth the trouble.”69 The federal monitor
pointed out that underreported stops is a significant problem because not
having such information “will undermine the Department’s and the
monitor’s ability to assess complaints with the court order.”70
No mayor has done more to help eliminate police abuse of citizens than
de Blasio. Neighborhood policing; banning racial profiling as a component
of stop, question, and frisk; and other initiatives have made New York City
one of the safest big cities in the United States. Nevertheless, De Blasio’s
unwavering support for broken windows and his 2015 decision to expand
the police force by 1,300 officers demonstrated his reliance on policing to
fight crime and helped him easily win a second term. But the question
remains for many who are involved in the campaign to end all forms of
police domination of citizens: Will the mayor support their efforts and end
broken windows–style policing?71 In May 2018 de Blasio acknowledged
that there is racial disparity in marijuana police actions, and he ordered the
NYPD to come up with a plan to end “unnecessary arrests.” In addition,
Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance said he was going to stop
prosecuting those arrested for possessing and using marijuana.72 The New
York Civil Liberties Union urged de Blasio to “reduce the enforcement
against low level offenses like farebeating which funnels people into the
criminal justice and flags immigrants for Trump’s deportation agenda. The
NYCLU also asked the mayor to assure that police are held “accountable
for misconduct” and to stop the “NYPD from targeting protesters or
subjecting them to unequal treatment.”73 As this chapter notes, although
there have been accomplishments in curbing police brutality during the de
Blasio administration, not enough has been done to eliminate it and it
remains a major social plague in this city.
 Conclusion

Where Do We Go from Here?

New York City has been an important battleground in the campaign to end
police brutality. The struggle has been a long and arduous one. Police
brutality has been a pivotal issue among African Americans and other
people of color because they have been its main targets. I have argued that
at the very core of police brutality is the intertwining of race and the
criminal justice. But this volume has addressed only the tip of the iceberg
when examining the many forces in the city fighting police abuse. A major
goal of this book has been to help bring attention to this long fight. The
anti–police brutality campaign has been creating ways to dramatically
reduce the amount of power police have over citizens. The People’s Voice,
the Communist Party, the Nation of Islam, civil rights leaders, civil liberty
organizations, grassroots activists, and others examined in this book
courageously fought against police dominance over individuals because a
product of police dominance is abuse.
Although the campaigns against police brutality covered in this work did
not meet with immediate success, it would be a mistake to see the earlier
campaigns as a failure. Despite the resistance crusade by the pro-police
network that included the NYPD, the PBA, and their ardent supporters in
government and among the public, the anti-police brutality movement made
significant gains. It gave voice to victims of unwarranted police assaults
and consistently kept the issue in the public’s eye despite the claim that
police brutality did not exist. The movement to end police brutality
publicized ways to end the horror of police attacks that would eventually be
adopted. The long struggle was responsible for placing citizens on the
civilian complaint review board and in 1993 for the creation of an all-
civilian complaint review board. Another objective of the early movement
was to get the NYPD to hire black officers. By 2013, 47.8 percent of the
force identified as a racial minority; blacks made up 16.1 percent while
Latinos constituted 26.1 percent and people of Asian origins 5.5 percent.1
 As illustrated in this volume, the relentless anti–police brutality
campaign led to the most important police reform measures in the city’s
history. Policies that would not have been imagined by many New Yorkers
in the 1970s and 1980s have become reality. The federal monitoring of the
NYPD, the creation of an inspector general, an end to racial profiling, the
decriminalizing of certain nonviolent offenses, and the establishment of an
all-civilian complaint review board with prosecutorial power have helped to
change the way police operate in the city.
Yet, despite the gains made by the anti–police brutality movement, such
abuse continues to plague New York City. As we have seen, it takes many
forms: excessive physical force, false arrest and imprisonment,
unreasonable search, harassment, sexual misconduct, intimidation, and
verbal abuse are among the abuses that people not only experience, but in
some cases have come to expect. Blacks and Latinos, who are subject to the
greatest amount of abuse, are joined by Asians, Muslims, members of the
LGBTQ communities, and others who are marginalized in some way.
Despite recent moves toward transparency and accountability regarding
police brutality, far stronger measures need to be enacted to empower
communities to confront the problem.
In the long struggle against police brutality, the various crusading groups
and individuals examined in this book have shared a core objective: to
empower people who, historically, have been the victims of police abuse.
This victimization has been at the heart of the struggle for institutional
reform and citizen oversight in New York City and elsewhere for decades.
While there have been significant accomplishments, especially in the areas
of monitoring and police accountability, there is still far too much abuse.
New York’s CCRB reported that in the first half of 2016, 2,343 complaints
were filed, a 12 percent increase over the same period in the previous year.
It also noted that the “average number of complaints filed per month was
391, which is higher than the 348 average complaints per month from the
first half of 2015.” This was considered disturbing, since there had been a
steady decline in complaints since 2010, when the CCRB received around
three thousand complaints biannually. The increase was across all boroughs,
with Manhattan producing the highest numbers: a 26 percent increase, up
from 496 in the first half of 2015 to 593 in the first half of 2016. In the
same time frame, there was a 9 percent increase in Brooklyn (708
complaints compared to 650), a 9 percent increase in the Bronx, and a 5
percent increase in both Queens and Staten Island.2
While allegations of excessive use of force dropped from 48 percent in
the first half of 2015 to 43 percent a year later, abuse of authority
allegations increased in the same time period from 60 percent to 70 percent.
Black people filed 54 percent of the cases, Latinos 25 percent, whites 14
percent, and Asians 2 percent (4 percent were files by those in the “other”
category). Men filed 89 percent of the cases, women 11 percent.3
In late June 2017, the CCRB released Worth a Thousand Words:
Examining Officer Interference with Civilian Recordings of Police, a report
that examined the 257 complaints involving officer interference with
recording incidents. Among the complaints were those of officers directing
people to stop recording, “knocking a recording device out of a civilian’s
hands, seizing a recording devise, detaining someone recording, blocking
recordings by physically obstructing a civilian’s camera view of a scene;
and intimidation like threatening to arrest or detain a civilian for recording
an interaction.” The CCRB reported that 24 percent of the 257 cases
involved verbal interference while 46 percent included physical
interference.4
The decriminalizing of marijuana by Mayor de Blasio also came under
attack when in July 2017 the Drug Policy Alliance and Marijuana Arrest
Research Policy reported that between 2014 and 2016, 52,730 blacks and
Latinos were arrested for marijuana offences, accounting for 86 percent of
such actions. During the same period 8,260 whites and “all others” were
arrested for marijuana offenses, accounting for just 14 percent. This racial
disparity in marijuana arrests persists despite national studies showing that
whites and others tend to smoke marijuana in about the same proportion as
do blacks and Latinos.5
The reason for the racial disparity was a “‘willful indifference’ by top
city and police officials to the unwarranted and unconstitutional racial
discrimination built into these routine police enforcement patterns and
policies.”6 The mayor criticized the study because the Drug Policy Alliance
looked at marijuana arrests from 2014 to 2016; he noted on the television
program Road to City Hall that his policy of not arresting people for low
levels of marijuana possession started in 2015. However, the report noted
that in 2016, of the 18,121 arrests for “lowest-level” marijuana possession
in 2016, 46 percent were black, 39 percent were Latino, and just 10 percent
were white (5 percent were Asian and a small percentage were classified as
“other”). The racial disparity in the number of marijuana arrests was quite
alarming in a city where blacks and Latinos make up 51 percent of the
population and whites make up 49 percent.7
Clearly the existing officer accountability measures need to be
strengthened. Civilians United against Police Brutality (CUAPB), an
organization based in Minnesota, has called for police officers to carry
personal liability or malpractice insurance, which would create “real
consequences for officers, rather than the current practice where taxpayers
foot the bill and the officers never receive any discipline.” CUAPB also
calls for reforming the police contract—in the context of New York City,
that would include getting rid of problematic practices such as the forty-
eight-hour rule, which prohibits interrogations by prosecutors of those
accused of police brutality for two days after the alleged event.8
Involving citizens in the hiring process of police who will operate in their
communities is one of the proposals put forth by the Independent Institute
in Oakland, California. The institute is a nonpartisan public policy research
and educational organization that mainly focuses on private security forces
but examines all types of policing and believes that “citizens deserve a
better system [of policing] that puts them in control.”9
Another necessary form of community involvement would be a system
by which the public could evaluate police performance in their communities
on a regular basis. Calling itself “the public safety solution,” the Virginia-
based Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies
(CALEA), established in 1979, has advocated for having the performance
of law enforcement be evaluated by the communities served.10 While
measuring police performance is nothing new and has included the use of
citizen surveys, the performance evaluations would go further in that, once
measured by the public, the outcome should have an impact on future
assignments, promotions, and the like. According to CALEA, “A
comprehensive suite of performance measures needs to account for a
broader spectrum of the work that police do, not just that part of their work
related to issuing citations and arresting offenders. If police are supposed to
prevent crime and motor vehicle accidents, solve community problems,
reduce disorder, and build lasting community relationships, then
performance measures should reflect their success in producing these and
other valuable outcomes.”11 Such performance measures should not be
limited to looking at entire precincts but also extend to individual officers.
The public should also play a role in the disciplinary process. In New
York City, even though on August 12, 2012, thanks to the memorandum of
understanding signed by the NYPD and the CCRB, the board was granted
prosecutorial powers, it can still only recommend action, not enforce it.12 To
quote Udi Ofer, deputy national political director of the ACLU’s Campaign
for Smart Justice, “An independent investigation will be meaningful only if
its findings then form the basis for deciding whether and to what extent to
discipline an officer.” The New York CCRB fails, he says, because the
“police commissioner has full discretion to ignore the board’s fact-finding
or to impose no discipline, even when the board has found that wrongdoing
occurred.”13 In order to make the CCRB more effective, according to Ofer,
its findings would have to be binding on the NYPD once the board’s
professional staff completed an investigation and the board substantiated an
allegation of misconduct. The commissioner would then determine the
discipline from a range of options included in a “pre-negotiated disciplinary
matrix.”14
Echoing a demand of many New York City police reform groups and
activists, President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
recommended that “law enforcement agencies should institute residency
incentive programs” requiring police officers to live in the city they serve.
New Yorkers long urged residency in the very borough where the officer’s
precinct is located, stressing that this important reform could help to bridge
the gap between the police and the communities they serve. One step
toward implementing a residency requirement would be for the city to
provide rent and housing subsidies to assure that officers could afford to
live in certain areas.15
Clearly, as this book has demonstrated, the push to end police brutality
cannot reliably depend on federal, state, or local officials to do the right
thing. Even when a sympathetic administration is in power, as with Mayor
de Blasio in New York City, there is no assurance that it will adopt effective
measures to end police abuse. This book has chronicled the efforts of some
of the most influential forces in that crusade. Leading black Communists,
prominent black religious figures, the black press, the Congress of Racial
Equality and other civil rights organizations, political leaders, members of
the New York City Council, and grassroots activists and civil liberties
groups have all conducted a relentless campaign over the past several
decades to end one of the great civil rights abuses taking place in New York
City. The groups that led the campaign against police brutality from the
1940s through the 1960s should be recognized for having been the first to
articulate many of the remedies advocated by later groups which were
eventually adopted, at least in part, in an effort to curb police abuse. Just as
important, those early groups should be given credit for bold leadership in a
period when it was much more difficult to be involved in such a battle.
They were able to frame the struggle, noting that at its root was the power
police and other institutions had over black and brown people. While they
fell short of obtaining their goal, their determination kept the struggle alive
to be taken up by activists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
century, who have achieved some measure of success in decreasing police
power.
More recent actors, such as those associated with the protest organization
Black Lives Matter, have demonstrated they understand that change comes
about only when those in power are pressured to make change. Black Lives
Matter has shown how crucial it is to put pressure even on those in
powerful positions who profess to be in support of ending police brutality
and other injustices. Social protest such as demonstrations, strikes, and
boycotts has always been an effective way to force those with power to act
for social justice.
Right-wing critics of Black Lives Matter have generally not offered any
thoughtful critiques of the group. Instead, they have presented nothing more
than nonsensical accusations, such as claiming the organization is anti-
white and anti-police.16 More serious critics of Black Lives Matter have
considered its antiracist approach detrimental to the anti–police brutality
cause. Political scientist Adolph Reed, probably the most outspoken
proponent of this view, maintains that the failure of Black Lives Matter and
others who argue that racism is the major cause of police brutality is that
data demonstrates that nearly half of those killed annually by the police are
white. Moreover, Reed insists that the group’s focus on race as a cause for
police killings does not lead to the building of a broad coalition of others
who are victimized by police violence.17
 One major problem with Reed’s argument is its lack of information on
the circumstances of police killing of civilians. He does not tell us how
many of these killings were of armed or unarmed people. Reed is also silent
on how many killings were done in self-defense or an attempt to protect the
life of another. As my work and the work of others have noted, police
killing is not the only form of police brutality and abuse. Excessive and
discriminatory use of force does not always lead to death. Using a number
of data sets in his July 2016 study, Harvard University economics professor
Ronald G. Fryer found that there was a racial difference in “lower levels” of
police force.18 One data set used in the study was from the Stop, Question,
and Frisk program. A second data set used was the Police Public Survey
Contact Survey (PPCS), a triennial survey of a national representative
sample of civilians’ interpretation of interaction with police officers
collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Moreover, two other data sets
comprised officer-involved shootings in ten cities, including Austin, Dallas,
Houston, Los Angeles, and Orlando.19
A team of researchers collected the data, read arrest records, and gathered
almost three hundred variables on the incidents in the report. The study
revealed that there was no racial bias when it came to lethal shootings.
However, the story was different when it came to nonlethal incidents.
Examining five million observations under the Stop, Question, and Frisk
program from 2003 to 2013, the study showed that blacks were 50 percent
more likely to be slapped, pushed into a wall, or experience some other
violent encounter with police.20 Even though there were fewer events taking
place in the more severe categories, such as pointing a weapon at a suspect,
the racial differences were constant. Fryer noted that “blacks are 21.3
percent more likely to be involved in an incident where a weapon is drawn.21
He also reported that “black civilians are 21.2 percent more likely to have
any force used against them in an interaction compared to white civilians
with the same reported compliance behavior.”22 The PPCS of 2011 showed
that black people were more likely to experience violent encounters with
the police than were whites.23
Contrary to Reed’s claim that Black Lives Matter has made ambiguous
and unrealistic demands, the Movement for Black Lives, a collective of
over fifty groups (including Black Lives Matter), issued in 2016 a number
of concrete and reasonable policy demands. For example, its call for
reparations and long-term investment in black communities has been made
by others long before Black Lives Matter. The demand for reparations was
not a wild, pie in the sky idea. The group called for support of H.R. 40, the
Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African
Americans Act.24 Leaders of the civil rights movement, including Martin
Luther King’s GI Bill for the poor and Whitney Young’s Marshall Plan for
poor urban areas, are examples of a similar call for investments fifty years
earlier.
The Movement for Black Lives’ solution to police domination of black
people is also specific and has been advocated by others in the anti–police
brutality movement—they call for an end to “zero-tolerance school policies
and the arrest of students, the removal of police from school, and the
reallocation of funds from police and punitive school discipline practices to
restorative services.”25 Under the subheading “Community Control,” the
Movement for Black Lives calls for “direct democratic community control”
over law enforcement agencies to ensure that the communities “most
harmed by destructive policing have the power to hire and fire officers, and
subpoena relevant agency information.”26 Just as important, the demands
made by the Movement for Black Lives will address police brutality not
only of black people but of all who are victims of police abuse.
The Movement for Black Lives is also attempting to broaden its
strategies. In addition to disruptive protest, it has gotten involved in
electoral activities, including endorsing candidates and members running
for office. Besides demonstrations, using the courts, voting, and running for
office are crucial means in the ongoing battle against police domination of
citizens.
The continued criminalization of black and brown people, the huge
investment in law enforcement, and the overuse of police to handle crime
while at the same time not investing in neighborhoods all assures that police
brutality and mass incarceration, especially of people of color, will remain a
problem that plagues the United States. While blacks and Latinos continue
to disproportionally experience abuse at the hands of the police, victims of
police brutality cross race, ethnicity, and gender lines. Whites, Asians,
women, and others have suffered police assaults and misconduct. Ending
police brutality is in the interest of everyone, not just those who have
historically been victims. As this book has noted, vigilance and
determination on the part of the public has been one of the best ways to
eradicate the scourge of police domination over the people they are sworn
to protect.
 Acknowledgments

This writing of this book would not have been possible without the backing
of my many friends and colleagues. I wish to thank Jennifer Hammer for
her encouragement and support for this project. Jennifer first contacted me
just as I got started writing and expressed great enthusiasm for the book.
During the research and writing phase, Jennifer gave me extremely helpful
advice and suggested that I submit the draft for review to New York
University Press.
I am extremely grateful to Jill Hannum for her editing of the manuscript.
Jill’s careful reading of each chapter and numerous recommendations has
made this a better book. I am indebted to Nicholas Taylor for his wonderful
copyediting of the book. V. P. Franklin’s careful reading and suggestions for
the second chapter of the book were very helpful. I am very grateful to Fred
Jerome for sharing his files on the William Epton, the Harlem Defense
Council, and the Progressive Labor Movement.
I owe a great debt to Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard. In the
summer of 2015, Jeanne and Komozi organized and conducted an NEH
Summer Faculty Seminar and invited me to present my work to a group of
leading scholars in modern African American history. The feedback,
comments, and suggestions from that presentation were invaluable.
I am grateful to Jocelyn Jerome, Dave Dubnow, and Johanna Fernandez
for their insight and willingness to share with me a number sources. Their
analysis on policing has influenced my thinking about the subject. My
discussions on policing and police brutality with Khalil Gibran Muhammad,
Jerald Podair, Douglas Egerton, Leigh Fought, Carol Smith, Joe Esposito,
Kristopher Burrell, Jane Latour, Tim Johnson, and Michael Koncewicz
were immeasurably helpful as well.
I also benefited from discussions on policing and race with my good
friend Felton O. Best and his students at Central Connecticut State
University. I similarly profited from Alex Vitale’s comments on chapter 3
and from his new book on policing. I wish to thank Pedro Hernandez and
Juber Ayala Millas at the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños for help with
the Richie Pérez Papers. I also wish to thank the archivists at the State
University of New York in Albany for their assistance with the Papers of
the New York Conservative Party. I also benefited from the work of Robert
Gangi and PROP.
Last but not least, I wish to give special thanks to Marsha for her patience
and understanding as I labored these last few years to complete this book.
 Notes

Introduction

“Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States,” Human Rights
Watch, July 1, 1998, www.hrw.org.
“Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department,” United States Department of Justice, March 4,
2015, www.justice.gov.
Matthew Mathias and Carly Schwartz, “The NYPD Has a Long History of Killing Unarmed Black
Men,” Huffington Post (blog), July 19, 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com; American Civil Liberties
Union, “Fighting Police Abuse: A Community Action Manual,” 1997, www.aclu.org.
Natasha Bach, “Police Violence Has Been Going On Forever: No Wonder People Are Fed Up with
It,” Huffington Post (blog), August 23, 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com.
Bryan Burrough, “Today, a Softer Response to Police Violence Than in the 1960s and 70s,” Los
Angeles Times, May 2, 2015.
Jamilah King, “Before Freddie Gray: A Timeline of American Unrest,” TakePark (blog), April 29,
2015, www.takepart.com.
Sam Roberts, “No Longer Majority Black, Harlem Is in Transition,” New York Times, January 5,
2010. All New York Times quotations are drawn from www.nytimes.com.
“Population of the 20 Largest U.S. Cities 1900–2012,” Infoplease, n.d., www.infoplease.com.
Clarence Taylor, The Black Churches of Brooklyn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 123.
0 Charles Crawford, “Law Enforcement and Popular Movies: Hollywood as a Teaching Tool in the
Classroom,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 6, no. 2 (1999): 46–57, available at
www.albany.edu.
1 Harry S. Truman, “Address before the Attorneys General Conference on Law Enforcement
Problems,” February 15, 1950, www.presidency.ucsb.edu.
 Chapter 1. The People’s Voice and Police Brutality

Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 70.
Warren H. Brown, “A Negro Looks at the Negro Press,” Saturday Review, December 19, 1942, 5.
Maxwell R. Brooks, The Negro Press Re-examined: Political Content of Leading Negro Newspapers
(Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1959), 67.
Louis E. Lomax, The Negro Revolt (New York: Signet Books, 1963), 72–73.
Al Nall, “Reports of Police Brutality Prove Some Cops Shouldn’t Be on the Force,” New York
Amsterdam News, September 7, 1957.
“Police Brutality,” Crisis, March 1953, 164–65.
Wil Haygood, King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (New York: Amistad,
2006), 88; Kathleen Curire, Interview with Marvel Cooke for the Washington Press Club Foundation,
transcript, October 6, 1989, http://beta.wpcf.org ; Brian Dolinar, The Black Cultural Front: Black
Artists and Writers of the Depression Generation (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012),
180.
Bruce Lambert, “Doxey Wilkerson Is Dead; Educator and Advocate Rights,” New York Times, June
18, 1993; Tony Pecinovsky, “Communist Party and African American Equality: A Focus Unequal in
U.S. History,” People’s World, February 3, 2010; Lawrence P. Jackson, The Indignant Generation: A
Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934–1960 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2011), 306.
Barbara Harris, “Harrington, Oliver W. (14 Feb. 1912–2 Nov. 1995,” in African American Lives, ed.
Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004),
375–76.
0 “The Editorial Policy of the Voice,” People’s Voice, February 14, 1942, 20.
1 James G. Thompson, letter to editor, Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942.
2 Thompson.
3 “Editorial Policy of the Voice.”
4 “Editorial Policy of the Voice.”
5 Richard Robbins, “Counter-Assertion in the New York Negro Press,” Phylon 10, no. 2 (1949).
6 Robbins; Haygood, King of the Cats, 90.
7 “Man Charges Cops Brutally Beat Him Up,” People’s Voice, February 28, 1942, 1.
8 James S. Ettema and Theodore L. Glasser, Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and
Public Virtue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 193.
9 Llewellyn Ransom, “Angry Mob Circled Hospital as Crazed Man Is Slain by Cop,” People’s Voice,
May 16, 1942, 2.
0 Ransom.
1 For an example of a police version of a killing of a Harlem resident see, “Police Shoot into Rioters;
Kill Negro in Harlem Mob,” New York Times, May 20, 1935; “Patrolman Cleared in Harlem
Shooting,” New York Times, November 15, 1949.
2 James W. Douglas Jr., “I Saw a Harlem Cop Slay a Helpless Man,” People’s Voice, May 23, 1942, 3.
3 Douglas.
4 Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York: McGraw
Hill, 1989), 371–72; Cheryl Greenberg, Or Does It Explode? Black Harlem in the Great Depression
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 294.
5 A. G. Sulzberger, “La Guardia’s Tough and Incorruptible Police Commissioner,” New York Times,
November 11, 2009.
6 “Four Lawyers Volunteer to Aid McCullom as Court Hears Case,” People’s Voice, December 12,
1942, 5.
7 Llewellyn Ransom, “Eyewitness to Shooting of Youth Swears Policeman Was Drunk,” People’s
Voice, November 21, 1941, 3.
8 “Four Lawyers Volunteer to Aid McCullum as Court Hears Case,” People’s Voice, December 12,
1942, 5.
9 “McCullum Back on Job Employer Held for Him,” People’s Voice, December 12, 1942, 8.
0 Llewellyn Ransom, “4 Teen-Age Boys Beaten, Spit Upon; Detective Had Been Warned by Judge,”
People’s Voice, April 10, 1943, 3.
1 “New Here?” St. Philips Church, 2017. http://stphilipsharlem.org/new-here/.
2 “Juvenile or Police Delinquency—Which?” People’s Voice, July 22, 1944, 2.
3 Llewellyn Ransom, “Regarded as Criminals Even before They Err: Black Squad Tactic Harmful to
Our Youth,” People’s Voice, August 19,1944, 7.
4 “Woman Attacked by Negro,” New York Times, March 11, 1898.
5 “Negroes Stab a White Man,” New York Times, August 20, 1900; “Frightened Negro Kills Girl,”
New York Times, August 20, 1900.
6 “Woman Slain in Park: Stabbed by Negro in Morningside—Her Escort Beaten,” New York Times,
July 16, 1935.
7 “One-Man Offensive Halted by Bullet,” New York Times, April 23, 1945.
8 David V. Walcott, Cops and Kids: Policing, Juvenile Delinquency, in Urban America, 1890–1940
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005), 193–94.
9 “Muggings Are Laid to New Arrivals,” New York Times, March 27, 1943.
0 “Crime Smear,” Crisis, December 1941, 375.
1 John Louis Clarke, “Daily News under Fire for Smearing,” People’s Voice, August 15, 1942, 2.
2 “Editorial Policy of the Voice,” People Voice, February 14, 1942, 34.
3 Joe Bostic, “Police Commissioner Denies Press Stories,” People’s Voice, August 15, 1942, 3.
4 Bostic.
5 Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers
Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 80.
6 Adam Clayton Powell, “Soapbox,” People’s Voice, November 27, 1943, 5; Taylor, 80.
7 Powell.
8 Laurie Leach, “Margie Polite, the Riot Starter: Harlem, 1943,” Studies in the Literary Imagination
40, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 25–48.
9 Adam Clayton Powell, “Soapbox,” People’s Voice, June 17, 1944, 5.
0 “No Time for Complacency,” New York Times, August 4, 1943.
1 Adam Clayton Powell, “Soapbox,” People’s Voice, July 24, 1943.
2 “Disappearing Act: Whites Replacing Negroes on Harlem Detective Force,” People’s Voice,
September 11, 1943, 3.
3 “Disappearing Act.”
4 “Valentine Willing to Add More Negroes to Police Force,” People’s Voice, July 10, 1943.
5 Joe Bostic, “More Negro Detectives for Harlem, Ryan Promises: Not Sure When or How Many,”
People’s Voice, September 18, 1943, 4.
6 Joe Bostic, “Ryan Fails to Name Negro Detectives,” People’s Voice, October 2, 1943, 4.
7 “Valentine Willing to Add More Negroes to Police Force,” People’s Voice, July 10, 1943, 3; Andrew
Darien, Becoming New York’s Finest: Race, Gender, and the Integration of the NYPD, 1935–1980
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 29.
8 “Whites Replacing Negroes on Harlem Detective Force,” People’s Voice, September 1, 1943, 3.
9 Andrew Darien, “Police Fraternity and the Politics of Race and Class in New York City, 1941–
1960,” Labor History Regional Labor Review 2, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2000): 29–37; Darien,
Becoming New York’s Finest, 30–31.
0 William M. Kephart, “Integration of Negroes into the Urban Police Force,” Journal of Criminal Law
45, no. 3 (1954): 329–30.
1 Dominic J. Capeci Jr., “From Harlem to Montgomery: The Bus Boycotts and Leadership of Adam
Clayton Powell Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr.,” Historian 41, no. 4 (1979): 723–29.
2 Adam Clayton Powell, “Soapbox,” People’s Voice, May 30, 1942, 5.
3 Powell.
4 Powell.
5 Lewis J. Valentine to F. H. La Guardia, May 15, 1942, Harlem—Powell, Adam Clayton folder, box
3531, folder 10, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
6 Stone Phone Call to Adam Clayton Powell, Transcript, n.d., Harlem—Powell, Adam Clayton folder,
box 3531, folder 10, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
7 Frank Shilbersky to Commanding Officer of the Criminal Alien Squad, May 17, 1942, Harlem—
Powell, Adam Clayton folder, box 3531, folder 10, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
8 Shilbersky.
 Chapter 2. The Communist Party and Police Brutality

Carl Lawrence, “Discharged GI Killed by Harlem Cops: Corpse Shipped Home,” New York
Amsterdam News, December 16, 1950, 1; “Eyewitness Tells How Cops Slew Negro Vet,” Daily
Worker, December 11, 1950.
For report on affidavits of witnesses, see Lawrence; and “Eyewitness Tells How Cops Slew Negro
Vet.” For statement by district attorney, see “Indictment Denied in Death of Ex-G.I.,” New York
Times, February 17, 1951.
“John Derrick’s Corpse Shipped Home; “NAACP Demands Probe of Cops,” New York Amsterdam
News, December 16, 1950, 1; John Hudson Jones, “Cops Who Killed Derrick Still Kept on Duty in
Harlem,” New York Amsterdam News, December 21, 1950, 1.
“Mass Meeting Friday to Protest Killing, Demand Indictment,” New York Amsterdam News,
December 30, 1950.
Abner Berry, “Cop Killing of Negro Vet Rouses Storm of Protests,” Daily Worker, December 17,
1950, 1.
Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (Chicago:
Liberator Press, 1978), 436–37.
Carl Vedro, “The Menace of White Chauvinism,” Jewish Currents, June 1950.
Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936 (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1998), 156–57; Marilynn Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police
Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 162–63; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 437.
“Communist Killed by Gotham Officer,” Pittsburgh Press, July 1, 1930; “To Investigate Gonzales’
Death,” Daily Star, July 1, 1930.
0 A. B. Magil and Joseph North, “Steve Katovis: Life and Death of a Worker,” International
Pamphlets, 1930, 28.
1 American Civil Liberties Union, “The Fight for Civil Liberty, 1930–1931,” June 1932, 19–20,
http://babel.hathitrust.org.
2 Solomon, Cry Was Unity, 189.
3 Paul D’Amato, “The Communist Party and Black Liberation in the 1930s,” International Socialist
Review 1 (Summer 1997): www.isreview.org.
4 D’Amato.
5 William Z. Foster, “Problems of Solidarity,” in Strike Strategy (Chicago: Trade Union Education
League, 1926), chap. 2, www.marxists.org.
6 Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers
Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 37–39.
7 Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1979), 3–99.
8 Carter, 186–87, 225–26, 229.
9 Resolutions of the National Negro Congress, February 14–16, 1936, Woodson-Harsh Collection,
Chicago Public Library; Erik Gillman, Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and
the Militant Fight for Civil Rights (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 30–56.
0 David Garrow, “Randolph, A. Phillip (1889–1979),” in Biographical Dictionary of the American
Left, ed. Bernard K. Johnpoll and Harvey Klehr (New York: ABC-CLIO, 1986), 329.
1 Daniel W. Aldridge III, “A Militant Liberalism: Anti-Communism and the African American
Intelligential, 1939–1955” (paper presented at the American Historical Association, 2004),
users.wfu.edu.
2 Eric Arnesen, “No ‘Graver Danger’: Black Anticommunism, the Communist Party, and the Race
Question,” Labor Studies in Working Class History of the Americas 3, no. 4 (2006): 15.
3 A. Philip Randolph, Excerpts from Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on
Washington Movement Meeting in Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942, www.bsos.umd.edu.
4 Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin, Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 254; Aldridge, “Militant Liberalism.”
5 “Second Dying, 3rd Wounded, after Arrest,” Nassau Daily Review Star, February 5, 1946.
6 “Jim Crow Pulled the Trigger,” Daily Worker, February 10, 1946.
7 Kimberly L. Phillips, War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military
from World War II to Iraq (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 91–93.
8 Phillips, 91–93; “New Unit Replaces Communist League: American Youth for Democracy
Organized Here—Soviet Friendship Stressed,” New York Times, October 18, 1943.
9 House Reports, 78th Congress, 2nd Session, January 10–December 19, 1944, Miscellaneous, vol. 2,
152.
0 John Simon, “Rebel in the House: The Life and Times of Vito Marcantonio,” Monthly Review 57,
no. 11 (2006), http://monthlyreview.org; Vito Marcantonio, “Mark My Words,” Daily Worker, n.d.
1 Benjamin, J. Davis, Communist Councilman from Harlem: Autobiographical Notes Written in a
Federal Penitentiary (New York: International Publishers, 1969), 101–44, 180–86.
2 Davis, 25–26.
3 Davis, 21–22.
4 Davis, 28–40.
5 Davis, 53–62.
6 Davis, 53–100; Benjamin J. Davis, “Why I Am a Communist,” Phylon 8, no. 2 (1947): 108–9.
7 Davis, “Why I Am a Communist,” 110.
8 Davis, 107–8.
9 Davis, 110.
0 Ben Davis, “Willie McGee Lynching,” Daily Worker, May 16, 1951; Benjamin J. Davis, The Negro
People in the Struggle for Peace and Freedom: Report to the 15th Convention, Communist Party
(New York: New Century, 1951), 8.
1 Horace Marshall, Police Brutality, Lynching in the Northern Style (New York: Office of Councilman
Benjamin J. Davis, 1947).
2 Davis press release, April 2, 1948, Communist Party of the United States of America, box 139,
folder 16, Tamiment Institute Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives (hereafter cited as
Tamiment Library).
3 Ben Davis, “An Answer to Wallander, End Police Brutality” Daily Worker, August 18, 1946.
4 Davis to “Dear Friend,” n.d., Communist Party of the United States of America, box 139, folder 16,
Tamiment Library; Marshall, “Police Brutality: Lynching Northern Style.”
5 “‘Muss Up” Hoodlums, Wallander Tells Cops,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 9, 1947.
6 “Ben Davis Will Continue to Serve the People,” New York Age, October 29, 1949.
7 Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 109–10.
8 Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America,
1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 22.
9 Walter Francis White, “The Negro and the Communists,” Harper’s Magazine, December 1931.
0 Hugh T. Murray Jr., “The NAACP vs. the Communist Party: The Scottsboro Rape Cases, 1931–
1932,” Phylon 28, no. 3 (1967): 276; Manfred Berg, “Black Civil Rights and Liberal
Anticommunism: The NAACP in the Early Cold War,” Journal of American History 94, no. 1 (June
1967): 75–96.
1 Ben Davis, “Truman’s Betrayal Hasn’t Ended Civil Rights Fight,” Daily Worker, June 27, 1950.
2 Eric Arnesen, “Civil Rights and the Cold War at Home: Post-War Activism, Anticommunism, and
the Decline of the Left,” American Communist History 11, no. 1 (April 2012), www.tandfonline.com.
3 Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New
York: New Press, 2009), 248–49.
4 Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate
New York City Schools (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 55–65.
5 Manfred Berg, “The Ticket to Freedom”: The NAACP and the Struggle for Black Political
Integration (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 134–36.
6 “Our New Councilman,” New York Age, November 20, 1943.
7 Rev. Ben Richardson to Ben Davis, September 17, 1945, Communist Party of the United States of
America, box 139, folder 16, Tamiment Library.
8 Dorothy M. Hayes to Ben Davis, January 10, 1947, Communist Party of the United States of
America, box 139, folder 16, Tamiment Library.
9 Walter White to Ben Davis, Western Union telegram, August 5, 1946, Communist Party of the
United States of America, box 139, folder 16, Tamiment Library.
0 James Powers to Ben Davis, February 9, 1949, Communist Party of the United States of America,
box 139, folder 16, Tamiment Library.
1 Walter White, press release, n.d., Communist Party of the United States of America, box 139, folder
16, Tamiment Library.
2 William L. Patterson, The Man Who Cried Genocide (New York: International Publishers, 1991),
19–59.
3 Patterson, 77–79.
4 Patterson, 79–87.
5 Patterson, 87–93.
6 Eugene Debs, “The Negro in the Class Struggle,” International Socialist Review 4, no. 5 (November
1903): www.marxists.org.
7 “Toward an Anti-Racist Practice,” SocialistWorker.org, September 9, 2014,
www.socialistworker.org.
8 Patterson, Man Who Cried Genocide, 94–103.
9 Patterson, 126–38, 161.
0 Walter T. Howard, ed., Black Communists Speak on Scottsboro: A Documentary History
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 103–17.
1 Patterson, Man Who Cried Genocide, 156–66.
2 William Patterson, “William Patterson Speaks,” in Black Communists Speak on Scottsboro: A
Documentary History, ed. William T. Howard (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 118.
3 Patterson, Man Who Cried Genocide, 91–95; Gerald Horne, Communist Front? The Civil Rights
Congress, 1946–1956 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988), 29.
4 Patterson, 170.
5 Manfred Berg, “Black Civil Rights and Liberal Anticommunism: The NAACP in the Early Cold
War,” Journal of American History 94, no. 1 (June 2007): 75–96.
6 Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide (New York: International Publishers, 1970); Daniel
Levitas, “Remembering Stetson Kennedy,” Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights,
October 25, 2011, www.irehr.org.
7 Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide, xiv.
8 Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard, 14; Tony Pencinovsky, “Remembering James W. Ford,” People’s
World, February 16, 2010; James H. Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and
Africa, 1935–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 61; “Claudia Jones,
Communist,” The Marxist-Leninist: A Revolutionary Communist Website, March 1, 2010,
www.marxistleninist.wordpress.com; Carole Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of
Black Communist Claudia Jones (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Gerald Horne,
Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica (New York: NYU Pres,
2005); Eric Homberger, “Obituary: Howard Fast,” The Guardian, March 13, 2003.
9 Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide, xvii.
0 Civil Rights Congress, 4.
1 Civil Rights Congress, 10.
2 Civil Rights Congress, 8–9.
3 Civil Rights Congress, 12–76.
4 Patterson, Man Who Cried Genocide, 180; Ronald Brown and Carolyn Hartfield, “The Black Church
Culture and Politics in the City of Detroit,” Center of Urban Studies, October 2011, 1–5.
5 Berg, “Black Civil Rights and Liberal Anticommunism”; Aldridge, “Militant Liberalism.”
6 For example, see Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response
to the Cold War (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985); Marable, Race, Reform and
Rebellion; and Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang, eds., Anticommunism and the African
American Freedom Movement: Another Side of the Story (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
7 Yama Kunichoff, “From Chicago to Geneva, a Call for Police Accountability for Violence and
Torture,” Truthout, October 15, 2014, www.truth-out.org.
8 “We Charge Genocide: The Cry Rings True 52 Years Later,” People’s World, February 3, 2003,
www.peoplesworld.org.
9 “Statement to the Media by the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African
Descent, on the Conclusion of its Official Visit to the USA, 19–29 January 2016,” United Nations
Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, January 29, 2016, www.ohchr.org.
0 Christopher Magan, “Speaking in St. Paul, NAACP Leader Compares Recent Police Killings to
Lynching,” Twin Cities Pioneer Press, July 10, 2016, www.twincities.com.
 Chapter 3. The Nation of Islam and Police Brutality

