The Savage City (54 page)

There was another problem. One day, George came home and someone had painted the words
Nigger Get Out
on the side of his garage. Whitmore contacted the local police, but they seemed uninterested in what George called his “KKK problem.” When the racial harassment continued, George decided he wasn't wanted in the lily-white suburb of Denisville. He sold the property at a loss and moved back to Wildwood.

It was the mid-1980s, and Whitmore's money was running out. He took what he had left, bought a scallop boat, and started his own fishing business. George had always loved the water, ever since his days of sticking a homemade fishing pole out his bedroom window when he was a child. With a crew of four or five men, George went out to sea and stayed there through the fishing season. “Out on the ocean seemed to be the only place where I could get peace of mind,” he recalled. “Nobody knew me or bothered me. I wasn't no famous man who went through hell. I was anonymous.”

One day, out on his fishing boat, George was hit in the face by a steel cable and broke his nose. He bled all over the boat, but he stayed at sea until he and the crew met their scallop quota. By the time he returned to land and went to the hospital, it was too late to reset his broken nose. Forever after, George would have a noticeably crooked nose.

Eventually, like many things in Whitmore's life, his fishing business took a bad turn. His boat was repossessed for lack of payment. By the 1990s, the money from his settlement with the City of New York was long gone. He lived off welfare and disability payments from the State of New Jersey. His drinking problem, which had begun in prison, grew worse, and when George drank he sometimes got ornery. His girlfriend took out a restraining order against him, which George routinely violated. Thus began a series of arrests for things like criminal trespassing, violating a protection order, simple assault, contempt of court, defaulting on bail, and driving while intoxicated. Between 1990 and 2005, Whitmore was arrested twenty-four times. He became a well-known figure at Middle Township Municipal Court and other courts and jail-houses in and around the Wildwood area.

Into the new century, now in his sixties, George stopped getting into trouble with the law, but his life of hardship did not let up. He had three separate heart attacks and was once declared legally dead. He broke more bones than he could count. Whitmore had developed a knack for disaster. He was like a tumbleweed blowing in the wind, freewheeling, trying to stay a few steps ahead of the next catastrophe. Nearly every day he self-medicated with vodka, beer, and cigarettes.

One day in January 2010, George was at the Western Union counter at a check-cashing store in Rio Grande, New Jersey, picking up money sent to him by a friend in Manhattan. Standing nearby, George noticed a man wearing a surgeon's mask over his face, but he didn't think too
much about it: There was lots of talk on the news about the swine flu, and sometimes people wore masks. Whitmore picked up his money, $250 in cash. Then, before he had a chance to put it in his pocket, the man with the mask snatched the money out of his hand and dashed out the door.

Whitmore ran after the thief, heading out into the street, when—BAM!—he was hit by a car. The vehicle dragged him twenty feet. Whitmore was unconscious when paramedics arrived on the scene and determined that the victim needed to be transferred to a hospital in Atlantic City. The fastest way to get there was by helicopter.

When Whitmore awoke, he was high in the sky—the first time he'd been in a helicopter since the day in 1973 when he was flown to New York City for the court hearing that would eventually lead to his freedom.

Whitmore suffered numerous broken bones and a concussion in the accident, but he escaped life-threatening injury. Soon he returned to his home at a motel off Route 9 in the town of Cape May Court House, where he convalesced. Said George, “I've had three heart attacks, been declared dead, got a stent in my heart, been harassed by ghosts, the KKK, broke my nose—you name it. But I'm still here. I ain't going nowhere. I'm a survivor.”

 

IN THE CITY
of New York, the wheels of progress continue to turn. The forces that shaped the lives of Whitmore, Phillips, Dhoruba, and others seemed to linger for decades—and things got worse before they got better. In the 1980s, the explosion of crack cocaine in the ghetto would lead to levels of violence and mayhem that far surpassed the heroin years of the 1950s and 1960s. The result was a staggering rate of incarceration for black males in their teens and twenties. The number of homicides in the city doubled from its total of one thousand in 1970 to more than two thousand in 1990. The city's crime rate continued to climb until, coincidentally, New York elected its first African American mayor, David Dinkins, in 1990.

