‘Who Can We Turn to for Justice?’
U.S. government takes on the NYPD
John Conyers sat behind a makeshift desk of folding tables, listening calmly and intently as one witness and then another stepped to the microphone 20 feet from him and recounted the experiences they’d had with the New York City police. The crowd that filled the two tiers along the walls applauded readily, but Conyers just sat and jotted notes, wearing a sober expression on his face.
Two hours passed, then four, then six. The parade of battered citizens that passed through Harlem’s 369th Armory continued. By 5:30, six hours and 45 minutes after the start of the hearing, the five men who had flanked Conyers were gone. So was much of the crowd and even most of the reporters that had recorded the day’s events. The purposes of newsgathering had been served.
The last witness spoke. Conyers briefly addressed the remaining audience and then left. Just a few reporters trailed him as he crossed the tennis courts on which the hearing had been held.
Mayor Edward Koch had not been there. Neither had Robert McGuire, the police chief. The Armory lacked the decorum which befitted a Congressional hearing; the event would likely turn into a political rally or a circus, the mayor said. He had enjoyed broad support at the start of his term, but that support had eroded sharply among liberals and minorities. His absence from the hearing was roundly criticized. When the sound system temporarily faltered, late in the day, a shout came from the crowd, “Cut it out, Koch!” and a chorus of laughs followed.
John Conyers’ work had led him to Harlem. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, the Michigan Democrat needed evidence that police were using excessive force in their dealings with minorities. Personal belief or even personal observations weren’t enough; he needed allegations — and lots of them. There was no better place to come than Harlem. The relationship between the New York City Police Department and the local black community is a volatile one — perhaps the worst of its kind in the country. Another hearing two months earlier at the Harlem State Office Building ended in bedlam after 15 minutes. That led to the use of the cavernous Armory. Spectators were confined to the balconies high above the floor and a long distance from the tables where Conyers, five other Congressmen and the witnesses sat.
It was a curious coalition that came to the Armory to testify. Most were black — both young and old, male and quite often female. There were a few Latinos, a group from Asian Americans for Equality and a group of black policemen, one of whom assured the crowd, “When we take off that badge, we’re just another black citizen.”
The witnesses had clearly been screened with care. The co-owner of Sylvia’s, a popular Harlem soul food restaurant, told of being arrested and beaten when he asked questions of a police officer during a fire at his business. An articulate middle-aged woman said she had been thrown against a wall repeatedly by police after she tried to aid a teenage girl whose boyfriend was being arrested and beaten. “I fought with everything I had — my elbows, my knees — to keep my head from hitting that wall,” the woman said before rising and limping to the interview area with a cane. There was a minister who, after being stopped for a traffic violation, was dragged from his car and beaten because his driver’s license was in his trunk. But that incident angered Harlem residents, leading to the hearing at the Armory.
When he took his seat at the microphone, the Rev. Lee Johnson saw the audience that his violent encounter had afforded him through a minister’s eyes. He launched into an exhortation of the crowd, ending each statement with “What are we gonna do?” He repeated the line over and over, using a storefront preacher’s cadence. “What are we gonna do? What are WE gonna do!” he shouted, never seeing that the session he addressed was not a public event; it was an operation of government, a Congressional hearing — not a March on Washington. The most important eyes and ears there were Conyers’. And in his seat across from the witnesses’ table, the Congressman remained attentive but sedate. When others grew weary and left, he remained, never leaving his seat for the entire six-and-three quarters hours.
A youth of 18 took a seat at the microphone. He told of being run down by a police car while riding a moped with a friend. The two ran a red light and police said later that the pair had tried to get away to avoid being cited. But from the very start, Corey Gibson told the Armory audience, they were merely trying to get out of the path of the speeding police car. Instead, Gibson was thrown beneath another vehicle and his friend, Larry Dawes, was killed.
When he finished his story, Gibson turned his attention directly to Conyers. “We’ve gone to everyone we could, seeking justice,” he said. “Now, I’m here asking you: Who can we turn to? I’m here for my friend, Larry Dawes, and his mother and I just want to ask you: Who should she turn to for justice for her son?”
The plea took Conyers by surprise. He leaned forward, pulling his own microphone closer, and tried to explain, “We’re here to formulate remedies. Let’s not try to solve each case at the hearing.” Seemingly satisfied, Gibson thanked him, then left.
John Conyers was seen — by many — as an outsider who had come in to mediate. Many of the testimonies were delivered as pleas — as though to convince him of the existence or the seriousness of police violence. In reality, he had — no doubt — been convinced of that long ago. He came to Harlem to compile evidence, not to investigate. Conyers’ presence lent credence and even a sense of glamour to the hearing: he was a nationally recognized figure. Many of the testimonies bordered on the theatrical. The hearing was seen as an “event.” In reality, it was merely a homework session.
A short time after 1 p.m., the Rev. Jesse Jackson entered the Armory. He sat with the dignitaries behind the witnesses’ table and listened to the proceedings. The veteran of the civil rights movement was then deciding whether to enter the political game with a Presidential nomination bid. He never addressed the crowd, instead leaving silently after an hour and a half. His presence did not go unnoticed however. A troop of reporters followed him as he made his way to the door and shouts of “Run, Jesse! Run!” rose from the crowd. But the hearing went on.
Late in the day, Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr., author of the book entitled Deadly Force, spoke.
Police in this country kill 600 citizens every year, O’Donnell told the audience. “That’s a very stubborn statistic. I don’t think there is ever going to be a change. What we have to do is concentrate on the aftermath.”
Another witness made the incongruous suggestion of using vigilantism to foil the police department’s abuses. He had forgotten that it was the Federal Government to whom he was, in effect, making this suggestion.
Another of the speakers was Conyers’ fellow Detroit-area Congressman, George Crockett. “When I first come to Detroit,” Crockett recalled, “it had the worst record of police violence of any city in the country. Blacks and Hispanics were getting beaten and killed daily.”
But minorities in Detroit used the vote to combat the problem, Crockett explained. “I can remember the election in 1972. When the count was in, one-half of the criminal judges in the city of Detroit were non-white and police brutality took a decided drop.”
It was a government solution — given in a government situation. If it was too slow and tedious a route for some of the more volatile observers who had come to the Armory, that was okay. Most of them had left already anyway.
The Crisis, 1983