All Nation of Islam sites were initially called “temples”; however, in an effort increase the
organization’s legitimacy by adding elements from mainstream Islam, the NOI later switched to the
word “mosque.”
“April 14, 1972: The Harlem Muslim Mosque Incident: Justice for Ptl. Cardillo Pending to This
Day!” The History of Policing in the City of New York (blog), March 22, 2017,
www.nypdhistory.com.
Rasul Miller, “Where Did All That Power Go? Muslims in the Movement for Community Control and
Police Accountability,” Sapelo Square (blog), September 1, 2015, www.sapelosquare.com.
Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), 128–29.
Andy A. Beveridge, “Harlem’s Shifting Population,” Gotham Gazette (blog), September 2, 2008,
www.gothamgazette.com.
Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–1930 (Chicago: Ivan R.
Dee, 1996), 135; “Answers about Depression-Era Harlem,” New York Times, February 19, 2009;
Richard L. Hughes, “Harlem’s Schools in the Great Depression: The Promise of the Agenda for
Education in a Democracy in an Educational Dystopia,” Miami University, n.d.,
www.units.miamioh.edu.
Jamie J. Wilson, Building a Healthy Black Harlem: Health Politics in Harlem, New York, from the
Jazz Age to the Great Depression (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2009), 24.
Hughes, “Harlem’s Schools in the Great Depression.”
Arthur Huff Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944), 76–78.
0 Erdmann Doane Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” American Journal
of Sociology 43, no. 6 (1938): 894.
1 Beynon, 895–902.
2 Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis, 41–51; Howard M. Brotz, “Negro ‘Jews’ in the United
States,” in The Black Church in America, ed. Hart M. Nelsen, Raytha L. Yokley, and Anne K. Nelsen
(New York: Basic Books, 1971), 195–209; Ernest Allen Jr., “When Japan Was ‘Champion of the
Darker Races’: Satokata Takahashi and Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” The Black
Scholar 24, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 26–28.
3 “Nation of Islam: Cult of the Black Muslims/Chapter 5,” Wikisource, last modified August 5, 2011,
http://en.wikisource.org.
4 Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Nation of Islam,” n.d., www.spicenter.org; Khuram Hussain,
“The Radical Black Press: Forgotten Legacy of Malcolm X,” Black Press Collective, June 2014.
5 Wayne Taylor “Premillennium Tension: Malcolm X and the Eschatology of the Nation of Islam,”
Souls 7, no. 1 (2005): 53.
6 Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011), 207.
7 “Nation of Islam,” part 2, 52, FBI Records: The Vault, n.d., http://vault.fbi.gov.
8 “Nation of Islam,” part 1, 37.
9 “Nation of Islam,” part 1, 38.
0 “Nation of Islam,” part 2, 52–54.
1 “The Hate That Hate Produced (1959): Malcom X First TV Appearance,” YouTube, June 28, 2017,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsYWD2EqavQ.
2 “Races: The Black Supremacists,” Time, August 10, 1959, 4–5.
3 “Recruits behind Bars” Time, March 31, 1961, http://www.time.com.
4 C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 156; see also E. U.
Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962), 293.
5 Lee P. Brown, “Black Muslims and the Police,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 56, no. 1
(Spring 1965): 119–22.
6 Lincoln, Black Muslims in America, 3.
7 Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple No. 2,
1965), 211–15.
8 Muhammad, 216.
9 Elijah Muhammad, “The Black Policeman and What He Polices,” Muhammad Speaks, December
13, 1968, www.elijahmuhammadspeaks.com.
0 Muhammad.
1 Muhammad.
2 File 100-6989, part 8, 42, “FBI File on Elijah Muhammad,” Internet Archive, www.archive.org
(hereafter cited as “FBI File on Elijah Muhammad”).
3 File 100-6989, “FBI File on Elijah Muhammad.”
4 Section 8, 10, “FBI File on Elijah Muhammad.”
5 Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 315.
6 “MGT Laws,” Muhammad Speaks, n.d., www.elijahmuhammadspeaks.com.
7 Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 315.
8 Part 8, 52, “FBI File on Elijah Muhammad.”
9 Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 319.
0 Muhammad, 316.
1 Muhammad, 211.
2 Elijah Muhammad, Police Brutality (1964; repr., Glendale, AZ: Scretarius Memps, 1997), Kindle
ed., 8.
3 “Elijah Muhammad: Messenger Meets the Press,” Muhammad Speaks, January 28, 1972,
www.elijahmuhammadspeaks.com. (The last line was a reference to NOI founder Wallace Fard’s
mysterious disappearance in 1934.)
4 “Elijah Muhammad.”
5 Martin Luther King Jr., “The Social Organization of Nonviolence,” in Civil Rights since 1787: A
Reader on the Black Struggle, ed. Jonathan Birnbaum and Clarence Taylor (New York: NYU Press,
2000), 459; “SCLC and ‘The Beloved Community,’” in Birnbaum and Taylor, 461.
6 “Malcolm X: Make It Plain,” YouTube, March 7, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGCygxs5ZqI.
7 Malcolm X to Dear Brother, n.d., file 100-399321, section 1, serials 1–17, 8, “Malcolm X FBI
Files,” Internet Archive, www.archive.org (hereafter cited as “Malcolm X FBI Files”).
8 Memorandum, SLC, Philadelphia, to Director, FBI, April 4, 1954, file 100-399321, section 1, 33–
34, “Malcolm X FBI Files.”
9 New York City Meeting in June 1959, file 105-8999, “Malcolm X FBI Files.”
0 Marable, Malcolm X, 207–11.
1 “Malcolm X: Harlem Unity Rally Excerpt 1963,” YouTube, September 15, 2016,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMHzLFmMfRw
2 “Malcolm X.”
3 “Bayard Rustin Debate (November, 1960),” Malcolm X Files, www.malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com;
Robert Penn Warren Interviews, Roy Wilkins, April 1, 1964, Who Speaks for the Negro? An
Archival Collection, whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu; Michael G. Long, ed., First Class
Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson (New York: Time Books, 2007), 148–49.
4 Martin Luther King Jr., “Address at the Thirty-Fourth Annual Convention of the National Bar
Association,” August 20, 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute,
http://kinginstitute.stanford.edu.
5 Some of those writing on the Hinton case claim that Hinton said to Dolan, “This is not Alabama, this
is New York.” For example, see Marable, Malcolm X, 127. However, in an affidavit, Hinton testified
that he only asked Dolan “Why don’t you carry the man to jail?” “Moslem Victim’s Own Story of
Cop’s Brutality,” New York Amsterdam News, May 18, 1957, 1.
6 “Moslem Victim’s Own Story,” 1.
7 “Moslem Victim’s Own Story.”
8 James L. Hicks, “Riot Threat as Cops Beat Moslem,” New York Amsterdam News, May 4, 1957;
Mariame Kaba, An Abridged History of Resisting Police Violence in Harlem (Chicago: Project NIA,
2012), www.policeviolence.files.wordpress.com.
9 Hinton v. City of New York, March 21, 1961, Leagle, www.leagle.com.
0 Malcom X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965),
233–34.
1 Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 55–
56.
2 Goldman, 56–59.
3 Hicks, “Riot Threat as Cops Beat Moslem”; “Moslem Victim’s Own Story,” 1, 32.
4 Hicks, 1, 32.
5 See Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X; and Hicks, “Riot Threat as Cops Beat Moslem.”
6 Fredrick Knight, “Justifiable Homicide, Police Brutality, or Governmental Repression? The 1962
Los Angeles Police Shooting of Seven Members of the Nation of Islam,” Journal of Negro History
79, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 184.
7 “The Day That Malcolm Won Harlem Over,” Prison Culture, August 12, 2012,
www.usprisonculture.com.
8 Justin Charity, “In 1957, Malcolm X Stared Down the NYPD—and Won,” Complex, May 19, 2015,
www.complex.com.
9 Hicks, “Riot Threat as Cops Beat Moslem.”
0 File 100-399321, section 3, 10, “Malcolm X FBI Files.”
1 File 105-6999, section 3, 80, “Malcolm X FBI Files.”
2 File 105-6999.
3 File 105-6999, 21–22.
4 “Cops Quiz Moslems: New Hearing Slated,” New York Amsterdam News, May 2, 1959.
5 “Moslems Confer with Top Cop,” New York Amsterdam News, April 11, 1959.
6 Section 3, 94, “Malcolm X FBI Files.”.
7 “Moslems Confer with Top Cop.”
8 “Cops Quiz Moslems.”
9 “Moslems Didn’t Get to See Commissioner,” New York Amsterdam News, June 27, 1959, 20.
0 “Moslems Didn’t Get to See Commissioner,” 20.
1 “Muslim Charges Police Brutality,” New York Amsterdam News, August 19, 1961, 18.
2 “Muslim Charges Police Brutality.”
3 Report of (Name Redacted) to (Name Blanked), November 17, 1959, 38, FBI Records: The Vault,
http://vault.fbi.gov.
4 “Say NY Cops KKK Members: Top Cop Denies Charge,” New York Amsterdam News, September
12, 1959, 1. The letter can also be found in Rodnell P. Collins, Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of
Malcolm X (New York: Citadel, 2000), 213–18.
5 Subject file Malcolm Little, 5 of 27, 77–78, FBI Records: The Vault, http://vault.fbi.gov.
6 “Say NY Cops KKK Members.”
7 Marable, Malcolm X, 191–93.
8 Malachi D. Crawford, “Neo-Houstonian Studies: The Nation of Islam, Edward W. Jacko Jr., and the
Struggle for Afro-Muslim Civil Liberties,” in Charles H. Houston: An Interdisciplinary Study of
Civil Rights Leadership, ed. James L. Conyors (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 238–41;
Malachi D. Crawford, Black Muslims and the Law: Civil Liberties from Elijah Muhammad to
Muhammad Ali (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 50–51.
9 Crawford, 59.
0 “Muslim Wins $75,000 in Damages from City,” New York Amsterdam News, May 7, 1960; Hinton v.
City of New York .
 Chapter 4. Civil Rights, Community Activists, and Police
Brutality

Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New
York City Schools (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 48–49.
Themis Chronopoulos, “Police Misconduct, Community Opposition, and Urban Governance in New
York City, 1945–1965,” Journal of Urban History (2015): 5, http://journals.sagepub.com.
Martha Biondi, “How New York Changes the Story of the Civil Rights Movement,” Afro-Americans
in New York Life and History 31, no. 2 (2007): 15–31.
The Complete Report of Mayor La Guardia’s Commission on the Harlem Riot of March 19, 1935
(New York: Arno Press, 1969), 122, 133–34.
Complete Report of Mayor La Guardia’s Commission, 134–35.
On June 22, 1943, Detroit erupted in “race riots.” Over six thousand federal troops were sent to
restore order.
“No Detroit in New York,” People’s Voice, August 7, 1943, 1; Llewelyn Ransom, “Racial Element
Not Present in Harlem, Leaders Act Quickly to Restore,” People’s Voice, August 7, 1943, 3; Marvel
Cooke, “Riots Express Resentment against Existing Social Ills,” People’s Voice, August 7, 1943, 4.
Cooke, 4.
“Police Commissioner Kills Cop Brutality Committee, People’s Voice, March 20, 1948.
0 “NAACP Organizes Police Committee,” People’s Voice, March 27, 1948.
1 John J. Cassese to the Mayor and Council of the City of New York, May 21, 1964, Legislative
Materials, Police Civilian Complaint Review Board, 1964–1965, box 14, folder 278, LaGuardia and
Wagner Archives; Andrew T. Darien, Becoming New York’s Finest: Race, Gender, and the
Integration of the NYPD, 1935–1980 (New York: Palgrave, 2013), 35.
2 Cedric Larson, “New York City Launches New Public Relations Policy,” Journal of Criminal Law
and Criminality 41, no. 3 (1950): 375.
3 Larson, 369–70.
4 Larson, 372–73.
5 From the Desk of the P.C. [Police Commissioner], “The Police and the Public,” January 1950,
www.archive.org.
6 “New York NAACP Opens Drive against Cop Brutality,” People’s Voice, March 6, 1948, 9; “Police
Commissioner Kills Cop Brutality Committee”.
7 Malachi D. Crawford, “Neo-Houstonian Studies: The Nation of Islam, Edward W. Jacko Jr., and the
Struggle for Afro-Muslim Civil Liberties,” in Charles H. Houston: An Interdisciplinary Study of
Civil Rights Leadership, ed. James L. Conyors (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 238–41;
Malachi D. Crawford, Black Muslims and the Law: Civil Liberties from Elijah Muhammad to
Muhammad Ali (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 50–51.
8 “Win $130Gs Damages,” New York Amsterdam News, February 9, 1957, 1, 31; “Convict Former
Cop for Shooting Fields,” New York Amsterdam News, July 6, 1957.
9 “Cop Victim Wins $50,000 in Court,” New York Amsterdam News, September 28, 1957, 2.
0 “Police Brutality,” Crisis, March 1953, 164–65.
1 “Brutality Charges against City Police under U.S. Inquiry,” New York Times, February 17, 1953;
“Cop Victim Wins $50,000 in Court”; Marilynn Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence
in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 222–26.
2 “Brutality Charges against City Police under U.S. Inquiry.”
3 “Brutality Charges against City Police under U.S. Inquiry.”
4 “Police Brutality,” 165.
5 Charles Grutzner, “Halley Urges City Sift ‘Deal’ on FBI; Mayor Disagrees,” New York Times,
February 19, 1953.
6 Grutzner.
7 Grutzner.
8 Grutzner.
9 Majority Report of a Special Subcommittee to Study the Feasibility of Creating an Independent
Civilian Complaint Review Board to Investigate, Hear, and Make Recommendations Concerning
Allegations of Police Brutality, Bill No. 498, City Counsel Special Committee, May 18, 1965, box
14, folder 278, La Guardia and Wagner Archives. .
0 Majority Report.
1 “Boy, 9, Says Cops Brutally Beat Him,” New York Amsterdam News, May 21, 1955, 1; “Grand Jury
Fails to Indict Cop,” New York Amsterdam News, June 11, 1955, 1.
2 Michael Nash, “Pregnant, Says Cop Beat Her,” New York Amsterdam News, April 27, 1957, 1.
3 Les Matthews, “It Was Police Brutality,” New York Amsterdam News, August 29, 1959, 1, 9.
4 “Miles Davis Seized,” New York Times, August 26, 1959.
5 Matthews, “It Was Police Brutality,” 1, 9.
6 Fred Powledge, “Brutality Cases Urged for Study,” New York Times, April 7, 1964.
7 Richard J. H. Johnston, “Murphy Charges Attack on Police,” New York Times, April 29, 1964.
 Chapter 5. Police Brutality, the Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant Riots, and the National Civil Rights Movement

Al Nall, “Reports of Police Brutality Prove Some Cops Shouldn’t Be on Force,” New York Amsterdam
News, September 7, 1957, 2; “Police Brutality Called Old Issue,” New York Times, March 22, 1953.
Milton Nallory, “Sidewalk Interview,” New York Amsterdam News, May 18, 1957, 11.
Michael Flamm, In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 12–13.
Gilligan Report, September 1, 1964–September 3, 1964, box 60228, folder 16, La Guardia and
Wagner Archives.
Carol J. Pelleck and Ted Poston, “City Probes Slaying of Boy, 15,” New York Post, July 17, 1964. All
New York Post quotations are drawn from http://nypost.com. See also Gilligan Report.
Gilligan Report; Flamm, In the Heat of the Summer, 28.
Paul L. Montgomery and Frances X. Clines, “Thousands Riot in Harlem Area: Scores Are Hurt,” New
York Times, July 19, 1964; Paul Montgomery, “Night of Riots Began with Calm Rally, New York
Times, July 20, 1964.
“Negroes, Police Turn Harlem into Battlefield,” Asahi Evening News, July 20, 1964, 1.
Robert L. Muller, “Virtual Guerrilla Warfare Rocks Harlem,” Windsor-Star, July 20, 1964, 28.
0 Peter Kihss, “Screvane Links Reds to Rioting,” New York Times, July 22, 1964.
1 “The Campaign,” Time, July 31, 1964, 10.
2 R. W. Apple Jr., “Violence Flares Again in Harlem; Restraint Urged,” New York Times, July 20,
1964; Robert Wagner, “Statement on the Harlem Riot, July 22, 1964,” New York City Municipal
Archives WNYC Collection.
3 Wagner.
4 Paul Screvane, “Statement on the Harlem Riots, July 19, 1964,” New York City Municipal Archives
WNYC Collection.
5 Kihss, “Screvane Links Reds to Rioting,” 1.
6 Author interview with Fred Jerome, June 5, 2017.
7 Peter Kihss, “Wagner Asserts Disorders Harm Negroes’ Cause,” New York Times, July 23, 1964.
8 William Borders, “More Than 100 Injured Get Aid at 2 City Hospitals in Harlem,” New York Times,
July 20, 1964.
9 Francis X. Clines, “Policemen Exhaust Their Ammunition in All-Night Battle,” New York Times,
July 20, 1964.
0 Simone Montgomery to Mayor Wagner and Commissioner Murphy, July 22, 1964, CORE Papers,
reel 3, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (hereafter cited as Schomburg).
1 “Freedom Funders: Philanthropy and the Civil Rights Movement, 1955–1965,” National Committee
for Responsive Philanthropy, June 2014.
2 Ray Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 11–22, 33–93, 207.
3 “Farmer and Murphy Discuss Complaints Board,” New York Times, April 28, 1964.
4 “Farmer and Murphy Discuss Complaints Board.”
5 Pelleck and Poston, “City Probes Slaying of Boy.”
6 Apple, “Violence Flares Again in Harlem,” 1.
7 Fred Powledge, “Screvane to Meet Rights Leaders,” New York Times, July 20, 1964.
8 List of July 20 Meeting, President of the City Council (Paul Screvane, 1962–1965), Series: Press
Releases, box 52517, folder 32, Harlem Riots, July 25, 1964, La Guardia and Wagner Archives;
Powledge, 1.
9 Meeting July 20, 1964, Hildebrand’s Group, President of the City Council (Paul Screvane, 1962–
1965), Series: Press Releases, box 52517, folder 32, Harlem Riots, July 25, 1964, La Guardia and
Wagner Archives; Peter Kihss, “City to Increase Negro Policemen on Harlem Duty,” New York
Times, July 21, 1964.
0 Kihss.
1 Kihss.
2 Warren Weaver Jr., “Powell Says Riots Can End If Mayor Meets 5 Demands,” New York Times, July
23, 1964.
3 Arthur C. Logan, “Statement from Board of Directors, HARYOU-ACT, Inc., of Conflict in Harlem,”
press release, n.d., Robert F. Wagner Documents Collection, box 60228, folder 18, Harlem Riots, La
Guardia and Wagner Archives.
4 Christopher Hayes, “The Heart of the City: Civil Rights, Resistance, and Police Reform in New
York City, 1945–1966” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2012), 194–95.
5 Police Power and Citizens’ Rights: The Case for an Independent Police Review Board (New York:
American Civil Liberties Union, 1966), 3.
6 “Riots in Harlem and Other Sections of New York,” Robert F. Wagner Documents Collection, box
60228, folder 19, Harlem Riots—Statements, July 21, 1964, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
7 “Riots in Harlem and Other Sections of New York.”
8 “Riots in Harlem and Other Sections of New York.”
9 “Riots in Harlem and Other Sections of New York.”
0 “Riots in Harlem and Other Sections of New York.”
1 “WSB-TV Newsfilm Clip of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Speaking about Race Riots in Rochester and
New York City, New York, 1964 July 27,” Civil Rights Digital Library, n.d., http://crdl.usg.edu.
2 “WSB-TV Newsfilm Clip of Dr. Martin Luther King.”
3 Peter Kihss “Harlem Killings Reported Urged,” New York Times, July 28, 1964.
4 Paul L. Montgomery, “CORE to Continue Its Direct Action,” New York Times, August 10, 1964.
5 Philip Benjamin, “Dr. King Confers with Mayor on City and U.S. Rights Issues,” New York Times,
July 28, 1964; Philip Benjamin, “Harlem Leaders Charge Dr. King Is Ignoring Them,” New York
Times, July 29, 1964.
6 Benjamin.
7 “Key Negro Groups Call on Members to Curb Protests” New York Times, July 30, 1964.
8 To JCCE, Telephone Conversation Message from Mrs. Roy Wilkins, n.d., box 60224, folder 5,
Robert F. Wagner Documents Collection, 37–44, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
9 To JCCE, Telephone Conversation Message from Mrs. Roy Wilkins.
0 Author interview with Fred Jerome, June 5, 2017; R. W. Apple Jr., “Police Ban March in Harlem
Today; Sponsors Defiant,” New York Times, July 25, 1964; “Jesse Gray, 64, Leader of Harlem Rent
Strike,” New York Times, August 5, 1988.
1 Apple.
2 R. W. Apple Jr., “Protest Leaders Seized in Harlem: Two Leftist Arrested after Defying Police and
Ignoring Pleas for Negro Unity,” New York Times, July 26, 1964.
3 M. S. Handler, “Negro Factions Are Considering a United Front,” New York Times, July 29, 1964.
4 President Lyndon Baines Johnson, State of the Union Address, January 8, 1964, MP503, Lyndon
Baines Johnson Library and Museum.
5 “MLK on the Republican Nomination of Barry Goldwater,” July 16, 1964, King Library and
Archives, www.thekingcenter.org.
6 Roy Wilkins to Senator Barry Goldwater, May 13, 1964, Telegram, NAACP Collection, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov.
7 Apple, “Police Ban March in Harlem Today.”
8 Apple.
9 “Key Negro Groups Call on Members to Curb Protests,” New York Times, July 30, 1964.
0 “Key Negro Groups Call on Members to Curb Protests”; R. W Apple Jr., “Negro Leaders Split over
Call to Curtail Drive,” New York Times, July 31, 1964.
1 Andrew Young, “Whitney Young: Working from the Middle,” Life 70/11 (March 26, 1971), 4;
Whitney Young Interview with Robert Penn Warren, April 13, 1964, Who Speaks for the Negro? An
Archival Collection, whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu.
2 Lyndon Johnson Conversation with A. Philip Randolph, November 29, 1963, tape K6311.05, Miller
Center, University of Virginia.
3 Apple, “Negro Leaders Split over the Call to Curtail Drive,” 1.
4 Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement,” Commentary
39, no. 2 (February 1965), www.crmvet.org.
5 Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in Civil Rights since 1787: A Reader in the
Black Struggle, ed. Jonathan Birnbaum and Clarence Taylor (New York: NYU Press, 2000), 478–80.
6 Statement from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Republican Nomination of Senator Barry Goldwater.
7 Clarence Taylor, “‘Whatever the Cost We Will Set the Nation Straight’: The Ministers Committee
for Job Opportunities and the Downstate Medical Center Jobs Campaign,” Long Historical Journal
1, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 136–46.
8 Roy Wilkins, “What Now! One Negro Leader’s Answer,” New York Times Magazine, August 1,
1964.
9 Brian Purnell, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in
Brooklyn (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013).
0 Purnell.
1 Purnell.
2 Paul L. Montgomery, “CORE to Continue Its Direct Action,” New York Times, August 10, 1964.
3 James Farmer, Freedom When? (New York: Random House, 1966), 26–28.
4 Farmer, 28–31.
5 James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement (Fort Worth:
Texas Christian University Press, 1985), 279–80.
6 Woody Klein, “James Farmer: Non-violent Pied Piper,” New York World and Sun, July 25, 1964.
7 Fred Howard to James Farmer, July 23, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
8 Ronald S. Freund to James Farmer, July 21, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
9 Blaine Lotz to James Farmer, n.d., CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
0 Milton Ellenbogen to James Farmer, July 19, 1964, CORE Papers reel 3, Schomburg.
1 Perry S. Samuels to James Farmer, July 21, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
2 James Marshall to Farmer, July 21, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
3 Justin G. Ferguson to James Farmer, n.d., CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
4 Herbert B. Geist to James Farmer, July 23, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
5 G. Louis Schata to James Farmer, July 24, 1964; G. Blaine Lotz to James Farmer, n.d., CORE
Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
6 Joanne Ferrera to James Farmer, July 27, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
7 Anne C. Jordan to James Farmer, July 27, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
8 Pat Matteo to James Farmer, July 29, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 4, Schomburg.
9 Fred Powledge, “Poll Shows Whites in City Resent Civil Rights Drive,” New York Times, September
21, 1964.
0 Thomas Hudson McKee to James Farmer, July 23, 1964, CORE Papers, reel 3, Schomburg.
 Chapter 6. John Lindsay, Racial Politics, and the Civilian
Complaint Review Board