The 1990s, when former federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani became mayor after Dinkins, saw a continuation in the decline of violent crime, but it was also a period characterized by instances of police brutality that far outstripped anything that had happened to George Whitmore. A Haitian immigrant was tortured and sodomized in the
back room of a Brooklyn station house; an African immigrant was riddled with forty-one bullets by a team of cops while he reached for his identification in front of his home in the Bronx. Protesters marched on police headquarters and City Hall. Eventually, Giuliani, like John Lindsay, headed to Florida to run for president. In the Republican Party primary of 2008, he somehow managed to do even worse than Lindsay, garnering a total of zero delegates before dropping out of the race.

Since the infamous 9/11 terror attacks of 2001 the crime rate has remained low. In 2009 there were 496 murders in New York, the lowest total since the NYPD began keeping detailed crime statistics in 1963. The Savage City is now the Safest Big City in America. But many of the fissures remain. Within the criminal justice system, assumptions based on race and class are still the norm. Out on the street, police stop and frisk African American and Latino youths at a rate nine times higher than whites. The city's jails are disproportionately filled with young black men. More cops than ever live in the suburbs, outside the city they police. When it comes to poor and minority neighborhoods in places like Brooklyn and the Bronx, they are strangers in a strange land.

Crime may be down, but the system is still based on fear. Mayors and police commissioners come and go; they tout new programs and produce statistics to show they're doing their job, but the institutional roots are largely the same. A criminal justice system that was designed to separate the races, and to enforce a racial caste system, does not change overnight. In fact, it doesn't change at all unless the general populace, and those who enforce the system, are willing to recognize the problem.

The Savage City may have drifted from memory; the names and events of a tumultuous era have been paved over and buried away. But the scars, emotions, and underlying causes are still present. They remain embedded below the surface of the city like a dormant but smoldering volcano, one that could rumble to life at any time.

Today, the city projects an image of security. But the fault lines remain. Lift up the rock and you will see.

The narrative of this book is based on primary sources: interviews with participants, archival documents, and unpublished manuscripts, as well as many of the books, newspaper and magazine articles, reports, transcripts, and law enforcement files listed throughout this section.

In instances where individuals were interviewed numerous times, they are usually listed by date of the first interview.

Abbreviations are used to designate the following institutions and agencies:

Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP Papers)

New York City Municipal Archives (NYCMA)

New York Public Library (NYPL)

Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture (SCRBC)

Paley Center for Media (PCM)

Vanderbilt University Television News Archives (Vanderbilt TVNA)

NYPD Bureau of Special Services (BOSS)

Organization of African American Unity (OAAU)

Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM)

Black Panther Party (BPP)

Federal Bureau of Investigation Counterintelligence Program (FBI COINTELPRO)

INTRODUCTION

Safest Big City in America:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City began using this phrase in 2006 to characterize the city's declining crime rate. The term caught on primarily as a marketing tool to promote tourism.

Crime rates in NYC, 1963 to 1973
: Greenwood, Peter W.,
Analysis of the Apprehension Activities of the New York City Police Department
.

Mechanical cotton picker:
Lemann, Nicholas,
The Promised Land,
pp. 3–6.

Sharecropping system:
Ibid., pp. 5–6, 11–25; Blackmon, Douglas A.,
Slavery by Another Name,
pp. 90–91, 120–121.

The black migration:
Lemann,
The Promised Land,
pp. 6–7; Biondi, Martha,
To Stand and Fight
, pp. 5–11, 28–31.

My Father's Gun:
McDonald, Brian,
My Father's Gun,
pp. 14–27; interview with Brian McDonald (February 4, 2010).

The Lyons Law:
McDonald,
My Father's Gun
, p. 19.

McDonald's father:
Interview with Brian McDonald (February 4, 2010).

Police brutality in NYC:
Biondi,
To Stand and Fight
, pp. 70–74.

Forty-six unarmed African Americans killed by police:
Ibid., p. 60.

“Lynching, Northern style”:
Ibid.

Harlem riot of 1943:
Ibid.; Jackson, Kenneth T. (ed.),
Encyclopedia of New York,
p. 124.

Hinton Johnson incident:
Goldman, Peter Louis,
The Death and Life of Malcolm X,
pp. 56–49.

“A boiler that is allowed”:
Cannato, Vincent J.,
The Ungovernable City
, p. 166.

NYC crime statistics
: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, statistical analysis of seven major crime groups, 1963–1973.

1. BLOOD OF THE LAMB

Martin Luther King Jr. stabbing incident:
“Dr. King, Negro Leader, Stabbed by Woman in a Store in Harlem,”
New York Times,
September 21, 1958; “Martin Luther King Stabbed,”
New York Daily News,
September 21, 1958; Branch, Taylor,
Parting the Waters
, pp. 243–245.

