The Savage City (64 page)

Stop and frisk rate:
In 2010, a study by the Center for Constitutional Rights of NYPD “stop and frisk” data showed that blacks and Latinos were nine times more likely than whites to be stopped by police, but that once stopped, they were no more likely to be arrested, suggesting that they were not stopped because they were committing a crime but because of their ethnicity. The study came about as the result of a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Baker, Al, “New York Minorities More Likely to Be Frisked,”
New York Times
, March 12, 2010; Rivera, Ray, Al Baker and Janet Roberts, “A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops,”
New York Times
, July 12, 2010; Rayman, Graham, a five-part series in
The Village Voice
that commenced with “The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct,” May 5, 2010, and continued with “The Corroboration,” August 25, 2010.

INTERVIEWS

Whenever possible, this book is based on firsthand accounts from people who lived through the events. Some of the interviews conducted were hours in length and ranged over numerous sessions, others short phone conversations to track down a specific piece of information. In the case of two interview subjects—George Whitmore and Dhoruba Bin Wahad—the interviews were extensive and involved follow-up conversations too numerous to list individually. Listed below are all interview subjects and the dates on which the major interviews occurred: Michael Armstrong (August 12, 2009); Myron Beldock (January 27, 2009); Dhoruba Bin Wahad (September 16 and 25, 2008; November 12, 2008; December 23, 2008; January 28, 2009; February 18, 2009; November 6, 2009; January 22, 2010); Robert Boyle (November 21, 2008); Robert Daley (January 21, 2010); Eddie Ellis (May 15, 2009); Sean Gardiner (June 6, 2009); Geoffrey Gray (November 19, 2009); Sonny Grosso (April 13, 2009); Joseph “Jazz” Hayden (December 19, 2008; January 23, 2009); Thomas Hughes (May 13, 2010); Randy Jurgensen (February 12, 2010); William “B.J.” Johnson (January 23, 2010); Gerald Lefcourt (January 25, 2010); Jerome J. Leftow (February 17, 2009); Robert Leuci (February 12, 2009); Leonard Levitt (January 13, 2010); Brian McDonald (February 4, 2010); Ido Mizrahy (November 19, 2009); John M. Murtagh (February 5, 2010); Selwyn Raab (April 22, 2009); Cleo Silvers (March 26, 2009); Edwin Torres (April 13, 2009); George Whitmore (April 3 and 5, 2009; June 18, 2009; September 21, 2009; December 1, 2009; February 1, 2010); Gerald Whitmore (June 18, 2009).

BOOKS

It is worth noting that three separate books were published about the Wylie-Hoffert murders and the legal travails of George Whitmore in the late 1960s. All three are excellent and come at the story from a slightly different angle.
Justice in the Back Room
(1967), by Selwyn Raab, frames the Whitmore story around the criminal justice issue of false or forced confessions;
Whitmore
(1968) by Fred Shapiro is a personal account of the life of George Whitmore (though Whitmore was only twenty-three years old when the book was published); and
The Victims
(1969) by Bernard Lefkowitz and Kenneth Gross focuses primarily on the police investigation into the Wylie-Hoffert murders and the ultimate conviction of Richard Robles. I cite all three as important sources for this book, though they are somewhat limited by the fact that they were published while the saga was still playing out in the courts and Whitmore's fate not yet determined.

Ahmad, Muhammad.
We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations, 1960–1975.
Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Co., 2007.

Alex, Nicholas.
New York Cops Talk Back: A Study of a Beleaguered Minority
. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976.

Austin, Curtis J.
Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party.
Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008.

Balagoon, Kuwasi, et al.
Look for Me in the Whirlwind.
New York: Random House, 1971.

Baldwin, James.
The Fire Next Time.
New York: Dial Press, 1963.

———.
Notes of a Native Son.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.

Biondi, Martha.
To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Blackmon, Douglas A.
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
. New York: Doubleday, 2008.

Branch, Taylor.
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

———.
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

———.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Breitman, George, Herman Porter, and Baxter Smith.
The Assassination of Malcolm X
. New York: Pathfinder, 1976.