Lynda Richardson, “Michael J. Murphy, 83, Dies, Led New York Police in 1960s,” New York Times,
May 18, 1997.
John Lindsay, “Address to New York Lawyers,” New York Times, May 21, 1965.
Geoffrey Kabaservice, “On Principle: A Progressive Republican,” in Summer in the City: John
Lindsay, New York, and the American Dream, ed. Joseph P. Viteritti (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2014), 27–28.
Eric Pace, “Herbert Brownell, 92, Eisenhower Attorney General, Dies,” New York Times, May 2,
1992.
“Civil Rights Act of 1957,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library,
www.eisenhower.archives.gov.
“John Lindsay (R-NY) and Emmanuel Celler (D-NY) on the Compromise Bill,” Civil Rights Act of
1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom, January 15, 1964, Library of Congress. www.loc.gov.
Interviews of John Lindsay by Seymour Siegel, “Close Up,” WNYC, May 3, 1964, New York City
Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.
Ronald Sullivan, “Lindsay Rejects National Ticket,” New York Times, August 4, 1964.
Lindsay, “Address to New York Lawyers.”
0 Lindsay.
1 “Lindsay Proposes Adding Civilians to Police Board,” New York Times, May 21, 1965.
2 Clayton Knowles, “City Bar Urges Civilian Control of Police Review,” New York Times, August 6,
1965; “The Democrats on Public Safety,” New York Times, September 10, 1965.
3 Charles G. Bennett, “Police Reform on Board Hailed,” New York Times, July 23, 1965.
4 “Lindsay Proposes Adding Civilians to Police Board,” 1.
5 Thomas Buckley, “Joint Drive Is On for Review Board,” New York Times, May 27, 1965; Edward J.
Blum and Paul Harvey, “How (George) Romney Championed Civil Rights and Challenged His
Church,” The Atlantic, August 13, 2012, www.theatlantic.com.
6 Buckley, “Joint Drive Is on for Review Board”; “Lindsay Is Assailed for Stand on Police,” New York
Times, May 24, 1965.
7 Homer Bigart, “5,000 Policemen Picket City Hall,” New York Times, June 30, 1965.
8 “Off Duty Police Officers against Civilian Review Board City Hall—June 29, 1965,” serial file Jul
21965 FOIA: JBS-NYC, Internet Archive, www.archive.org.
9 “Off Duty Police Officers against Civilian Review Board City Hall.”
0 Homer Bigart “Inquiry Is Sought on Police Racism,” New York Times, July 1, 1965.
1 Peter Kihss, “Negro Policemen Here Ask for a Civilian Review Board,” New York Times, June 15,
1965; Bigart, “5,000 Policemen Picket City Hall.”
2 William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1986).
3 Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot, 7th ed. (Washington, DC: Regnery
Publishing, 2001); Whittaker Chambers, Witness: (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1987); Carl
 T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (New York:
Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 14–17, 107–11.
4 William. F. Buckley Jr. Speech to National Press Club, Washington, DC, August 4, 1965, M. E.
Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives (hereafter cited as Grenander
Department). Milton Galamison was the leader of the public school integration campaign in New
York City. See Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton Galamison and the Struggle to
Integrate New York City Schools (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
5 Buckley.
6 Statement Scheduled for Delivery by William F. Buckley Jr., Conservative Party Candidate for
Mayor of New York City, to the New York City Council on Tuesday Afternoon, July 13, 1965, on the
Proposal to Establish a Civilian Review Board for the New York City Police Department, Buckley
Files—William F. Buckley Jr., box 18, Grenander Department.
7 Statement Scheduled for Delivery by William F. Buckley Jr.
8 Statement Scheduled for Delivery by William F. Buckley Jr.
9 William F. Buckley Jr., “Crime: In New York, It Pays,” box 18, Position Papers for Mayoral Race,
1965, Grenander Department.
0 Buckley.
1 Sam Tanenhaus, “The Buckley Effect,” New York Times, October 5, 2005.
2 Richard Wilkin, “Seesaw Contest: Vote Is Tightest Here in a Quarter Century,” New York Times,
November 2, 1965.
3 Paul Hofmann, “Sweeping Change in Police Powers Urged on Lindsay,” New York Times, February
7, 1966.
4 Eric Pace, “Broderick Defies Lindsay on Issue of Police Review Board,” New York Times, February
9, 1966.
5 Pace.
6 Terrence Smith, “Lindsay Declares His Record Good,” New York Times, April 6, 1966.
7 Murray Schumach, “Choice Is Praised by Rights Groups,” New York Times, February 16, 1966.
8 Thomas R. Farrell letter to the editor, New York Times, February 18, 1966.
9 “Statements and Preamble of Order on Police Review Board,” New York Times, May 3, 1966; Paul
Hofmann, “Civilian Control of Police Review Is Set Up by City,” New York Times, May 3, 1966.
0 General Order No. 14, Amendments to the Rules and Procedures, Civilian Complaints—Revised
Procedures, May 17, 1966. Mayor Lindsay subject files, box 21, folder 364, Civilian Complaint
Review Board, New York City Municipal Archives.
1 In addition to Brownell, the other members were Morris B. Abram, U.S. representative to the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights; William H. Booth, chair of the City Commission on Human
Rights; Vincent J. Cuttis, member of the Catholic Lawyers Guild; John Patrick Hogan, assistant
principal of P.S. 65 in the Bronx; Donald S. Harrington, minister of the Community Churches of New
York; Orin Lehman, a Democrat who ran and lost the race to fill Lindsay’s congressional seat;
William Hughes Mulligan, a law professor at Fordham University; Raymond Fernandez Narrel, vice
president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association; C. B. Powell, editor of the Amsterdam News; and
Sandy F. Ray, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church. See General Order No. 14.
2 “A Modern Review Board,” New York Times, May 3, 1966.
 Chapter 7. The Triumph of a False Narrative

Peter Kihss, “NAACP Attacks New Police Plan,” New York Times, May 4, 1966.
“Cassese Balks at a TV Debate with Mayor on Review Board,” New York Times, October 30, 1966.
Kihss, “NAACP Attacks New Police Plan,” 1.
Peter Kihss, “CORE Assails Lack of Voice for Ghettos on Police Panel,” New York Times, May 5,
1966.
Eric Pace, “Suit Threatened on Police Board,” New York Times, February 15, 1966.
Paul Hofmann, “Civilian Control of Police Review Is Set Up by City,” New York Times, May 3, 1966.
Eric Pace, “Suit Threatened on Police Board.”
Will Lissner, “Policemen to Sue for Writ Barring Civilian Review Board,” New York Times, May 9,
1966.
Lissner.
0 Eric Pace, “PBA Gets Writ Ordering City to Court Today on Its Review Board Plan,” New York
Times, May 10, 1966.
1 John J. Cassese et al., on Behalf of Themselves and All Members of the Police Department of the
City of New York Similarly Situated, Plaintiffs v. John V. Lindsay as Mayor of the City of New York, et
al. Defendants, Supreme Court Special Term, New York County, June 23, 1966; Robert E. Tomasson,
“Court Hears Police Board Plan; Ruling Is Expected Next Month,” New York Times, May 21, 1966.
2 John J. Cassese et al. v. John V. Lindsay as Mayor of the City of New York, et al.; Tomasson.
3 “Battler for Police Rights: John Joseph Cassese,” New York Times, May 9, 1966.
4 Lissner, “Policemen to Sue for Writ Barring Civilian Review,” 1.
5 Lissner.
6 Eric Pace, “PBA Asks Public to Oppose Board,” New York Times, June 3, 1966.
7 Pace.
8 John J. Cassese et al. v. John V. Lindsay as Mayor of the City of New York, et al.
9 Eric Pace, “PBA Asks Public to Oppose Board.”
0 Sidney E. Zion, “Civilian Review Board: Now a Nasty Campaign,” New York Times, July 3, 1966.
1 Bernard Weinraub, “Lindsay to Fight Police Issue,” New York Times, July 9, 1966.
2 Author interview with Jay Kriegel, February 12, 2012.
3 Herbert Brownell to John V. Lindsay, May 27, 1966; and Biographical Data on Algernon Black,
Kenneth Clark, Manuel Diaz, Thomas R. Farrell, Helen Hall, Theodore W. Kheel, both in Mayor
Lindsay subject files, box 21, folder 364, Civilian Complaint Review Board, New York City
Municipal Archives (hereafter cited as Civilian Complaint Review Board); Emanuel Perlmutter,
“Lindsay to Name 4 Civilians Today for Police Board,” New York Times, July 11, 1966; Bernard
Weinraub, “New Police Board Has Two Negroes and Puerto Rican,” New York Times, July 12, 1966.
4 Weinraub, “New Police Board Has Two Negroes and Puerto Rican.”
5 Weinraub.
6 Bernard Weinraub, “Racism Laid to PBA Head in Review Board Stand,” New York Times, July 13,
1966.
7 Petition for the Submission to the Electors of the City of New York, Mayor Lindsay subject files,
box 21, folder 364, Civilian Complaint Review Board.
8 Conservative Party Petition for the Submission to the Electors of the City of New York at the
General Election to Be Held November 8, 1966, Concerning Control of Disciplinary Proceedings
within the Police Department of the City of New York, Mayor Lindsay subject files, box 21, folder
364, Civilian Complaint Review Board .
9 Bernard Weinraub, “Leary Assails PBA Accusations,” New York Times, September 28, 1966.
0 Weinraub.
1 Sidney E. Zion, “Civilian Review Board: FAIR Fights for It,” New York Times, September 11, 1966.
2 American Jewish Committee, “Review of the Year: United States Other Countries,” American
Jewish Year Book 68 (1967): 90–91, www.ajcarchives.org.
3 Jonathan Randal, “Mayor Sees Chances of Civilian Review Board Improving ‘Every Minute,’” New
York Times, September 11, 1966.
4 “Myths about the Review Board,” Mayor Lindsay subject files, box 21, folder 364.
5 “City Loses Again on Police Board,” New York Times, October 1, 1966.
6 Robert Alden, “Lindsay Seeks Aid on Review Board,” New York Times, October 3, 1966.
7 Bernard Weinraub, “Poll Favors Foes of Review Board,” New York Times, October 14, 1966.
8 Thomas R. Brooks, “25,000 Police against the Review Board: No! Says the PBA, New York Times,
October 16, 1966.
9 Eric Pace, “PBA Asks Public to Oppose Board,” New York Times, June 3, 1966.
0 Herman Katz, Letter, August 4, 1964, Legislative Materials: Parents and Taxpayers, box 14, folder
274, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
1 “PAT Denounces City Clerk’s Decision on Neighborhood School Referendum: Attacks Mayor and
‘Political Cronies’ for Defying Will of the Majority,” August 4, 1964, Legislative Materials: Parents
and Taxpayers, box 14, folder 274, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
2 Clarence Taylor, “Conservative and Liberal Opposition to the New York City School Integration
Campaign,” in Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era, ed. Clarence
Taylor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 106–9.
3 Will Bunch, “Gathering Storm: The Philly Riots of 1964,” Inquirer Daily News, August 29, 1964;
“Rochester Police Battle Race Riot,” New York Times, July 25, 1964; “300 Negroes Riot in
Philadelphia,” New York Times, August 29, 1964; “2 New Jersey Cities Racked by Race Riots,”
Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1964, 7.
4 “2,000 Troops Enter Los Angeles on Third Day of Negro Rioting; 4 Die as Fires and Looting
Grow,” New York Times, August 14, 1965; Gene Roberts, “Negroes Still Angry and Jobless Three
Months after Watts Riot, New York Times, November 7, 1965.
5 Linda Lyons, “Gallup Brain: The Darkest Hours of Racial Unrest,” Gallup, June 3, 2003,
http://news.gallup.com.
6 Lyons.
7 Bernard Weinraub, “Police Review Panel Killed by Large Majority in City,” New York Times,
November 9, 1966.
8 Weinraub.
9 Brooks, “25,000 Police against the Review Board.”
 Chapter 8. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Brutality

Statement of Honorable Edward I. Koch, Mayor of the City of New York, before the City Council
Committee on Public Safety, October 21, 1986, Series: Local Laws, box 50016, folder 14, Civilian
Review Police Actions, 1986, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
Statement of Honorable Edward I. Koch.
Joyce Purnick, “Koch, in Shift, Wants Private Citizens on Police Review Board,” New York Times,
June 7, 1985.
“Cops Plead Innocent in Torture Case,” Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1985, www.chicagotribune.com.
Joyce Purnick, “Koch, in Shift, Wants Private Citizens on Police Review Board,” New York Times,
June 7, 1985.
The Council of the City of New York Intl. No. 583, A Local Law, December 20, 1990, Series: Local
Laws, box 50045, folder 11, Accounting for Revenues and Expenditures Associated with the Safe
Streets / Safe City Omnibus Criminal Justice Program, 1991, La Guardia and Wagner Archives;
Ralph Blumenthal, “Dinkins on Crime: Dinkins Proposes Record Expansion of Police Forces,” New
York Times, October 3, 1990.
William Bratton, Broken Windows and Quality-of-Life Policing in New York City (New York: NYPD,
2015), 1, www.nyc.gov.
“Lee Brown’s Legacy,” New York Times, August 4, 1992.
James G. McKinley, “Dinkins Denounces Police Protest as Furthering Images of Racism,” New York
Times, September 16, 1992; Catherine Manegold, “Rally Puts Police under New Scrutiny,” New York
Times, September 27, 1992.
0 James C. McKinley Jr., “Officers Rally and Dinkins Is Their Target,” New York Times, September
17, 1992; Manegold, “Rally Puts Police under New Scrutiny.”
1 Local Laws of the City of New York for the Year 1993, Chapter 18—Civilian Complaint Review
Board, Office of the Vice-Chair / Maj. Leaders—Cuite / Vallone (1969–89), Office of the Speaker—
Vallone (1990–2001), box 52456. La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
2 James C. McKinley Jr., “Giuliani Imposes Curbs on Hiring by Agencies, New York Times, January 5,
1994.
3 Norman Siegel to Peter Vallone, March 9, 1994, Series: Committee Files, box 50215, folder 24,
Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), 1994, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
4 Norman Siegel to Edward Silver and Hector Soto, January 7, 1994, Committee Files, box 50218,
folder 44, Miscellaneous—Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB); Abortion Clinic Access; Gun
Control, 1994, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
5 Norman Siegel to Edward Silver and Hector Soto, January 7, 1994.
6 Testimony of David M. Zornow before the Public Safety Committee of the New York City Council,
March 15, 1995, Committee Files, box 50212, folder 2, Oversight Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year
1995, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
7 Jonathan P. Hicks, “Mayor Accused of Sabotaging Civilian Board,” New York Times, March 10,
1994.
8 Alison Mitchell, “Giuliani Urges Street Policing Refocused on Crime,” New York Times, January 25,
1994.
9 William Bratton, Turnaround: How America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (New York:
Random House, 1998), 198–99; Judith Greene, “Zero Tolerance: A Case Study of Police Policies and
Practices in New York City,” Crime and Delinquency 45, no. 2 (April 1999):
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/ZeroNYC.htm.
0 William Bratton, Testimony before the Committee on Public Safety of the New York City Council
on Police Productivity, Monday May 9, 1994, Series: Committee Files, box 50152, folder 27,
Oversight: Citizens Budget Commission Report on New York Police Department, May 9, 1994, La
Guardia and Wagner Archives.
1 Gary Pierre-Pierre, “They’re Tried, They’re True, but How Long Do They Last?” New York Times,
October 8, 1995; Congressional Record, March 28, 2000, H3794.
2 George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,”
The Atlantic, March 1982, www.theatlantic.com.
3 Bratton, Broken Windows and Quality-of-Life Policing in New York City.
4 CompStat: Its Origins, Evolution, and Future in Law Enforcement Agencies (Washington, DC:
Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2013), vii.
5 CompStat, 4.
6 Greene, “Zero Tolerance.”
7 George L. Kelling and William J. Bratton, “Why We Need Broken Windows Policing,” City Journal,
Winter 2015, www.city-journal.org.
8 Freda F. Solomon, “The Impact of Quality-of-Life Policing,” CJA Research Brief, August 2003, 1–
2; K. Babe Howell, “Broken Lives from Broken Windows: The Hidden Cost of Aggressive Order-
Maintenance Policing,” New York University Review of Law and Social Change 33 (2009): 271, 281.
9 New York State Law: Penal Law, Consolidated Laws of New York Penal Code, n.d.,
www.ypdcrime.com; “Marijuana Possession Arrests in New York City in Three Decades,” Brown
University, May 31, 2007, www.brown.edu.
0 Howell, “Broken Lives from Broken Windows,” 81–82.
1 Kelling and Bratton, “Why We Need Broken Windows Policing.”
2 Greene, “Zero Tolerance.”
3 Commission to Investigate Allegations of Corruption and the Anti-corruption Procedures of the
Police Department Commission Report (Mollen Commission Report), July 7, 1994, 2–8,
www.scribd.com (hereafter cited as Mollen Commission Report).
4 Mollen Commission Report, 1–2.
5 Mollen Commission Report, 2–3.
6 Mollen Commission Report, 43–44.
7 Mollen Commission Report, 44–45.
8 Mollen Commission Report, 47.
9 Mollen Commission Report, 47–48.
0 Mollen Commission Report, 50.
1 Mollen Commission Report, 142.
2 Mollen Commission Report, 122–28.
3 Mollen Commission Report, 143.
4 Mollen Commission Report.
5 Mollen Commission Report, 152.
6 George James, “Investigating by a Monitor Is Opposed by Bratton,” New York Times, April 25,
1994; Alison Mitchell, “Corruption in Uniform: The Mayor; Giuliani Promises to Fight to Root Out
Police Corruption,” New York Times, July 8, 1994.
7 Int. No. 961, A Local Law to Amend the New York City Charter, in Relation to the Establishment of
an Independent Police Investigation and Audit Board, May 14, 1997, Series: Local Laws, box 51913,
Local Laws 91, Independent Police Investigation and Audit Board, 1997, La Guardia and Wagner
Archives.
8 Int. No. 961.
9 Supreme Court, New York County, New York, Mayor of the City of New York, et al., Plaintiffs, v.
Council of the City of New York, Defendant, Decided August 21, 1999.
0 Supreme Court, New York County, et al. v. Council of the City of New York.
1 Int. No. 961.
2 Int. No. 961.
3 Mayor of the City of New York et al., Plaintiff, v. Council of the City of New York, Defendant,
Decided August 31, 1999.
4 Mayor of the City of New York et al. v. Council of the City of New York.
5 Congressional Record, March 28, 2000, H3794.
 Chapter 9. Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, and the Resistance
to Giuliani