New Yorkers depart for March on Washington, D.C.
: “Cars, Buses, Trains, and Planes Taking New Yorkers to Capital,”
New York Times,
August 28, 1963; Petersen, Anna, “80,000 Lunches Made Here by Volunteers for Washington Marchers,”
New York Times,
August 28, 1963; Hansen, Drew D.,
The Dream,
pp. 25–27.

The March on Washington:
“Gentle Army Occupies Capital; Politeness Is Order of the Day,”
New York Times,
August 29, 1963; “Wagner Hails March; Cites Whites' Turnout,”
New York Times,
August 29, 1963; Jones, Theodore, “Tired New Yorkers Head Home Full of Praise for Capital Rally,”
New York Times,
August 29, 1963; “Rights Marchers Tell of Feelings,”
New York
Times,
September 2, 1963;
Eyes on the Prize,
PBS documentary; Hansen,
The Dream,
pp. 1–64; Branch,
Parting the Waters
, pp. 833–864.

“I have a dream” speech:
Eyes on the Prize,
PBS documentary; Hansen,
The Dream,
entire book; Branch,
Parting the Waters,
pp. 846–887. Speech was broadcast in its entirety on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 19, 2010 (text version transcribed directly from audio by the author).

The speech on television:
Adams, Val, “TV: Coverage of March,”
New York Times,
August 29, 1963.

“My name is Patricia Tolles”:
Lefkowitz, Bernard, and Kenneth Gross,
The Victims
, p. 28; Raab, Selwyn,
Justice in the Back Room
, p. 14.

Wylie-Hoffert crime scene:
Doyle, Patrick, and Sidney Kline, “2 Career Girls Found Savagely Slain,”
Daily News,
August 29, 1963; “2 Girls Murdered in E. 88th St. Flat,”
New York Times,
August 29, 1963; Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 29–37; Raab,
Justice in the Back Room,
pp. 14–15.

Detective Lynch's notebook:
Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 34–35.

“This is not the way humans should die”:
Ibid., p. 37.

“We don't even know”:
Doyle and Kline,
Daily News,
August 29, 1963.

George Whitmore background:
Interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009); interview with Gerald Whitmore (June 18, 2009); interview with Myron Beldock (January 27, 2009); interview with Selwyn Raab (April 22, 2009); Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 179–196.

“The Negro is a sort of seventh son”:
Du Bois, W. E. B.,
The Souls of Black Folks,
p. 7.

“I never did like big cities”:
Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
p. 179.

“I remember the night, that summer”:
Ibid.

“He was mean”:
Ibid.

“Sometimes you think they're all the same”:
Ibid.

Pig slaughter incident:
Ibid.; interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009).

Sammy Davis Jr. in Wildwood:
Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 184–185.

“I was a man who had one rule”:
Ibid.; More on George Whitmore Sr. from: interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009); interview with Gerald Whitmore (June 18, 2009).

Lieutenant Parker Johnson:
Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 193–194.

2. BUSINESS AS USUAL

Detective Phillips and Wylie-Hoffert case:
Shecter, Leonard, with William Phillips,
On the Pad,
p. 384; Talese, Gay, “Air of Fear Grips Sedate East Side,”
New York Times,
August 31, 1963.

“Responded to a DOA with Kenny”:
Shecter with Phillips,
On the Pad,
pp. 97–98.

William R. Phillips Sr.:
Ibid.

“There were many young cadets”:
Ibid.

Phillips's early career:
William Phillips, Knapp Commission testimony, October 18, 1971; Shecter with Phillips,
On the Pad,
pp. 50–75; Burton, Anthony, “How to Be a Corrupt Cop & Live to Tell,”
Daily News,
October 20, 1970; interview with Mike Armstrong (August 12, 2009).

“I jumped out”:
Shecter with Phillips,
On the Pad,
pp. 83–84.

“I told him I caught this guy”:
Ibid.

He comes back with ten dollars:
Ibid.

“When you first get to a precinct”:
Ibid.

The prosecuter looked at Phillips:
Ibid.

David Durk:
Lardner, James,
Crusader;
Lardner, James, and Thomas Repetto,
NYPD,
pp. 265–267, 272–274, 306–307; Levitt, Leonard,
NYPD Confidential,
pp. 34–35; Maas, Peter,
Serpico
, pp. 114, 189–93.