Breitman, George (ed.).
Malcolm X Speaks.
New York: Grove Press, 1965.

Brown, Claude.
Manchild in the Promised Land.
New York: Macmillan, 1965.

Butterfield, Fox.
All God's Children: The Boskett Family and the American Tradition of Violence.
New York: Knopf, 1995.

Cannato, Vincent J.
The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York City.
New York: Basic Books, 2001.

Carmichael, Stokely.
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America.
New York: Vintage, 1967.

Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall.
The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret War Against Domestic Dissent
. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1990.

Cleaver, Eldridge.
Soul on Ice.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.

———.
Target Zero: A Life Writing.
New York: Palgrave, 2007.

Conlon, Edward.
Blue Blood
. New York: Riverhead, 2004.

Connolly, Harold X.
A Ghetto Grows in Brooklyn
. New York: New York University Press, 1977.

Cunningham, Barry, and Mike Pearl.
Mr. District Attorney: The Story of Frank Hogan.
New York: Mason/Charter, 1977.

Daley, Robert.
Target Blue: An Insider's View of the N.Y.P.D.
New York: Delacorte Press, 1973.

Du Bois, W. E. B.
The Souls of Black Folk.
New York: New American Library, 1969.

Durant, Sam (ed.).
Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas.
New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2007.

Ellison, Ralph.
Invisible Man.
New York: Random House, 1947.

Estes, Steve.
I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Fanon, Frantz.
The Wretched of the Earth.
New York: Grove Press, 1963.

Gelb, Arthur.
City Room.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2003.

Goldman, Peter Louis.
The Death and Life of Malcolm X
. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Greenwood, Peter W.
An Analysis of Apprehension Activities of the New York City Police Department.
Washington, D.C.: Rand Institute, 1970.

Gregory, Dick.
Nigger: An Autobiography.
New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964.

Grosso, Sonny, and John Devaney.
Murder at the Harlem Mosque
. New York: Crown, 1977.

Haley, Alex.
Autobiography of Malcolm X
. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

Hansen, Drew D.
The Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation.
New York: Harper Collins, 2003.

Hayden, Tom.
Rebellion in Newark
. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

Heath, G. Louis.
Off the Pigs! The History and Literature of the Black Panther Party.
Lenham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1976.

Hilliard, David (ed.).
The Black Panther: Intercommunal News Service, 1967–1980.
New York: Atria Books, 2007.

Hilliard, David, and Fredrika Newton (eds.).
The Huey P. Newton Reader.
New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.

Hilliard, David, with Lewis Cole.
This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party.
Boston: Back Bay Books, 1993.

Hollander, Xaviera.
The Happy Hooker.
New York: Dell, 1972.

Jackson, Kenneth T. (ed.).
The Encyclopedia of New York City
. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.

Johnson, Marilynn S.
Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City.
Boston: Beacon Press, 2003.

Jonas, Gilbert.
Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism, 1909–1969.
New York: Routledge, 2004.

Joseph, Peniel E.
Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America.
New York: Henry Holt, 2006.

Jurgensen, Randy, and Robert Cea.
Circle of Six: The True Story of New York's Most Notorious Cop Killer and the Cop Who Risked Everything to Catch Him
. New York: Disinformation Co., 2006.

Kempton, Murray.
The Briar Patch: The People of the State of New York v. Lumumba Shakur et al.
New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973.

Kennebeck, Edwin.
Juror Number Four: The Trial of Thirteen Black Panthers as Seen From the Jury Box.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1973

Klein, Herbert.
The Police: Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don't.
New York: Crown, 1968.

Kunstler, William.
My Life As a Radical Lawyer
. New York: Carol Publishing Co., 1994.

Lardner, James.
Crusader: The Hell-Raising Police Career of Detective David Durk
. New York: Random House, 1996.

Lardner, James, and Thomas Reppetto.
NYPD: A City and Its Police
. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.

Lefkowitz, Bernard, and Kenneth Gross.
The Victims: The Wylie-Hoffert Murder Case—and Its Strange Aftermath
. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969.