Wayne Barrett, “Rudy’s Milky Way,” Village Voice, January 19, 1999; Perry Bacon, “Giuliani’s Ties
to Black New York Troubled,” Washington Post, June 10, 2007. All Washington Post quotations are
drawn from www.washingtonpost.com.
Mark Green, Public Advocate for the City of New York, Trend Analysis of Complaints Received by
the New York Civilian Complaint Review Board, 1992–1996, September 11, 1997, Series:
Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
Michael Fletcher, “Changes in Police Tactics Trigger Charges of Brutality,” Washington Post, April
27, 1997.
“Mayor Defends Cops After Boy Shot,” United Press International, April 8, 1997.
Barbara Ross, Stephen McFarland, James Ruttenberg, and Alice McQuillan, “Cop Who Shot Teen
Cleared,” New York Daily News, July 2, 1997. All New York Daily News quotations are drawn from
www.nydailynews.com.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, United States of America, Appellee v. Francis X.
Livoti, Defendant-Appellant, Docket No. 981608, Decided November 8, 1999.
Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department (London: Amnesty
International, 1996), 29–30.
Cathy Lisa Schneider, Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 170.
Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 1–6.
0 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department.
1 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department.
2 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 11.
3 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 12–13.
4 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 13–14.
5 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 55.
6 “Amadou Diallo Was Not the First: Selected Police Brutality Cases—NYC (1994–1998),” National
Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, Justice Committee—New York City Chapter, n.d., Richie Pérez
Papers, box 6, folder 7, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
7 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 56–57.
8 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 56–58.
9 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 58–59.
0 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 59–60.
1 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 60–61.
2 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 65.
3 Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 66.
4 Clifford Krauss, “Rights Group Finds Abuse of Suspects by City Police,” New York Times, June 26,
1996; David Firestone, “Poll of Voters Gives Giuliani an Early Lead,” New York Times, November
20, 1996.
5 Gary Pierre-Pierre, “Settling Suits for Brutality Rises in Cost,” New York Times, August 2, 1995;
“Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States,” Human Rights
Watch, July 1, 1998, www.hrw.org.
6 Marie Brenner, “Incident in the 70th Precinct,” Vanity Fair, December 1997, www.vanityfair.com.
7 United States District Court Eastern District of New York, Abner Louima and Micheline Louima,
Plaintiffs, against the City of New York, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Individually and in
Their Official Capacity as New York City Police Officers, Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas
Bruder, et al., Third Supplemental Summons and Third Complaint, Testimony of the Center for Law
and Social Justice before the City Council Hearings on Police Brutality, August 28, 1997, at
Brooklyn College, Series: Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, Oversight: Police Abuse And
Brutality—Searching for Solutions, September 11, 1997, La Guardia and Wagner Archives (hereafter
cited as Abner Louima and Micheline Louima, Plaintiffs, against the City of New York).
8 Abner Louima and Micheline Louima, Plaintiffs, against the City of New York.
9 Abner Louima and Micheline Louima, Plaintiffs, against the City of New York.
0 Abner Louima and Micheline Louima, Plaintiffs, against the City of New York; Brenner, “Incident
in the 70th Precinct.”
1 Abner Louima and Micheline Louima, Plaintiffs, against the City of New York.
2 Michael Meyers, Margaret Fung, and Norman Siegel, Deflecting Blame: The Dissenting Report of
the Mayor’s Task Force on Police/Community Relations (New York: New York Civil Liberties
Union, 1998), 13, www.nycivilrights.org.
3 Dan Barry, “Leaders in Precinct Are Swept Out in Torture Inquiry,” New York Times, August 15,
1997.
4 Meyers, Fung, and Siegel, Deflecting Blame; 15 Dan Barry, “Giuliani Dismisses Police Proposals by
His Task Force, New York Times, March 27, 1998.
5 David Firestone, “Skepticism and Fiery Debate Mark First Session of Panel,” New York Times,
August 22, 1997.
6 Meyers, Fung, and Siegel, Deflecting Blame, 15; Firestone.
7 Meyers, Fung, and Siegel, 15–17.
8 Meyers, Fung, and Siegel, 17–24.
9 Meyers, Fung, and Siegel, 3–5.
0 Barry, “Giuliani Dismisses Police Proposals.”
1 Committee on Public Safety, Oversight: Police Abuse and Brutality—Searching for Solutions,
September 11, 1997, box 050215, folder 2, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
2 “The Role of the Public Advocate,” NYC Public Advocate, n.d., http://archive.advocate.nyc.gov.
3 Testimony of Mark Green, Public Advocate for the City of New York, before the City Council
Committee on Public Safety, Series: Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, September 11, 1997, La
Guardia and Wagner Archives.
4 Testimony of Mark Green.
5 Testimony of the Center for Law and Social Justice before the City Council Hearings on Police
Brutality, August 28, 1997, at Brooklyn College Prepared by Esmeralda Simmons, Esq., Executive
Director, Joan P. Gibbs, Esq., General Counsel, Ruth Lateefah Carter, Project Associate, 4, 5, Series:
Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, Oversight: Police Abuse and Brutality—Searching for
Solutions, September 11, 1997.
6 Testimony of the Center for Law and Social Justice, box 50215, folder 2, September 11, 1997, La
Guardia and Wagner Archives, 5
7 Testimony of the Center for Law and Social Justice, 7–8.
8 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, “Mutual Respect through Proper Monitoring,” Series:
Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, September 11, 1997, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
9 Latino Officers Association, City of New York, Inc., “Police Abuse and Brutality: Searching for
Solutions,” August 28, 1997, Series: Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, La Guardia and Wagner
Archives.
0 Latino Officers Association.
1 Testimony of Ray LaForest before the New York City Council Committee on Public Safety,
September 11, 1997, Series Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
2 John Kifner, “Thousands March to Protest Police,” New York Times, August 17, 1997; Chrisena
Coleman et al., “City Grids for Protest Tide,” New York Daily News, August 29, 1997.
3 Kifner.
4 Meyers, Fung, and Siegel, Deflecting Blame, 10–11.
5 Randy Kennedy, “Haitians Press Mayor on Issue of Brutality by Police,” New York Times,
September 1, 1997.
6 Kennedy; Gary Pierre-Pierre, “For Haitians, Leadership Split Is a Generation Gap,” New York Times,
September 24, 1997.
7 Pierre-Pierre.
8 John Kifner, “Thousands Call on City Hall to Confront Police Brutality,” New York Times, August
30, 1997.
9 Kifner; Kennedy, “Haitians Press Mayor on Issue of Brutality by Police.”
0 Kifner.
1 “NY Officer to Plead Guilty in Brutality Case,” Baltimore Sun, May 25, 1999.
2 Devlin Barrett, “Tearful Volpe Confesses: Apologizes to Own Family, Not Louima,” New York Post,
May 26, 1999; Joseph P. Fried, “Volpe Sentenced to a 30-Year Term in the Louima Torture,” New
York Times, December 14, 1998.
3 United States v. Volpe, 62 F. Supp. 2d 887 (E.D.N.Y. 1999).
4 “Court Overturns 3 Convictions in NY Police Torture Case,” CNN, February 26, 2002,
www.cnn.com.
5 Joseph P. Fried and Blaine Harden, “The Louima Case: The Overview; Officer Is Guilty in Torture
of Louima,” New York Times, June 9, 1999.
6 Timothy Lynch, “We Own the Night: Amadou Diallo’s Deadly Encounter with New York City
Special Crime Unit,” Cato Institute Briefing Paper, March 31, 2000.
7 Tara George, “Cops Tell Their Story Officer’s Frantic Plea: ‘Please Don’t Die,’” New York Daily
News, February 15, 2000; “Opening Statements: The Amadou Diallo Killing,” Diallo, 2012,
www.criminaldefense.com.
8 Jane Fritsch, “Diallo Witness: Man Cried ‘Gun!’ but Police Shot without Warning,” New York Times,
February 10, 2000; Michael Cooper, “Officers in Bronx Fire 41 Shots, and an Unarmed Man Is
Killed,” New York Times, February 5, 1999.
9 Rafael A. Olmeda and John Marzulli, “Unarmed Man Amadou Diallo Is Killed by Four Officers
Who Shot at Him 41 Times in 1999,” New York Daily News, February 3, 2015.
0 Marilyn Vogt-Downey, “New Yorkers Protest Cop Killing of Ahmed Diallo,” Socialist Action,
March 3, 1999.
1 Ginger Thompson, “1,000 Rally to Condemn Shooting of Unarmed Man by Police,” New York
Times, February 8, 1999; Michael Cooper, “12 Arrested during Sit-In to Protest Diallo Killing,” New
 York Times, March 10, 1999.
2 Michael Copper, “12 Arrested during Sit-In to Protest Diallo Killing,” New York Times, March 10,
1999.
3 Dave Saltonstall, “Inside Al’s Protest Machine Rev. Al’s Line Getting Long,” New York Daily News,
March 21, 1999.
4 “History,” National Action Network History, n.d., www.nationalactionnetwork.net; Clarence Taylor,
Black Religious Intellectuals (New York: Routledge, 2002), 138–39.
5 Taylor, 138.
6 Michael Litwin, “Labor Joins Protest over New York Police Killing,” May 1999,
http://michaelletwin.wordpress.com.
7 Shan-san Wu, “‘Books, Not Bullets’ Demand CUNY Students and Faculty,” The Ticker, April 14,
1999, 1, 5.
8 “U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to Investigate Diallo Shooting,” 15.
9 Scott Sherman, “He Has a Dream: The Grand Ambition of the Rev. Al Sharpton,” The Nation,
March 30, 2001, www.thenation.com.
0 “Life after Diallo: Officials Ponder Why NYPD Arrest Numbers Are Down,” Law Enforcement
News 25, nos. 511–12 (May 1999): 1.
1 Katherine Finkelstein, “Rookies Told to Serve, Protect and Respect,” New York Times, May 7, 1999.
2 “NYPD’s ‘Streetwise’ Cultural Sensitivity Training Gets Renewed Impetus,” Law Enforcement
News 25, nos. 511–12 (May 1999): 1.
3 “Trials Put Giuliani, NYPD on Defensive,” Washington Post, March 30, 1999.
4 Tom Topousis, “Rudy Job Rating Hits a New Low; Bad News in Post Diallo Poll,” New York Post,
April 9, 1999; “Despite Crime Approval, Mayor’s Job Rating Is Negative, Quinnipiac College Poll
Finds; New Yorkers Concerned With Race Relations, Police,” Quinnipiac University Poll, April 8,
1999, http://poll.qu.edu.
5 Eric Lipton, “Giuliani Cites Criminal Past of Slain Man,” New York Times, March 20, 2000; Bill
Vann, “The Killing of Patrick Dorismond: New York Police Violence Escalates in Wake of Diallo
Verdict,” World Socialist Web Site, March 22, 2000, www.wsws.org.
6 Transcript, “New York Police Arrest Protestors at Funeral of Patrick Dorismond,” Democracy Now!
March 27, 2000. www.democracynow.org.
7 Lipton, “Giuliani Cites Criminal Past of Slain Man.”
8 In the Matter of Mark Green, as Public Advocate of the City of New York, Petitioner, v. Rudolph
Giuliani, as Mayor of the City of New York, Respondent, Supreme Court, New York County,
November 21, 2000, Leagle, www.leagle.com.
9 Mark Green v. Rudolph Giuliani.
0 Mark Green v. Rudolph Giuliani.
1 C. J. Chivers, “Grand Jury Clears Detective in Killing of Unarmed Guard,” New York Times, July 28,
2000.
2 William Clarkson, “City Settles Suit in Guard’s Death by Police Bullet,” New York Times, March 13,
2003.
3 Rudolph Giuliani, “The City of New York Mayor’s Management Report Fiscal 2001,” City of New
York, September 12, 2001, 1–16, www1.nyc.gov.
4 New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board Status Report, January–December 2002 (New
York: City of New York, 2003), xvii, www1.nyc.gov.
5 Giuliani, “City of New York Mayor’s Management Report,” 17.
6 Giuliani.
7 Giuliani.
 Chapter 10. The Campaign to End Stop, Question, and Frisk

Testimony of Mark Green, Public Advocate for the City of New York, before the City Council
Committee on Public Safety, Series: Committee Files, box 50215, folder 2, September 11, 1997, La
Guardia and Wagner Archives.
Testimony of Mark Green.
Testimony of Mark Green.
Alice McQuillan, “Street Crime Unit Dumped: Kelly Sending Cops to Detective, Plainclothes
Squad,” New York Daily News, April 10, 2002.
Daniels et al. v. City of New York, Center of Constitutional Rights, 1999, http://ccrjustice.org; Winston
Daniels Jr., Appellant v. City of New York, Defendant, New York City Transit Authority, Leagle,
February 14, 2002, www.leagle.com.
Daniels et al. v. City of New York.
Michael Myers, Special Report: Mayor Bloomberg and Civil Rights—an Assessment of the First Year
(New York: New York Civil Rights Coalition, 2003); Diane Cardwell, “Mayor to Mark King’s
Birthday with Sharpton,” New York Times, January 19, 2002.
Diane Cardwell and Sewell Chan, “Mayor Calls 50 Shots by the Police Unacceptable,” New York
Times, November 28, 2006.
“Bloomberg and NY Police Shooting,” American Spectator, November 27, 2006.
0 New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board Status Report, January–December 2002 (New
York: City of New York, 2003), www1.nyc.gov.
1 New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board Status Report, January–December 2003 (New
York: City of New York, 2004), xvii–xviii, www1.nyc.gov.
2 Ernie Naspretto, “The Real History of Stop and Frisk,” New York Daily News, June 3, 2002.
3 New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board Status Report, January–December 2005 (New
York: City of New York, 2006), 1, www1.nyc.gov.
4 Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), Argued December 12, 1967, Decided June 10, 1968,
www.law.cornell.edu.
5 Interview with Bill Bratton, Here and Now, February 25, 2014, www.wbur.org.
6 “Stop-and-Frisk Data,” New York Civil Liberties Union, n.d., www.nyclu.org.
7 “Stop-and-Frisk Data.”
8 Al Baker and Emily Vasquez, “Police Report Far More Stops and Searches,” New York Times,
February 3, 2007; Michael D. White and Henry F. Fradella, Stop and Frisk: The Use and Abuse of a
Controversial Policing Tactic (New York: NYU Press, 2016).
9 Eliot Spitzer, The New York City Police Department’s Stop and Frisk Practices: A Report to the
People of the State of New York from the Office of the Attorney General (New York: Civil Rights
Bureau, 1999), v–vii, 5, http://ag.ny.gov.
0 Spitzer, ix.
1 “Richie Pérez (1944–2004),” Virtual Boricua, March 30, 2004, www.virtual.boricua.org.
2 Richie Pérez, “Police Brutality and the Black and Latino Coalition,” January 11, 1980, Richie Pérez
Papers, box 6, folder 2, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora; Richie Pérez Interview, Tape 2, Voces
Digital Audio Archive, 1988, Richie Pérez Interviews, VOCES Digital Audio Archive,
 www.voces.prattsi.org; Joseph P. Field, “Police Ruled Not Liable in Killing,” New York Times,
November 21, 1979.
3 “Interview with Richie Pérez, Founder, National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, and the Justice
Committee,” ed. Blanca Vazquez, 2004, Anderson Gold Films, www.andersongoldfilms.com.
4 National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, Justice Committee, NYC Chapter, August 2, 1988,
Richie Pérez Papers, box 10, folder 1, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
5 “Interview with Richie Pérez.”
6 Richie Pérez to Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, August 27, 1996; and Adele Mora di Puma,
“Adopt a Day in Court,” September 5, 1996, both in Richie Pérez Papers, box 14, folder 2, Archives
of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
7 Matthew Purdy, “Judges Rule Clerical Error Voids Officer’s Homicide Charges,” New York Times,
September 6, 1996.
8 Press Release, Committee to Remember Anthony Baez, September 16, 1996, Richie Pérez Papers,
box 4, folder 1, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
9 Richie Pérez Interview.
0 Copies of Justicia can be found in the Richie Pérez Papers, box 14, folder 2, Archives of the Puerto
Rican Diaspora.
1 David M. Herszenhorn, “Judge Assails but Acquits Officer in Man’s Choking Death in Bronx,” New
York Times, October 8, 1996.
2 David Gonzalez, “Not Innocent, Not Guilty: No Comfort,” New York Times, October 9, 1996.
3 United States of America v. Francis X. Livoti, 25 F. Supp. 2d 390 (S.D.N.Y. 1998), Court Listener,
www.courtlistener.com.
4 Benjamin Weiser, “Former Officer Gets 7 ½ Years In Man’s Death,” New York Times, October 9,
1998.
5 Richie Pérez Interview.
6 Richie Pérez Interview.
7 “Mission and History,” Center for Constitutional Rights, May 27, 2015, www.ccrjustice.org.
8 “Daniels, et al. v. the City of New York,” Center for Constitutional Rights, 1999,
www.ccrjustice.org.
9 “Daniels, et al. v. the City of New York.”
0 “Daniels, et al. v. the City of New York.”
1 “Floyd, et al., v. City of New York, et at.,” Center for Constitutional Rights, 2008,
www.ccrjustice.org.
2 Davis v. City of New York, 10 Civ. 0699 (SAS). (S.D.N.Y. May. 5, 2011), Casetext, 1–4,
http://casetext.com.
3 Davis v. City of New York, 4–13.
4 Davis v. City of New York, 15–16.
5 Jaenean Ligon, Individually, et al. v. the City of New York et al., New York Civil Liberties Union,
March 28, 2012, 1–2, www.nyclu.org.
6 Jaenean Ligon (March 28, 2012), 3.
7 Jaenean Ligon (March 28, 2012), 4.
8 Jaenean Ligon (March 28, 2012), 10.
9 Jaenean Ligon et al. v. the City of New York et al., New York Civil Liberties Union, January 8, 2013,
1–10, www.nyclu.org.
0 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 134–47.
1 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013).
2 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 1–3.
3 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 6–7.
4 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 7–8.
5 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 13–14.
6 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 22–23.
7 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 178.
8 Jaenean Ligon (January 8, 2013), 178–87.
9 Opinion and Order, David Floyd, et al., Plaintiffs, against City of New York, Defendant, New York
Civil Liberties Union, August 12, 2013, www.nyclu.org.
0 Davis v. City of New York—Joint Letter to the Court re: Settlement, NAACP LDF, January 7, 2015,
www.naacpldf.org.
1 Michael R. Bloomberg, “Michael Bloomberg: ‘Stop and Frisk’ Keeps New York Safe,” Washington
Post, August 18, 2013.
2 Bloomberg.
3 Christopher Mathlas, “Bloomberg Decries ‘Dangerous’ Stop-and-Frisk Ruling, Promises Appeal,”
Huffington Post (blog), August 12, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com.
4 In re: Reassignment in Cases: Ligon; Floyd et al. v. City of New York et al., United States Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit, Filed November 13, 2013, docket 13-3123-3088, FindLaw,
http://caselaw.findlaw.com; Joseph Goldstein, “Court Blocks Stop and Frisk Changes of New York
Police,” New York Times, October 31, 2013.
5 Goldstein.
6 Benjamin Weisner and Joseph Goldstein, “New York City Asks Court to Vacate Rulings on Stop-
and-Frisk Tactics,” New York Times, November 9, 2013.
7 In re: Reassignment in Cases: Ligon; Floyd et al. v. City of New York et al.
8 Benjamin Weiser, “Judges Decline to Reverse Stop-and-Frisk Ruling, All but Ending Mayor’s
Fight,” New York Times, November 22, 2013.
9 Michael Barbaro, “The Ad Campaign: De Blasio Speaks against Stop and Frisk Tactics,” New York
Times, August 18, 2013.
0 One New York Rising Together (New York: Bill de Blasio for Mayor, 2013), 20–21, www.marijuana-
arrests.com.
1 Black, Latino/a, and Asian Caucus to Mayor Bill de Blasio, January 21, 2014, Scribd,
www.scribd.com.
2 “Transcript: Mayor Bill de Blasio Announces Agreement in Landmark Stop-And-Frisk Case,” City
of New York, January 30, 2014, www.1.nyc.gov; Benjamin Weiser, “Mayor Says New York Will
Settle Suits on Stop and Frisk Tactics,” New York Times, January 30, 2014; Black, Latino/a, and
Asian Caucus to Mayor Bill de Blasio.
3 “Transcript: Mayor Bill de Blasio.”
4 “Transcript: Mayor Bill de Blasio.”
5 “Transcript: Mayor Bill de Blasio.”
6 “Transcript: Mayor Bill de Blasio.”
7 “What We Want,” Citizens Union, n.d., www.citizensunion.org.
8 “Citizens Union Commends City Agreement Allowing Civilian Police Complaints to Be Prosecuted
Independently,” Citizens Union, March 28, 2012, www.citizensunion.org; Al Basker, “Independent
Agency Gets New Powers to Prosecute New York City Officers,” New York Times, March 27, 2012.
9 Basker.
 Chapter 11. The Limits of Mayor de Blasio’s Police Reform
Agenda

“DOI’s Mission and History,” NYC Department of Investigation, n.d., www1.nyc.gov.