Max and Philip Wylie:
Tomasson, Robert E., “In the Shadow of Brother,”
New York Times,
September 23, 1975; Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 136–139

Wylie-Hoffert investigation:
Cassidy, Joseph, and Henry Lee, “Seek an Ex-Admirer to Throw Some Light on Killing of 2 Girls,”
Daily News,
30, 1963; Bigart, Homer, “Killing of 2 Girls Yields No Clue; Police Question 500 in a Month,”
New York Times,
September 27, 1963; Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 1–168; Raab,
Justice in the Back Room,
pp. 1–121.

“There is a complete lack of physical evidence”:
Bigart,
New York Times,
September 27, 1963.

“The police, under intense pressure”:
Ibid.

“Career Girls, Watch Your Step”: Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
p. 135; Raab,
Justice in the Back Room,
p. 31.

Heroin in Harlem:
Interview with Joseph “Jazz” Hayden (December 19, 2008); Brown, Claude,
Manchild in the Promised Land,
entire book; Cannato,
The Ungovernable City,
pp. 527, 534–535; Jackson, Kenneth T. (ed.),
Encyclopedia of New York City,
pp. 123–124; Haley, Alex,
Autobiography of Malcolm X,
pp. 155–156.

“Around 1955, everybody wanted a slick bitch”:
Brown,
Manchild in the Promised Land,
p. 193.

JFK assassination:
The books, documentaries, and official investigations of the assassination are voluminous. A presentation of the racial climate surrounding events leading up to November 22, 1963, can be found in Branch,
Parting the Waters,
pp. 922–927.

“We preach freedom around the world”:
Branch,
Parting the Waters,
pp. 913–916;
Eyes on the Prize
(PBS documentary).

“I know I should take into consideration”:
Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
p. 191.

Whitmore parting with mother:
Interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009); Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
p. 196.

3. THE BOWELS OF BROOKLYN

Whitmore arrival in Brownsville:
Interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009); Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 197–199; Shapiro,
Whitmore,
pp. 9–11, 34–35.

“By every number we have”:
Connolly, Harold X.,
A Ghetto Grows in Brooklyn,
p. 28; in addition, see Judge, Joseph B., “Brownsville: A Neighborhood in Trouble,”
Dissent,
September/October 1966.

Whitmore encounter with Patrolman Isola:
Interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009); interview with Jerome Leftow (February 17, 2009); interview with Myron Beldock; interview with Selwyn Raab; Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 211–213; Raab,
Justice in the Back Room,
pp. 37–40; Shapiro,
Whitmore,
pp. 2–6; Shapiro, Fred C., “Annals of Jurisprudence: The Whitmore Confession,”
The New Yorker,
February 8, 1969.

Seventy-third Precinct station house:
Viewed by author, June 2009. The building still stands, though it is vacant, boarded up, and has the look of a crumbling haunted house. A new Seventy-third Precinct station house opened in 1983, a few blocks from the old location.

Details of Borrero identification of Whitmore:
Interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009); interview with Jerome Leftow (February 17, 2009); interview with Myron Beldock (January 27, 2009); interview with Selwyn Raab (April 22, 2009); Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 222–223; Shapiro,
Whitmore,
pp. 18–20; Raab,
Justice in the Back Room,
pp. 35–37; Shapiro, “Annals of Jurisprudence: The Whitmore Confession,”
The New Yorker,
February 8, 1969.

The “Third Degree”:
McGill, T. O., “Third Degree in Police Parlance,”
New York Times,
October 6, 1901.

Details of Whitmore confession:
Interview with George Whitmore (April 3, 2009); interview with Jerome Leftow (February 17, 2009); interview with Selwyn Raab (April 22, 2009); interview with Myron Beldock (January 27, 2009); Roland, Charles, and Mel Juffe, “How Police Broke Wylie
Case: Step-by-Step Account,”
Journal-American,
April 26, 1964; Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 215–249; Shapiro,
Whitmore,
pp. 14–68; Raab,
Justice in the Back Room,
pp. 41–53; Shapiro, “Annals of Jurisprudence: The Whitmore Confession,”
The New Yorker,
February 8, 1969.

Whitmore statement taken by ADA Koste:
Shapiro,
Whitmore,
pp. 52–58; Lefkowitz and Gross,
The Victims,
pp. 294–322; Raab,
Justice in the Back Room,
pp. 75–116 (Raab, in his book, publishes Whitmore's statement to Koste in its entirety).