Lemann, Nicholas.
The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America.
New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Lester, Julius.
Look Out, Whitey!: Black Power's Gon' Get Your Mama!
New York: Grove Press, 1969.

Levitt, Leonard.
NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country's Greatest Police Force
. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009.

Leuci, Robert.
All the Centurions: A New York City Cop Remembers His Years on the Street, 1961–1981.
New York: William Morrow, 2004.

Leyson, Burr W.
Fighting Crime: The New York Police Department in Action.
New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948.

Lindsay, John V.
The City
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969.

Maas, Peter.
Serpico
. New York: Viking, 1973.

Marighella, Carlos.
Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla
. Montreal: Abraham Guillen Press, 2002 (originally published in 1969).

McDonald, Brian.
My Father's Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD.
New York: Dutton, 1999.

Morris, Charles R.
The Cost of Good Intentions: New York City and the Liberal Experiment, 1960–1975.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.

Muntaqim, Jalil.
On the Black Liberation Army
. Montreal: Abraham Guillen Press, 2002 (first published in 1997).

Murphy, Patrick V., and Thomas Plate.
Commissioner: A View from the Top of American Law Enforcement
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977.

Newton, Huey P.
Revolutionary Suicide.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.

O'Reilly, Kenneth.
Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972.
New York: Free Press, 1989.

Pearson, Hugh.
Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Power in America.
New York: Perseus Books, 1994.

Perlstein, Rick.
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.
New York: Scribner, 2008.

Raab, Selwyn.
Justice in the Back Room: The Explosive Story of Forced Confessions
. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1967.

Rosenthal, A. M.
Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case.
Brooklyn: Melville House, 2008.

Rucker, Walter, and James Nathanial Upton (eds.).
Encyclopedia of American Race Riots.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.

Seedman, Albert A., and Peter Hellman.
Chief!
New York: Arthur Fields Books, 1974.

Shakur, Assata.
Assata: An Autobiography.
Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987.

Shapiro, Fred C.
Whitmore
. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.

Shapiro, Fred C., and James W. Sullivan.
Race Riots: New York 1964.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1964.

Shecter, Leonard, with William Phillips.
On the Pad.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1973.

Sheehy, Gail.
Panthermania: The Clash of Black Against Black in One American City.
New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Silverman, Al.
Foster and Laurie.
New York: Little, Brown, 1974.

Tanenbaum, Robert K., and Philip Rosenberg.
Badge of the Assassin.
New York: Dutton, 1979.

Van Deburg, William.
New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Wolfe, Tom.
Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970.

Wright, Richard.
Native Son.
New York: Harper & Row, 1940.

Zimroth, Peter L.
Perversion of Justice: The Prosecution and Acquittal of the Panther 21.
New York: Viking, 1974.

PERIODICALS, ARTICLES, AND REPORTS

The newspaper and magazine articles used as source material for this book are cited individually in the chapter notes section. Most articles are drawn from the following publications:
New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Journal American, New York World Telegram & Sun, New York Post, Time, Newsweek, Muhammad Speaks, The Crisis, Liberator, Prison Life, City Journal, The East Village Other, Amsterdam News, Black Panther, The Militant, Ramparts, National Review,
and the
Village Voice.

The findings of three governmental investigations informed the research and writing of this book. The U.S. Commission on Civil Disturbances (1968), which produced the Kerner Report, was formed by President Lyndon Johnson as a consequence of the riots in many U.S. cities between 1964 and 1968. Particularly in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the possibility of full-fledged racial insurrection in the country was looming on the horizon. To spearhead this commission Johnson turned to New York mayor John Lindsay, who was believed to have a good reputation with what was still commonly referred to as “the Negro community.” The Kerner Report turned out to be one of the most lacerating critiques of the race problem in America. “Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal,” stated the report. The Kerner Commission's conclusion that riots in the ghetto were the consequence of “white racism” was controversial. President Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, used the report to formulate a countertheory that the “silent majority” who did not riot or engage in acts of civil disobedience were the true, neglected backbone of America.