“Local Laws of the City of New York for the Year 2013: No. 70,” City of New York, 2013,
www1.nyc.gov.
“Transcript: Mayor de Blasio, Police Commissioner Bratton Announce Change in Marijuana Policy,”
City of New York, November 10, 2014, www1.nyc.gov; “Transcript: Mayor de Blasio and Police
Commissioner Bratton Host Press Conference on Police Body Cameras,” City of New York,
December 3, 2014, www1.nyc.gov; Margaret Hartman, “43 Ways New York Has Changed under
Mayor de Blasio,” New York, December 31, 2014.
Police Use of Force in New York City: Findings and Recommendations on NYPD’s Policies and
Practices (New York: New York City Department of Investigation Office of the Inspector General for
the NYPD, 2015), 21–29, www.nyc.gov.
J. David Goodman and Al Baker, “Bratton, Tracking Police Use of Force, Aims to Stay Step Ahead of
Watchdogs,” New York Times, October 1, 2015; Alison Fox, “NYPD Reveals New Use of Force
Guidelines, Admitting Deficiencies,” New York Times, October 1, 2015.
William J. Bratton, “The NYPD Plan of Action and the Neighborhood Policing Plan: A Realistic
Framework for Connecting Police and Communities,” n.d., http://home.nyc.gov.
Bratton.
New York City Police Department, “Neighborhood Policing,” n.d., www1.nyc.gov.
Ellie Kaufman, “New York City on Pace to Record Lowest Murder Tally in Decades,” CNN,
December 28, 2017, www.cnn.com.
0 “Mayor de Blasio Outlines Core Principles of Legislation to Make the Disciplinary Records of Law
Enforcement and Other Uniformed Public Personnel Subject to Disclosure,” City of New York,
October 14, 2016, www1.nyc.gov.
1 “NYC Police Reform Campaign Responds to Mayor de Blasio’s ‘Core Principles’ of State
Legislation on Police Transparency, Communities United for Police Reform,” Communities United
for Police Reform, October 14, 2016, http://changethenypd.org; Rick Rojas and David Goodman,
“De Blasio Calls for Change in Law That Blocks Release of Police Disciplinary Action,” New York
Times, October 14, 2016.
2 Al Baker, David Goodman, and Benjamin Mueller, “Beyond the Chokehold: The Path to Eric
Garner’s Death,” New York Times, June 13, 2015.
3 Baker, Goodman, and Mueller.
4 In October 2016, two years after Eric Garner’s death, Ramsey was convicted and sentenced to four
years in prison for gun and drug possession. “Ramsey Orta, Who Filmed Death of Eric Garner,
Sentenced to Four Years in Prison for Drug and Weapons Charges,” New York Daily News, October
2, 2016.
5 Department of Justice Report Regarding the Criminal Investigation into the Shooting Death of
Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Justice, 2015), 1–7, www.justice.gov.
6 Raf Sanchez and David Lawler, “Ferguson: Timeline of Events since Michael Brown’s Death,”
Telegraph, August 10, 2015.
7 “NYPD Commissioner Talks about Death of Eric Garner,” News 4 New York, August 20, 2014,
www.nbcnewyork.com.
8 Erin Durkin, “Mayor de Blasio Defends ‘Broken Windows’ Policing Strategy after Eric Garner
Death,” New York Daily News, July 25, 2014.
9 “Statement of Mayor Bill de Blasio on the Medical Examiner’s Report on the Death of Eric Garner,”
City of New York, August 1, 2014, www1.nyc.gov.
0 Ian Blair, “Finally,. Staten Island DA Will Convene Grand Jury in Eric Garner Chokehold Case,”
Salon (blog), August 19, 2014, www.salon.com.
1 Jeffrey Fagan and Bernard E. Harcourt, “Fact Sheet in Richmond County (Staten Island) Grand Jury
in Eric Garner Homicide,” Social Justice Initiatives, Columbia University Law School, n.d.,
www.law.columbia.edu.
2 David Goodman and Al Baker, “Waves of Protest after Grand Jury Doesn’t Indict Officer in Eric
Garner Chokehold Case,” New York Times, December 3, 2014.
3 Goodman and Baker.
4 “NYPD Commissioner Talks about Death of Eric Garner”; “NYPD Commissioner Bratton on
Broken Windows, Community Policing, and More,” Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, August 12, 2014,
www.wnyc.org; Aaron Feis, “Bratton: Criminal Suspects Should Not Resist Arrest,” New York Post,
August 12, 2014.
5 “Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC,” City of New York,
November 13, 2015, www1.nyc.gov.
6 Marc Santora, “Mayor de Blasio Announces Retraining of New York Police,” New York Times,
December 4, 2014.
7 “Transcript: Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bratton Host Press Conference to Discuss Police
Retraining,” City of New York, December 4, 2014, www1.nyc.gov; Kate Briquelet, “Cops Say
Training after Eric Garner’s Death Is a Waste of Time,” New York Post, February 22, 2015; “NYPD
Cops Say Training Inspired by Eric Garner’s Death Is a ‘Waste of Time,’” Vice News (blog),
February 23, 2015, http://news.vice.com.
8 Briquelet.
9 Briquelet.
0 Corinne Lestch, “Rev. Sharpton Takes de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Bratton to Task over Eric
Garner’s Death as Mayor Calls for Change,” New York Daily News, August 1, 2014.
1 Yoav Gonen and Beth DeFalco, “City Council Wants to Add 1,000 Cops to NYPD,” New York Post,
April 22, 2014.
2 “A Second Summer Sit-down with the Mayor,” Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, June 5, 2015,
www.wnyc.org.
3 Michael M. Grynbaum and Matt Flegenheimer, “Mayor de Blasio Poised to Hire Nearly 1,300
Police Officers,” New York Times, June 22, 2015.
4 “Transcript: NYPD Commissioner William Bratton and Executive Staff Hold Briefing at 1 Police
Plaza,” City of New York, July 1, 2015, www1.nyc.gov.
5 Grynbaum and Flegenheimer, “Mayor de Blasio Poised to Hire”; Murray Weiss, Jeff Mays, and
Trevor Kapp, “De Blasio Hired More Police to Head Off Political Fallout Sources Say,” DNAinfo
(blog), June 24, 2015, www.dnainfo.com.
6 Michael Goodwin, “Why de Blasio Smears the NYPD,” New York Post, July 30, 2014.
7 Tina More, Dale Esinger, and Rocco Parascandola, “Two NYPD Officers ‘Assassinated’ while
Sitting in Patrol Car in Brooklyn by Gunman Who Boasted on Instagram about ‘Revenge Killing’
Cops,” New York Daily News, December 21, 2014; Benjamin Mueller and Al Baker, “2 NYPD
Officers Killed in Brooklyn Ambush; Suspect Commits Suicide,” New York Times, December 20,
2014; “NY Police Union Head Blames Mayor, Protesters for Officers’ Death,” YouTube, December
21, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmPPUXgMNM.
8 “Hundreds of Police Turn Backs on NYC Mayor at Slain Officer’s Funeral,” Reuters, January 4,
2015; “Why the NYPD Turned It Back on the City,” The Atlantic, January 5, 2015.
9 Michael Grynbaum, Alexander Burns, and Dalia Sussman, “Mayor de Blasio Has Lost Support of
White New Yorkers, Poll Finds,” New York Times, November 17, 2015.
0 Rocco Parascandola, Erin Dunkin, and Revuen Blau, “First Time PBA Union Survey Says NYPD
Morale at Rock Bottom under Mayor de Blasio, New York Daily News, March 14, 2016.
1 Weiss, Mays, and Kapp, “De Blasio Hired More Police.”
2 Grynbaum, Burns, and Sussman, “Mayor de Blasio Has Lost Support of White New Yorkers.”
3 An Analysis of Quality-of-Life Summonses, Quality-of-Life Misdemeanors, Arrests, and Felony
Crime in New York City, 2010–2015 (New York: New York City Department of Investigation Office
of the Inspector General for the NYPD, 2016), 1–3, www1.nyc.gov.
4 An Analysis of Quality-of-Life Summonses, 3.
5 “Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show,” City of New York,
June 23, 2016. www1.nyc.gov.
6 Nearly 1,800,000 per Year Punitive Interactions between NYPD and New Yorkers (New York: Police
Reform Organizing Project, 2016), 1–4, www.policereformorganizingproject.org.
7 Nearly 1,800,000 per Year Punitive Interactions, 5.
8 File Int. 0182-2014, A Local Law to Amend the Administrative Code of the City of New York in
Relation to Requiring Law Enforcement Officers to Identify Themselves to the Public, New York
City Council, March 12, 2014, legistar.council.nyc.gov; J. David Goodman, “De Blasio’s Police
Reforms Pledges May Burden His Re-election Bid,” New York Times, October 14, 2016.
9 File Int. 0541-2014, A Local Bill to Amend the Administrative Code of the City of New York, in
Relation to Requiring Law Enforcement Officers to Provide Notice and Obtain Proof of Consent to
Search Individuals, New York City Council, November 14, 2014, http://legistar.council.nyc.gov.
0 File Int. 0541-2014.
1 Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (Washington, DC: Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services, 2015, 25, http://cops.usdoj.gov.
2 J. David Goodman “New York Council Won’t Vote on Police Reform Bills, but Agency Agrees to
Changes,” New York Times, July 12, 2016.
3 “New York City Policing Reform, Derailed,” New York Times, July 26, 2016.
4 “Communities Need Legislation,” Communities United for Police Reform, n.d.,
www.changethenypd.org.
5 Michael Garland and Yoav Gonen, “De Blasio Asking City Councilors to Delay Police Reform
Bill,” New York Post, March 7, 2017.
6 Michael Sisitzky, “A Backroom Deal Threatens to Weaken Real Police Reform in New York,” New
York City Liberties Union, December 15, 2017, www.nyclu.org.
7 Sisitzky.
8 Monifa Bandele, “NYC Council Shouldn’t Take City backwards by Undermining Police Reform,”
Huffington Post (blog), December 17, 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com.
9 J. David Goodman, “City Council Passes Billson Police Behavior amid Outcry on Both Sides,” New
York Times, December 19, 2017.
0 Goodman.
1 Dean Meminger, “First on 1: More Than 750,000’Broken Windows’ Era Warrants Tossed,” NY1,
www.ny1.com Access July 27, 2017.
2 James C. McKinley Jr., “For Manhattan Fare Beaters, One-Way Ticket to Court May Be Over,” New
York Times, June 30, 2017.
3 J. David Goodman, “Turnstile Jumping Pits de Blasio against Police Reformers,” New York Times,
February 7, 2017.
4 Joseph J. Lhota to Cyrus R. Vance Jr., February 5, 2017, www.politico.com.
5 Cyrus R. Vance Jr. to Joseph J. Lhota, February 5, 2017 www.politico.com/.
6 “District Attorney Vance to End Criminal Prosecution of Approximately 20,000 Low-Level, Non-
Violent Misdemeanors per Year,” Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, June 30, 2017,
www.manhattanda.org.
7 Peter L. Zimroth, “Seventh Report of the Independent Monitor,” December 13, 2017, 41,
http://nypdmonitor.org.
8 Zimroth, 41; Al Baker, “City Police Officers Are Not Reporting All Street Stops, Monitor Says,”
New York Times, December 13, 2017.
9 Zimroth, “Seventh Report of the Independent Monitor,” 4.
0 Zimroth, 38.
1 Ginia Bellafante, “What Happened to Police Accountability? The Mayor Is Not Saying,” New York
Times, September 29, 2017.
2 Benjamin Mueller, “Mayor de Blasio and Some Prosecutors Move to Curb Marijuana Arrests,” New
York Times, May 15, 2018; “District Attorney Vance to End Prosecution of Marijuana Possession and
Smoking Cases,” Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, May 15, 2018, www.manhattanda.org.
3 “NYCLU Issues Seven Steps Mayor Can Take for a Fairer New York City,” February 13, 2018,
www.nyclu.org.

Conclusion

“Police Department Race and Ethnicity Demographic Data,” Governing: The States and Localities,
n.d., www.governing.com.
Semi-Annual Report, January–June 2016 (New York: NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board, 2016),
ix, www1.nyc.gov.
Semi-Annual Report, ix–x.
Worth a Thousand Words: Examining Officer Interference with Civilian Recordings of Police (New
York: NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board, 2017), 1–15, www1.nyc.gov.
Unjust and Unconstitutional: 60,000 Jim Crow Marijuana Arrests in Mayor de Blasio’s New York
(New York: Drug Policy Alliance and Marijuana Arrest Research Project, 2017), 1–5,
www.drugpolicy.org.
Unjust and Unconstitutional, 7.
Unjust and Unconstitutional, 8.
 Solutions to Police Brutality, Racism and Misconduct That Could Be Implemented by the City Council
and Mayor of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Communities United against Police Brutality, 2014),
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net.
Lawrence J. McQuillan and Kelly R. Lester, “Bureaucrats or Citizens: Who Should Control the
Police?” Independent Institute, July 14, 2016, www.independent.org.
0 “The Commission,” CALEA, n.d., www.calea.org.
1 “Measuring the Performance of Law Enforcement Agencies,” CALEA, n.d., www.calea.org.
2 “Memorandum of Understanding between the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) and the
Police Department (NYPD) of the City of New York concerning the Processing of Substantiated
Complaints,” City of New York, August 12, 2012, www1.nyc.gov.
3 Odi Ofer, “Getting It Right: Building Effective Civilian Review Boards to Oversee Police,” Seton
Hall Law Review 46, no. 1033 (May 2016): 1046–47.
4 Ofer, 1047–48.
5 M. G. Duke, “Residency Rules for Police,” New York Times, January 21, 2015.
6 Melissa Chan, “Rudy Giuliani Says ‘Black Lives Mater’ Is Inherently Racist,” Time, July 10, 2016,
time.com.
7 Adolph Reed Jr., “How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence,”
Nonsite (blog), September 16, 2016, www.nonsite.org.
8 Ronald G. Fryer, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Difference in Police Use of Force,” Harvard
University Department of Economics, July 2016, 1–2, http://scholar.harvard.edu.
9 Fryer, 2–3, 8.
0 Fryer, 2–4.
1 Fryer, 4.
2 Fryer, 35.
3 Fryer, 3–8.
4 A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice (n.p.: Movement
for Black Lives, 2016), 9, http://policy.m4bl.org.
5 A Vision for Black Lives, 4–7.
6 A Vision for Black Lives, 14.
 Index

Abyssinian Baptist Church, 11, 87, 113

ACLU. See American Civil Liberties Union
ctivism, against police brutality: acknowledgment issue, 2–3; civil rights and, 6; in North, 9, 121–22;
religious, 3, 5–6; resistance to, 6–7; spectrum of people and groups in, 5; start of, 4–5. See also civil
rights activism, police brutality and
African Affairs Council, 53
AFSCME. See American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
AI. See Amnesty International
lcohol container charges, 167, 238
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 2, 37, 110, 217, 230; on police commissioner power, 249
American Communist Party (Workers Party), 11–12, 85; appeal to blacks, 50; black weekly news and,
39; daily newspaper of, 35, 36; Davis, B., and, 41–49; Nazi Germany pact with, 39–40, 54; NNC
affiliation with, 39; Patterson leadership in, 48–49; riots blamed on communism and, 104–5
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), 189
American Labor Party, 32
American Spectator, 207
Amnesty International (AI), 178–83
Amsterdam News. See New York Amsterdam News
Anderson, Palmer, 15
Antoine, Patrick, 192–93
Arm, Walter, 75–76, 77, 104
Armstrong, Wallace, 16–18, 31, 32
rrests, 238; B-misdemeanor, 167; decline in number of SCU, 198–99; marijuana, 228, 241, 247–48;
1990s percentage of black, 167–68; retraining on, 231; vertical patrols causing more, 215
Asahi Evening News, 102
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, 186
Asians, 246
sphyxia, deaths by, 178, 179
ttorney generals, 41, 130, 142, 198, 210; district, 232
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X), 72

Bach, Natasha, 2
Baez, Anthony, 178, 206, 212–13
Baez, Iris, 212–13
Baez, Luis, 211
Baker, Ella, 92, 98
Bandele, Monifa, 235–36, 240–41
Bandy, Robert, 87
Bates, Ruby, 38
Beame, Abraham, 133
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Pérez demonstrations in, 211
Bedford-Stuyvesant riots, 1964 Harlem and, 24, 25, 104, 156; civil rights activism and, 99, 108–12,
127–28; Farmer criticized for view of, 123–25; Harlem and, 98, 100–102, 139; injuries from, 103;
intellectuals on meaning of, 116; Montgomery letter regarding, 105–6; police incident triggering, 98,
100–102; solutions sought after, 108–12; summer incident triggering Harlem and, 98, 100–102
Begun, Isadore, 52
Bell, Sean, 207
Bien-Aime, Clement, 192
Biondi, Martha, 9
Birmingham, Alabama, 100, 108
Black, Algernon D., 150–51
Black and Latino Coalition against Police Brutality, 211
Black Gods of the Metropolis (Fauset), 58
Black Lives Matter, 250–51
lack nationalists, religious sects of, 59–60
lack police officers: in NYPD, 109, 245–46; People’s Voice push for more NYPD, 26–29
lack press (black weeklies), 10–12, 13; American Communist Party and, 39; CCRB and, 94; on
genocide, 51–52; 1930s civil rights activists and, 85. See also People’s Voice;
lacks, 167–68; Communist Party appeal to, 50; People’s Voice on youth victims, 18–22; police image
in religious community, 5–6; population of NYC, 3, 10, 30, 57; stereotypes of, 6, 9; working class,
42–43. See also specific topics
Black United Front, 211
Bloomberg, Michael, 206, 207, 221, 225–26
B-misdemeanor arrests, 167
ody cameras, 228
Bonilla, Freddie, Jr., 180–81
Bostic, Joe, 24, 28
oycotts, 29, 41, 67, 100; Montgomery Bus, 121; PAT city school, 156
Bradsher, William, 19
Brancato, Peter J., 23
Bratton, William, 164–67, 168, 172, 180; de Blasio and, 223–24; Garner death and, 231; on Stop,
Question, and Frisk, 208, 209, 233, 239
Briggs, Cyril, 49, 50
Broderick, Vincent L., 135, 140–41
roken windows policing, 237–38, 241–42; Garner death and, 233; theory, 165–66, 167, 168
Brooklyn Joint Council for Better Education, 156
Brown, Earl, 34, 92
Brown, Lee P., 62
Brown, Michael, 1–2, 231
Brown, Warren H., 10
Brownell, Herbert, 130, 142
Brown v. Board of Education, 9, 114, 130
Buckley, William F., 130, 133–35, 136, 157; CCRB opposition of, 137–39, 146
Bumpurs, Eleanor, 160
Burrough, Bryan, 2
Burrows, Danny, 32

CALEA. See Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies

California Eagle, 53
Callender, Herbert, 118
apitalism, 36, 42
Cardillo, Phillip (police officer), 56
Caruso, Philip, 161
Cassese, John, 134, 135, 143, 144; CCRB illegality argument of, 146–47; race-based arguments of, 147,
148, 151; referendum and, 155, 157
Cavanagh, Edward F., Jr., 108–9
CCR. See Center for Constitutional Rights
CCRB. See Civilian Complaint Review Board
Cedeno, Kevin, 177–78
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), 207, 214, 215, 224, 238
Center for Law and Social Justice (CLSJ), 189–91
Chambers, Whitaker, 136
Chicago Defender, 51–52
Chicago Police Department, 55; 1930s, 36
Chicago riots, 3
hokeholds, death by, 230–34
igarettes, 167, 230
Citizens’ Public Safety Committee, recommendation for, 86
Citizens Union (CU), 225–26
City Corporation Counsel, 115–16
City University of New York (CUNY), 198, 211, 227
Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), 77, 107, 110–12; AI report on NYPD and, 182–83; all-
civilian, 96, 97, 133, 190–91, 245; allegations of 2005 lodged with, 208; Bloomberg and, 225–26;
boroughs with highest complaints to, 246–47; Buckley stance on, 137–39; budget increase of 1997,
202; challenges of 1966, 139–42; CLSJ on, 190–91; complaints dismissed, 182; credibility issue, 94;
de Blasio era, 235; defunding of, 162–64, 175, 181; election votes against, 157; false narrative, 157–
58; Farmer on, 123, 133; Farmer’s request to Wagner for, 123; General Order for, 142, 147; Giuliani
and, 162–68; Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots and, 104; Koch proposal for restructuring, 159–
60; La Guardia refusal to create, 87; Lindsay and, 129–30, 132–33, 139–42, 154; Local Law 91 and,
174–75, 177; membership selection, 142; Murphy, M., refusal to create independent, 129; 1930s call
for, 85–88; 1993 version of, 162–64; number of complaints to, 180, 246; NYPD creation of, 90–94;
opposition, 130, 133–35, 137–43; PBA campaign against, 133–35, 144–48; police commissioner
discretion and, 182, 249; prosecutorial powers granted to, 225–26, 246; public advocate
recommendations on, 205; public opinion poll on, 153; race percentages of complaints to, 168, 180,
 208, 247; referendum, 150–54, 155, 157; scandal leading to, 90–93, 90–94; 2002–2005 complaints,
208; 2015 and 2016 complaints, 246–47; Wagner opposition to, 112, 129; Weiss proposal and, 96;
white backlash against, 138–39, 157–58
Civilians United against Police Brutality (CUAPB), 248
Civil Rights Act, 99, 111, 115, 117, 118; Lindsay role in 1957, 130–31
ivil rights activism, police brutality and, 5, 6, 7, 39; attorneys for victims issue, 84; CCRB demands of,
85–88, 110; Cold War and, 35, 44, 45–48, 54; demonstrations of 1964, 97; discontent with, 126–27;
about Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots of 1964, 99, 108–12, 127–28; Louima torture case and,
186–88; NAACP demands, 84; postwar period, 84–85, 89–90; public relations approach, 88–90. See
also American Communist Party; specific organizations
Civil Rights Commission, 131
Civil Rights Congress (CRC), 51, 52–54
ivil rights leaders, 99, 107–9; Buckley infamy among, 136; as communists, 105; CORE and, 118–19;
criticism of, 116; demonstrations moratorium conflict and, 116–27; King, M. L., Jr., conflict and
division, 112–16; Malcolm X on black, 69; riot issue meetings, 117–18; Sharpton becoming, 198;
Wilkins, R., on North and South civil rights, 121–22
ivil rights movement: division within, 99–100; historiography and, 9; NAACP and, 34, 45–48, 54, 99–
100; New York Times survey of whites on, 127–28; South and, 9, 121–22. See also demonstrations;
Harlem riots; riots
Clarke, Una, 186, 188
lass, social, justice based on, 49–50
Clinton, Bill, 198
CLSJ. See Center for Law and Social Justice
Coalition to End Police Brutality, 236
Cold War, 35, 44, 45–48, 54
Coleman, Thomas, 18–20
Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), 248
Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption. See Mollen Commission
Committee of Action against Police Brutality, 88
Committee on Civil Rights, Truman, 45–46
Committee United for Police Reform, 235
ommunists, 52; civil rights leaders as, 105; riots blamed on, 104–5. See also American Communist
Party
Communities United for Police Reform, 230, 240–41
Community Council for Housing, 115
ommunity policing: Giuliani opposition to, 164–65, 205; Green (public advocate) on, 205; law
enforcement and, 248
Community Relations Protocol, 203
CompStat, 166–67, 203, 208, 209, 237
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 99, 115, 141, 249–50; Bedford-Stuyvesant riot and, 103; CCRB
objections of, 145; civil rights leadership divisions and, 118–19; Farmer and, 106–8; Gilligan
incident investigation by, 123; McKee letter to, 128; in moratorium debate, 118, 119, 120, 122–27;
New York World’s Fair stall-in organized by, 121; rally for Gilligan suspension, 102; SNCC and,
118–19, 122–23
Connor, Eugene (“Bull”), 100
Conservative Party: Buckley as candidate for, 137, 139; New York, 143, 152, 154
onviction, of police officers, 206; Baez, L., shooting and, 211; CU research on CCRB recommended,
225; lack of punishment and, 180, 183; Livoti trial and, 212–13; Louima case, 195; MOU of 2012
allowing prosecution and, 225; public role in disciplinary process and, 249
Cooke, Marvel, 12
CORE. See Congress of Racial Equality
Council of Democracy, 10
Court of Appeals, New York, 222
Court of Appeals, U.S., Baez, A., case and, 213
CRC. See Civil Rights Congress
rime reduction, under de Blasio, 229
rimes, Zero Tolerance list of, 167
rime smear campaign, Harlem portrayal in, 14, 22–25
rime statistics, in New York City: non-felony offenses, 167
Crisis (NAACP magazine), 11, 23, 92
CU. See Citizens Union
CUAPB. See Civilians United against Police Brutality
Cultural Awareness and Diversity Training Program, 199, 203, 204
CUNY. See City University of New York

Daily News, 24
Daily Worker, 12, 35, 36, 40–41
Daughtry, Herbert, 211
Davidson, Mark, 159–60
Davis, Ben, 12, 41–49, 54
Davis, Kelson, 216
Davis, Miles, 95–96
Davis, Ossie, 197
Davis et al. v. the City of New York et al., 215
Day of Outrage, 194–95
The Day That Malcolm Won Harlem Over” (Knight), 73–74
eaths, 160, 177–78, 199–202, 212; AI report on, 179; by asphyxia, 178, 179; by chokehold, 230–34; of
suspects, 190. See also specific cases
e Blasio, Bill, 222, 226; Bratton and, 223–24; NYC Floyd appeal withdrawal by, 224, 225, 241; police
reform agenda of, 227–30; reversals and modifications to reform, 230–38; Right to Know
compromise signed by, 240–41
Debs, Eugene, 50
Dee, Ruby, 197
e-escalation, 82–83, 228; training, 233–34
emocracy, 32, 44, 49, 154, 224; Powell, A., on, 30
Democratic National Convention, 122
Democratic Party, 120
 emonstrations (protests): ban on, 115; civil rights, 97; conflict over moratorium on, 116–27; CORE
counter-demonstration against PBA, 134–35; Diallo, 197–99; Farmer on riots v., 122; Farmer view
of, 100; Garner death causing “die-ins” and, 232–33; Gray, J., and Epton march, 115–16; Harlem
riots and, 3–4; Louima torture causing, 193–95; New York World’s Fair stall-in, 121; 1920s, 3; PBA
anti CCRB, 134–35, 161; Pérez Bedford-Stuyvesant, 211; against White Castle restaurants, 120
Department of Investigation (DOI), 227–28, 237
Department of Justice, U.S. (DOJ), 2, 191, 199; police commissioner agreement with, 91–93
Derrick, John, 34–35, 43, 53
etectives: black, 26–28; Malcolm X request for investigation of, 76–78
Detroit riots, 87, 267n6
Dewey, Thomas, 4
Diallo, Amadou, 176, 195–99, 200, 207, 210, 226; 15th anniversary, 224; Pérez, NCPRR and, 213
Diaz, Manuel, 141
Dinkins, David, 160–61, 162, 164; Mollen Commission appointed by, 168–72
isciplinary process, public role in, 249
District Court, U.S.: Louima case, 195; SCU case, 214
District Court for Southern New York, U.S.: Stop, Question, and Frisk cases, 209, 216–25, 226
ocumentaries, on NOI, 62, 67
DOI. See Department of Investigation
Donovan, Daniel, 232
Dorismond, Patrick, 199–202
Dorsey, Margaret, 76
Double V campaign, 12
Douglas, James W., 17
Du Bois, W. E. B., 21, 53
Dudley, Edward R., 108
Dukes, Elbert, 94

Edelstein, Julius C. C., 114

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 92, 130–31
Epton, William, 104, 115–16
Equal Protection Clause, 131, 214, 219
yewitnesses, People’s Voice and, 16–18

AIR. See Federated Associations for Impartial Review

amily Court Act, 201
ard, Wallace D., 59
are evasion, 242, 243
armer, James, 99, 116, 117–18; CCRB and, 123, 133; CORE and, 106–8; criticism of, 123–27;
demonstrations and protests stance of, 100; PBA counter-demonstration by, 134–35; replacement of,
145
arrell, Thomas R., 151
ascism, 44
 auset, Huff, 58
ederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 91–92, 134; Malcolm X reports, 74, 76; NOI and 68, 60, 61–62,
78
ederal monitor, 227, 243–44
ederated Associations for Impartial Review (FAIR), 152–53, 157
erguson, Malcolm, 200
erguson brothers killing, 40–41, 53
errera, Joanne, 126
ields, Ben, 90–91
Floyd et al. v. City of New York et al., 215, 218, 220–22, 223, 225, 226; changes resulting from, 227
OI. See Fruit of Islam
onda, Henry, 154
orce: manual on elements of use of, 228–29; recent allegations on excessive use of, 247
orce Incident Report, 229
ord, James W., 53
oster, William Z., 38
ourth Amendment, 209, 214, 216, 218
Fox News Sunday, 200
reedom Riders, 106–7
Freedom When? (Farmer), 122
ruit of Islam (FOI), 69, 73, 78
ryer, Ronald G., 251
ung, Margaret, 186–88

Galamison, Milton A., 47, 137

Gans, Louise Gruner, 201
Garner, Eric, 230–34
enocide, police brutality as form of, 48–51; CRC We Charge Genocide petition, 52–54
Gibbs, Benjamin, 45
Gilligan, Thomas (NYPD lieutenant), 109, 123; Powell, J., killing by, 98, 101, 102, 103–4
Giuliani, Rudolph, 214; AI report criticized by, 183; amended investigation bill opposed by, 174–75;
approval ratings, 183, 199; Bloomberg and, 226; CCRB treatment by, 162–64; community policing
viewed by, 205; criticism of, 189–90; Diallo case and, 196–97, 198–99; juvenile record release
scandal, 200–202; last year in office, 202; Louima case response of, 185–88, 195; Mollen
Commission response of, 168–72; rise of police brutality cases under, 168, 177; silent response to
incidents, 178; successor, 206; Washington Post interview with, 176; Zero Tolerance policy, 164–68,
176, 180
Goldwater, Barry, 99–100, 118, 120, 124; FAIR on campaign of, 152–53; John Birch Society and, 122;
Lindsay and, 131; Wilkins, R., letter to, 117
Gonzalez, Gonzalo, 36–37
Gravitt, Joseph (Yusuf Shah), 78
Gray, Freddie, 3
Gray, Jesse, 115
Great Depression, 38, 58
Green, Mark (public advocate), 168, 177, 189, 200–202; recommendations to Public Safety Committee,
205–6
Greene, Judith, 168
a Guardia, Fiorello, 28
Guardians, 148, 152
Guardian Society, 135

Haitian American Alliance, 185

Haitian community, Louima and, 193–94
Haitian immigrant, torture of, 184–86
Harlem, 9, 113; black migration into, 57–59; crime smear campaign against, 14, 22–25; “crime waves,”
23; Depression-era, 58; mosque incident in 1972, 56–57, 263n1; Murphy, M., and Wagner on, 110–
11; People’s Voice and, 11; population of 1920, 57; rally over Derrick killing, 34–35; unemployment
rate in 1933, 58; Unity Rally, 69; Wallander directive regarding criminals of, 45
Harlem Commission, 86
Harlem Defense Council, 116
Harlem riots, 3–4; civil rights activism and, 127–28; intellectuals on meaning of, 116; of 1935, 85–86;
of 1943, 25, 28, 87; of 1964, 102; summer school incident sparking 1964, 100–102. See also
Bedford-Stuyvesant riots, 1964 Harlem and
Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, 109–10
Harper’s Magazine, 46
Harrington, Ollie, 12
Harten, Thomas, 3
The Hate That Hate Produced, 62
Haywood, Harry, 35, 52–53
Herald Tribune, 65
Herndon, Angelo, 42
Hildebrand, Richard A., 108–9
Hinton, Christine, 81
Hinton, Johnson X, 70–76, 80, 81, 265n55
istoriography, on civil rights movement, 9
Hitler, Adolph, 39, 52
Hogan, Frank, 112
Hollywood, 4
Holy Trinity Baptist Church, 3
ospitalizations, 179, 200
House Un-American Activities Committee, 41
Housing and Transit police forces, NYPD merger with, 177, 180
Houston, Charles Hamilton, 81
Huffington Post, 2, 241
l-Hussary, Mahmoud Khalil (Sheikh), 56
LD. See International Labor Defense
mmediate Abuse Response Team, 191
nstitutional racism, 6, 30, 90, 246
nternational Labor Defense (ILD), 38, 50–51
rene Morgan v. the Commonwealth of Virginia, 106–7

acko, Edward, 81, 90, 91

ackson, Jacob, 91
ackson, Jesse, 197
aenean Ligon et al. v. the city of New York et al., 216–18, 221–23; impact of, 226; police reform and,
230
avits, Jacob, 34–35, 152, 154
ewish Voice for Peace NYC, 238
im Crow, 24, 28, 43, 99; NYPD and, 40, 41
ohn Birch Society, 122
ohnson, Edward, 94–95
ohnson, Lyndon Baines, 99, 104, 115, 117
ones, Clarence, 116
ones, Claudia, 53
ournal of Criminal Law and Criminality, 89
usticia, 213
uvenile records, sealed, 201

Keating, Kenneth B., 92–93

Kelling, George L., 165–66
Kelly, Raymond, 206–7, 210, 221, 225
Kennedy, John F., 99, 117, 119
Kennedy, Robert F., 105, 152, 154
Kennedy, Stephen, 75, 77, 79
Kiernan, Joseph, 76
King, Jamilah, 3
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 99, 117–18, 207; criticisms of, 116; Diallo demonstrations and, 197; NYC civil
rights leadership conflict with, 112–16; SCLC and, 106; Wilkins, A., criticism of, 114–15; Wilkins,
R., and, 115
King, Rodney, 2
Kirk, Russell, 136
KKK. See Ku Klux Klan
Knapp Commission, 169–70
Knight, Fredrick, 73–74
Koch, Edward, 159–60
Kriegel, Jay, 150
Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 62, 79–80, 111, 122
abor unions, 38, 50–51, 118, 198; Louima case outrage of, 192–93
aForest, Ray, 192
a Guardia, Fiorello, 28, 85–87
atino Officers Association, 189, 192
atinos, 96, 248; arrests in 1989, 167–68; CCRB complaint percentages, 180; Stop, Question, and Frisk
as targeting, 215, 218
awsuits, police brutality, 10–11, 82, 202; NYC spending on, 183; against SCU, 207; Stop, Question,
and Frisk, 215–16
eague of Struggle for Negro Rights, 35
eary, Howard R., 141, 142, 143, 149–50
ee, Spike, 73
effler, Sheldon S., 164
egal Aid Society, 189
egal Defense Fund, NAACP, 117, 220
egal Redress Committee, NAACP, 90–91, 95
ewis, Edward S., 88
ewis, John, 119
GBTQ communities, 246
beralism, anti-communist, 45–48, 54
iebman, David, 24
indsay, John, 1, 4, 5, 129, 132; Broderick and, 140–41; on CCRB defeat, 157; Civil Rights Act role of,
130–31; criticism of, 133–34; on democracy and CCRB, 154; on equal protection, 131; FAIR public
opinion poll and, 153; liberals praise of CCRB announcement, 145; New York Times praise of, 143;
NYPD Law enforcement Task Force appointed by, 140; PBA referendum and, 154, 157; political
views of, 130; show-cause order issued, 147
ivoti, Francis, 178, 206, 212–13
ocal Law 91, CCRB, 174–75, 177
omax, Louis E., 10, 62
oosies (single cigarettes), 230
os Angeles Police Department, NOI temple raid of 1962, 69
os Angeles Times, 2
ouima, Abner, torture of, 176, 184; demonstrations sparked by, 193–95; Giuliani response to case of,
185–88, 195; labor outrage over, 192–93; New York City Council response to, 188–93; other victims
in case of, 192–93; public advocate on, 189
ow-level offenses. See non-felony offenses
uro, Alfred, 37
ynch, Lincoln, 118
ynch, Patrick, 100, 101
ynching: contemporary police brutality as, 55, 93; police brutality as northern style, 36–41; Scottsboro
case as legal, 51
ynn, Conrad, 116

Magil, A. B., 37
mainstream press. See media coverage
Maitland, Errol, 200
Malcolm X: Arm (commissioner) promise to, 75, 76–77; autobiography, 72; on black civil rights
leaders, 69; confrontational approach of, 67–70; debates of, 61; FBI reports on, 74; Hinton, J., case
and, 70–76, 80, 81, 265n55; legal approach of, 81–82; Muhammad, E., compared with, 69, 70;
negotiations with NYPD, 75–78; NOI joined by, 60; nonconfrontational approaches of, 75, 76–81,
83; “obey the law” message from, 78, 80; self-defense message of, 68, 70
Mallory, Milton, 98
Marable, Manning, 69, 80
March on Washington movement, 10, 98–99
marijuana, 228, 241, 247–48
Mark-Viverito, Melissa, 235, 240
Marshall, Horace, 43
Marshall, Thurgood, 62
Marshall Plan, 44
Mathias, Charles, 131
Mathias, Matthew, 2
McCulloch, William, 131
McCullum, James, 18–20
McGranery, James P., 91–92
McKee, Thomas Hudson, 128
McKissick, Floyd B., 145
media coverage (mainstream press), 2; on Louima, 185, 188; NOI and, 62; race emphasis in, 22–23;
riots cause viewed by, 103
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), 225
merger, NYPD-Housing and Transit police forces, 177, 180
Metropolitan Transit Authority, 242
migration, southern black, 57–59
Milline, Zach, 34
Minakotis, Basil, 34
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 122; Summer Project incident, 99
Mitchell, George, 32
Mollen, Milton, 168
Mollen Commission, 168–72, 183
Mollette, John, 76, 80
Mollette, Yvonne, 76, 80
MomsRising.org, 240–41
Monaghan, George P., 91–93
monitoring, of NYPD, 88, 220–21, 223–24; federal, 227, 243–44
Montgomery, Simone, 105–6
Montgomery Bus Boycott, 121
Moore, Richard, 49
Moorish Science Temple, 59
Morgenthau, Robert, 178
MOU. See Memorandum of Understanding
Movement for Black Lives, 251–52
Muhammad, Elijah (Elijah Robert Poole), 57, 59, 63–65, 77–78; de-escalation and, 82; Malcolm X
compared with, 69, 70; NOI policy announcements and, 83
Muhammad, Wallace, 67
Murphy (Justice), 149–50
Murphy, Michael J., 96, 105–6, 112, 115; on black officers in NYPD, 109; civil rights leaders meeting
with, 107–8; on Harlem, 110–11; independent review board opposed by, 129; police brutality issue
viewed by, 107; resignation of, 129, 132
Murray, Walter, 150–51
Museum of the City of New York, 1
Muslims, 227, 246

NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Nall, Al, 10–11
National Action Network (NAN), 197–98, 207
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 11, 109, 141, 194; attorneys,
81; Baker and, 98; Brooklyn Branch, 84; on civil rights leaders meddling in New York City, 115;
civil rights movement and, 34, 45–48, 54, 99–100; Cold War period stance of, 45–48; Committee of
Action against Police Brutality, 88; CORE competition with, 106; killings investigated by, 34; King,
M. L., Jr., visit to New York viewed by, 115; Legal Defense Fund, 117, 220; Legal Redress
Committee, 90–91, 95; NOI and, 62, 69, 81; Powell, J., incident and, 108; rally planned by Harlem
leaders and, 34–35; Right to Know legislation supported by, 238; secret agreement outrage of, 92;
Stop, Question, and Frisk lawsuit filed by, 215. See also Crisis; Wilkins, Roy
National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights (NCPRR), 210–11; “Adopt a Day in Court” tactic, 212;
campaign against Stop, Question, and Frisk, 213–25; Justice for Anthony Baez campaign of, 212–13
National Latino Officers Association, 238
National Negro Congress (NNC), 39, 51
National Urban League, 88, 99, 117–19, 141
Nation of Islam (NOI): common narrative on, 82; de-escalation and, 82–83; FBI and, 60, 61–62;
Harlem mosque incident in 1972, 56–57, 263n1; Hinton, J., case, 70–76, 80, 81, 265n55; legal
approach of, 81–82; Malcolm X and, 60, 67–70, 76–81; media image of, 62; Mollettes mistrial, 76;
NAACP and, 62, 69, 81; non-militant strategies of, 57, 69–70; “obey the law” policy of, 63–67, 78,
80; origins of, 57–61; popularity of, 60; Quarles case, 78; Stokes murder and, 64; temple raid of
1962, 69; violent organization view of, 61–63; women victims of police brutality, 68. See also
Muhammad, Elijah
Navarra, Vito (police officer), 56
Nazi Germany, 39–40, 54
NCPRR. See National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights
Negro American Labor Council, 118
The Negro Revolt (Lomax), 10
eighborhood policing, 229, 243
New Masses, 37
New York Age, 11, 47
New York Amsterdam News (Amsterdam News), 10, 11–12, 13 14, 51–52; on Derrick killing, 34; on
Malcolm X and Hinton, J., case, 72–73; 1950s reporting, 94, 96; weekly reporting of incidents, 98
New York City (NYC), 238; black population of, 3, 10, 30, 57; crime rates, 160–61; Floyd appeal, 224,
225, 241; as Jim Crow city, 24, 28; King, M. L., Jr., invited to, 112–15; lawsuit against NYPD and,
215–16; police brutality lawsuits spending by, 183; symposium in, 1. See also District Court for
Southern New York, U.S.; People’s Voice
New York City Anti-violence Project, 186
New York City Charter, 141–42, 152; on sealed juvenile records, 201
New York City Congress of Puerto Rican Rights, 238
New York City Council, 227; independent investigation board proposed by, 172–75; Kelly and, 210;
Koch bill and, 159; Louima case and, 186–88, 188–93; Mollen Commission and, 172–73; Public
Safety Committee, 188–93, 205–6; Right to Know and, 238–41
New York City Teachers Union, 24
New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), 110, 151, 152, 163–64; low-level offenses and, 243; Right
to Know legislation and, 240; on Stop, Question, and Frisk, 209, 216, 224–25
New York Civil Rights Coalition, 186
New York Conservative Party, 143, 152, 154
New York County Lawyers Association, 132–33
New York Daily News, 23, 207
New York Police Department (NYPD), 1; AI report on, 178–80, 182–83; Anti-Corruption Procedures,
168; Civilian Complaint Review Board created by, 90–94; CLSJ on racism of, 190; crime smear
campaign and, 24–25; denial of police brutality by, 7; headcount and budget, 235–36; institutional
racism and, 6, 30, 90, 246; Internal Affairs, 169, 182; Jim Crow and, 40, 41; KKK and, 79–80;
lawsuit against NYC and, 215–16; Lindsay’s Law enforcement Task Force on, 140; Louima cover-up
in, 186; Malcolm X negotiations with, 75–78; merger, 177, 180; monitoring of, 88, 220–21, 223–24,
227–28, 243–44; NOI mosque incident of 1972, 56–57; People’s Voice and, 18, 26–29, 87; police
commissioner power and, 149; racial integration of, 108, 245; racial makeup of, 28, 192, 245–46;
supervisors, 170; vertical patrols, 215, 217, 220. See also specific incidents; specific names; specific
topics
New York Post, 101, 199, 234
New York Society for Ethical Culture, 150
New York Times, 1, 22–23, 96; CCRB and, 133, 148, 150, 155, 157–58; on CCRB white backlash, 157–
58; crimes by “Negroes” reported in, 22–23; on de Blasio support, 236; demonstration moratorium
and, 121; on Harlem riot of 1964, 102; Jones, Clarence, interview on civil rights leaders, 116;
Lindsay praised by, 143; Louima case and, 185, 188; on NYPD power, 240; Siegel quoted in, 163–
64; whites survey on civil rights in, 127–28; on woman shot while requesting help, 108
New York World’s Fair, 121
New York World-Telegram, 124
NNC. See National Negro Congress
NOI. See Nation of Islam
on-felony offenses (low-level offenses), 166, 167, 176, 243, 246
North: activism in, 9, 121–22; Jim Crow system of, 43
NYCHA buildings (New York City Housing Authority), 215, 243
NYCLU. See New York Civil Liberties Union
NYPD. See New York Police Department
The NYPD Has a Long History of Killing Unarmed Black Men” (Mathias and Schwartz), 2

Obama, Barack, 2, 239, 240, 249

O’Brian, Edmund J., 36, 37
O’Brian, William P., 89
O’Dwyer, William, 48, 88–89
Ofer, Udi, 249
Office of Inspector General (OIG), 227, 237
Office of Price Administration (OPA), 87–88
OIG. See Office of Inspector General
00 Blacks in Law enforcement, 191–92
O’Neil, James, 229
OPA. See Office of Price Administration
Operation Clean Halls, 216, 217
Opportunity Journal, 11
Orta, Ramsey, 230, 231
Overton, L. Joseph, 114

alumbo, Louis, 34
antaleo, Daniel, 230–31, 232–33
arents and Taxpayers (PAT), 155–56
artner Office program, 234
AT. See Parents and Taxpayers
atrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), 7, 129; anti-CCRB protests, 134–35, 161; anti-Dinkins
protest by, 161; appeal to racist sentiments, 133–35; campaign against CCRB, 144–48; CCRB
opposed by, 130, 133–35, 142, 143; CCRB referendum, 150–54, 155, 157, 158; false narrative of,
158; Louima evidence cover-up of, 185; police reform resistance of, 236–37; Right to Know opposed
by, 239
atterson, William L., 40, 41, 50–51, 54; communist party leadership, 48–49
BA. See Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association
ellegrini, Anthony, 177–78
People’s Voice, 90; black press and (black weeklies), 10–12, 13; campaign strategy, 13–14; circulation,
13; crime smear campaign fought by, 22–25; criticism of, 10; eyewitness accounts in, 16–18; first
edition, 12; investigative journalism of, 14–16; on northern style lynching, 44; NYPD and, 18, 26–
29, 87; political role of, 9, 33; racial strife downplayed by, 87; rallies, 31–33; solutions advocated by,
26–30; writers, 12–13
érez, Richie, 210–11; Baez, A., family and, 212–13; campaign against Stop, Question, and Frisk, 213–
25
Phylon, 42
Pittsburgh Courier, 12–13
L. See Progressive Labor Movement
olice Academy and In-Service Integrity training, 171
 olice brutality, 211, 252; AI report on, 178–80; anti-Communist liberalism and, 54; black youth and,
18–22; cultural programs as not addressing, 203–4; definition of, 1; denial of, 6–7, 126, 175; as
genocide, 48–54; increased incidence under Giuliani, 168, 177; investigation practices of 1940s and,
30; lynching and, 36–41, 55; media coverage absence on, 2; 1950s continuation of, 94–96; police
corruption link with, 170–71; as predating 1960s, 2–3; pregnant mother case, 95; as public relations
problem, 88–90; Puerto Rican hotline for cases of, 211; riots as caused by, 98, 105–6; stun guns and,
159–60; trade unions and, 44, 48; white victims of, 250–51; women victims of, 68, 95, 179. See also
civil rights activism, police brutality and; Nation of Islam (NOI); specific cases; specific topics
Police Brutality, Lynching in the Northern Style, 43
Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 178–79
olice commissioners, 96; agreement with DOJ, 91–93; Bloomberg’s appointed, 206–7; CCRB
complaints dismissal by, 182; “mussed up” directive, 18, 45; 1936, 18, 24, 27, 29, 32; 1946, 43, 44–
45, 48; 1949, 89; 1959, 75, 77, 79, 91–93; 1994, 164–67, 168; 1994–1996, 165; power of, 149; 2002,
206–7; 2016, 229. See also specific commissioners
olice corruption: DOI and, 227–28; Knapp Commission on, 169–70; Mollen Commission to
investigate, 168–72; police brutality link with, 170–71
olice Investigation and Audit Board, 172–73
olice officers: AI report on race of, 180; on CCRB, 129; Giuliani protection of, 176; image, 4, 5, 6;
judicial immunity of, 9, 90; Leary selection of, 151; letters in defense of, 126; monitoring, 88, 223–
24, 227–28; MOU on right to prosecute, 225; prior record of Diallo case, 196; retirement, 171; riots
as caused by, 105–6; role of, 4–5; self monitoring by, 96. See also specific topics
olice Patrol Guide, 228, 239
olice Public Contact Survey (PPCS), 251
olice reform, 161; de Blasio and, 227–38; modifications to de Blasio’s, 230–38; Mollen Commission
and, 168–72; resistance to, 168–72
olice Reform Organizing Project (PROP), 237–38
oll Tax, 46–47
oole, Elijah Robert. See Muhammad, Elijah
opular culture, police image in, 4, 5, 6
opular Front, 39, 46
opulation: growth of black, 3, 10; Latino, 248; NYC, 3, 30, 57, 248
otts, Frankie Lee, 70, 73, 75
owell, Adam Clayton, Jr., 11, 21, 29–33, 87, 109; on crime smear campaign, 24; Derrick killing and,
34–35; King, M. L., Jr. criticized by, 113–14
owell, James, 2, 98, 101, 102, 103–4; CORE and NAACP on killing of, 108; NAACP and, 109
owers, James, 48
owers, Peter, 162
PCS. See Police Public Contact Survey
rogressive Labor Movement (PL), 104, 115, 116
ROP. See Police Reform Organizing Project
The Protestant, 47
rotests. See demonstrations
ublic advocate: Dorismond shooting inquiry by, 200–202; position, 189. See also Green, Mark
ublic relations, 88–90, 188
 uerto Ricans, 211
unitive action: broken windows-type policing and, 237–38; PROP definition of, 237

uality-of-life offenses, 233, 237

Quarles, Raymond, 78
Quinn, Christine, 225
Quran, 59

ace: CCRB complaint percentages by, 168, 180, 208, 247; labor movement and, 50; media emphasis
on, 22–23; of police officers, 180; racial disparity in marijuana arrests, 248; Stop, Question, and Frisk
policy and, 251
acial discrimination: downplaying of, 87; genocide petition and, 52–54; interstate travel ruling and,
106–7
acial inequality, Socialist Party recognition of, 50
acial profiling, 197–98; de Blasio on, 222, 224; indirect, 220; in Stop, Question, and Frisk, 209–10,
214–25, 228; in vertical patrol, 215, 217
acism: CCRB opposition as based on, 147, 148, 151; CLSJ on NYPD racism, 190; institutional, 6, 30,
90, 246; Mollen Commission ignoring element of, 170; working class struggles and, 42
allies: CORE, 102; after Derrick killing, 34–35; Harlem Unity, 69; People’s Voice, 31–33
Randolph, A. Phillip, 35, 39–40, 46, 118; CCRB stance, 133; Johnson, L. B., and, 119; Unity for Action
meeting, 80
Rangel, Charles, 56
Ransom, Llewellyn, 12, 16, 20–22, 87
easonable suspicion standard, 219
Reed, Adolph, 250
eferendum, against CCRB, 150–54, 155, 157
Regional Action Committee, 47
Reidman, Harold, 16–18
eligion: activism and, 3, 5–6; black nationalism and, 59–60. See also Nation of Islam
Reno, Janet, 198
ent strike, of 1963, 115
Republican Party, Lindsay-era, 130
esidency requirement, 249
etirement, police, 171
Right to Know Act, 227, 238–39; compromise, 240–41
iots: Chicago, 3; civil rights leaders meeting on, 117–18; communism blamed for race, 104–5; Detroit,
87, 267n6; Farmer on demonstrations v., 122; media coverage and, 103; police brutality as cause of,
98, 105–6; Watts 1964, 156. See also Bedford-Stuyvesant riots, 1964 Harlem and; Harlem riots
Rivera, Dennis, 198
Robbins, Richard, 13
Robert F. Wagner Junior High School, 100–102
Roberts, Sam, 1
Robinson, Jackie, 35, 69
Robinson, Sugar Ray, 35
Rockefeller, Nelson, 108, 121, 131
Romeika, Joseph, 40
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 39, 88–89
Roosevelt, Theodore, 130
Rosario, Anthony, Jr., 180–81
Rosen, Milton, 115
Rustin, Bayard, 99–100, 115, 116, 117; CCRB and, 133; on moratorium issue, 119–20
Ryan, John J., 27–28

acco, Ferdinando Nicola, 49

afe City, Safe Streets, 160
afir, Howard, 186
amuels, Leona Hightower, 47
andifer, Jawn, 81, 90, 108
arandon, Susan, 197
aturday Review, 10
aunders, Charles, 102
cheindlin, Shira (Justice), 214, 217–20, 224; judges accusations of, 221–22
chool Workshop, NAACP, 47
chwartz, Carly, 2
CLC. See Southern Christian Leadership Conference
cottsboro Nine case, 38, 50–51
crevane, Paul, 103, 104, 108–9, 112; Taylor and, 135
CU. See Street Crimes Unit
ector integrity, 229
egregation, 81, 105, 106, 114, 120–21; boycott to end, 100; NYCHA and, 215
elf-defense, 57, 64, 251; NOI and, 67, 68, 70, 82
exual harassment, 240
hah, Yusuf. See Gravitt, Joseph
harpton, Al, 197, 198, 207, 234
heindlin, Gerald, 212, 213
iegel, Normal, 163–64, 186–88
immons, Esmeralda, 189–90
immons, Minnie X., 76
ister Roberta, 68
mith, Patrick (police), 16
mith Act, 41–42, 45
NCC. See Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
ocialist Party, 50
ocial justice: class nature of, 49–50; 2014 campaign for, 55
outh, 24; black migration out of, 57–59; civil rights movement and, 9, 121–22
outhern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 67, 99, 106
 oviet Union, 39, 50, 54
pitzer, Eliot, 210
prowal, Chris, 102
tall-in, New York World’s Fair, 121
tebbins, Ernest Lyman, 24
tein, Annie, 47
tereotypes: black criminality, 6; of blacks, 6, 9; police image and, 4, 5, 6
teward, Harold (“Davy Crocket”), 91
tewart, Michael, 160
tokes, Ronald, 64, 69
tone, Lester, 31–32
toner, J. B., 79, 80
top, Question, and Frisk, 166, 199, 228; attorney general investigations of, 210; Bloomberg policy of,
206, 226; Bratton on, 233; CCRB complaints increase resulting from, 208; de Blasio on, 223;
humiliation of blacks in, 224; innocent citizen percentages, 209; Judge Scheindlin remedies for, 220;
number of citizens subjected to, 218; Pérez and NCPRR campaign against, 213–25; police
monitoring order for, 220, 221; police officer audits regarding, 214–15; policy, 209–10; race factor in
violent encounters during, 251; racial percentages, 209, 218; rationale for, 218–19; Right to Know
Act and, 238–41; right to refuse, 239; SCU use of, 210, 213; Supreme Court rulings on, 209
treet Crimes Unit (SCU), 196, 198–99, 207; disbanding of, 214, 226; Equal Protection violated by,
214; Stop, Question, and Frisk use in, 210, 213
treet peddler, Giuliani-era incident involving, 195–99
treetwise program, 199, 202–3
trikes, 1, 11, 12, 37, 250; rent, 115; United Bus, 29
tudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 107, 118–19, 122–23
tun guns, 159–60
ummer school, riot sparked by incident at junior high, 100–102
upreme Court, New York County, 149, 174–75; Dorismond juvenile record release and, 200–202
upreme Court, New York State, 149, 174–75
upreme Court, U.S.: enforcement of rulings issue, 106–7; lawsuit against NYC and NYPD, 215–16;
PBA victory from, 146–47. See also District Court, U.S.
urvey, on whites attitude towards civil rights movement, 127–28

Taft-Hartley Act, 41
Take Part, 3
Tal, L’Pysli, 73, 75
TAP. See Trespass Affidavit Program
Task Force on 21st Century Policing, 239, 240, 249
Taylor, Gardner C., 135
Terry v. Ohio, 209
Thompson, James G., 12–13
Till, Emmitt, 62
Time, 62, 103
Tonton Macoute, 193
Torres, Ritchie, 238–41
orture, 20, 55; 1980s incidents of, 159–60. See also Louima, Abner, torture of
rade unions, 44, 48
Train, Peter, 43
raining, police, 171, 188; cultural, 199, 203, 204; de-escalation, 233–34; Garner death and, 231, 233;
officer ratings of retraining, 234
ransparency, 229–30
Trespass Affidavit Program (TAP), 216, 217–18
Trujillo, Josmar, 236
Truman, Harry S., 4–5, 44–46, 91–92
Truman Doctrine, 44
Trump, Donald, 243

UN Commission on Human Rights, 52

UN Committee against Torture, 55
nemployment, 1930s, 58, 103, 111, 121, 140, 147
United Veterans for Equality, 41
Unity Council of Harlem Organizations, 113
Unity for Action, 80
UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, 55

Vacancy Control Board, 162

Valentine, Lewis, 18, 24, 27, 29, 32
Vance, Cyrus, 242
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 49
Vasquez, Anthony, 200, 202
Vedro, Carl, 35
Vega, Hilton, 180–81
ertical patrols, 215, 217, 220
ideos, of police assaults, 231, 247
Volpe, Justin, 184

Wagner, Robert F., 79, 93, 105, 110, 121, 129; civil rights leaders meeting with, 107–8; Farmer and,
123; intransigence of, 127, 128; King, M. L., Jr., invited to NYC by, 112–15; PAT criticism of, 155;
PBA supported by, 147; response to Bedford-Stuyvesant riot, 103–4
Wah, Tatiana, 193–94
Wallace, George, 126
Wallander, Arthur William, 43, 44–45, 48
Walters, Anderson, 192–93
War on Poverty, 99, 117
warrants, dismissal of minor offense, 241–42
Warren, Vincent, 224
Washington, Rudy, 193
Washington Post, 176, 221
Watts riot, 155
WBAI Radio, 200
We Charge Genocide petition, 52–55
Weiss, Theodore, 96, 129, 134, 139
White, Walter, 48
White Castle restaurants, 120
white press: crime smear campaign of, 14, 22–25; People’s Voice on, 25; police brutality reporting in,
16–17
whites: CCRB backlash of, 138–39, 157–58; civil rights movement feared by, 155; de Blasio negative
ratings by, 236; Giuliani approval rating among, 199; 1963 poll on integration, 156; PBA appeal to
racist, 133–35, 147–48; police brutality incidents among, 250–51
Wilkerson, Doxey, 11–12
Wilkins, Aminda Badeau, 114–15, 124
Wilkins, Roy, 39–40, 46, 69–70, 141; civil rights movement divisions and, 99; demonstration
moratorium support by, 116, 119, 120–21; Farmer criticized by, 124; King, M. L., Jr., and, 115, 120;
letter to Goldwater, 117; on North v. South civil rights strategies, 121–22; on PBA, 151
willful indifference, 247
Wilson, Darren, 231
Windsor-Star, 102
women: as police brutality victims, 68, 95, 179; sexual harassment of, 240
Workers Party. See American Communist Party
working class, 42; racial divisions within 1920s, 38
Writers Guild, 11, 12

YMCA, 21, 28
Young, Whitney, 99, 117–18, 141
Young Communist League, 52
Young Lords, 211

ero Tolerance, 164–68, 176, 180; Pérez on Baez, A., case and, 213; school policies, 252
imroth, Peter J., 242–43
ornow, David, 163
 About the Author

Clarence Taylor is an American historian and author and editor of several

books, including Civil Rights since 1787: A Reader in the Black Struggle
and Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York
City Teachers Union.