The Savage City

by T. J. English

  Ralph White was one Panther whom Dhoruba stayed away from. Dhoruba suspected that White was an informant from the day they first met. At PE meetings, White was usually the most vocal and militant in his calls for violent action against the police. Throughout early 1969, White had begun stockpiling material to make explosives, laying out plans for what he called “a day of terror” in New York City. Years later, Dhoruba remembered, “He was full of shit. I mean, the party had many people who talked a good game. They were usually the least likely to follow through. Ralph White was often high or drunk, talking ’bout blowing up buildings or monuments. He was a classic agent provocateur. I suspected he was either a spy or a bullshit artist.”

  One member Dhoruba didn’t suspect was Gene Roberts. Having knelt alongside Malcolm X seconds after he was riddled with bullets at the Audubon Ballroom, Roberts had a pedigree that seemed beyond reproach. He was older than Dhoruba and the others, a veteran of the movement who no one suspected had been working undercover for almost four years.

  Early in 1969, Roberts was assigned to the Panthers’ security section, where he would work directly with Dhoruba. From January through late March, Roberts, Dhoruba, and a few other Panthers made a series of weapons procurement or TE (technical equipment) runs to various locales around the country. These were among the most perilous activities a Panther could undertake—driving under cover of darkness to Texas, Louisiana, or Virginia, buying handguns, rifles, and machine guns from local dealers, loading them in the trunk, and driving back to New York. In his unpublished memoir, Dhoruba described these missions as an almost spiritual undertaking, a metaphorical visit to what he called “The Church of Saint Nat Turner What’s Happening Now.”

  We traveled like shadows trapped behind enemy lines intent on making it to the nearest border and sanctuary before the light of false dawn. That was the script; the way we flowed. There was a distinct difference between “revolutionary theater” and theaters of revolutionary operations. We fully identified with the perception that ever since Plymouth Rock, Africans in America were behind enemy lines.

  In the early-morning hours of April 1, 1969, Dhoruba was in the backseat of a car returning from a gun-running mission in the Baltimore area. Also in the car were Roberts and fellow Panthers Kwando Kinshasa (aka William King) and Cetewayo (aka Michael Tabor), who was driving. Dhoruba dozed off, and when he awoke, Gene Roberts was behind the wheel. The first thing Dhoruba saw was the Pentagon Building straight ahead. Apparently, Roberts had made a wrong turn off the expressway and got “trapped in a traffic loop to possible oblivion.”

  The vast parking lot around the Pentagon loomed ahead deserted and lit by powerful security lights, and there we were: four Harlem Panthers in a car loaded with weapons, albeit purchased legally, who had lost their way and wandered into the parking facilities of the most powerful military establishment on the planet. A tense moment to say the least. After getting back on track and pointed in the right direction, the discomfort I felt over the incident and our new driver never fully subsided.

  For the first time, the thought entered Dhoruba’s mind that Gene Roberts was an undercover agent or a spy. He let it pass, figuring it was a product of the mix of suspicion and paranoia that was endemic to life as a Black Panther.

  Dhoruba got home at dawn and slept most of the next day. He and Iris had recently moved from their apartment near Harlem Hospital to a larger apartment on West 142nd Street near St. Nicholas Avenue. That night, there was tension between Dhoruba and Iris. Dhoruba’s deepening involvement with the Panthers was taking him away from home for longer and longer stretches, and the relationship was suffering. It didn’t help that Dhoruba had been sleeping around with Panther women, and Iris herself had begun to stray. They were still living under the same roof, but the marriage had drifted down the priority list in both their lives.

  In the early-morning hours of April 2, Dhoruba and Iris were sound asleep in bed. Suddenly, there was a loud banging on the front door. From the other side of the door, someone shouted, “Welfare agency! Is Iris Moore home?”

  Welfare agency at 4:30 in the morning? Dhoruba thought. I don’t think so. He got out of bed and approached the door in his underwear.

  At first I didn’t answer, realizing that to do so might invite a fusillade of gunfire through the front door. But the pounding grew louder, more insistent. Between the pounding on my front door, and the adrenaline rush of anticipation, anxiety, fear, and impending combat, I got quickly dressed. Standing to the side of the door, I boomed back, “Who is it?”

  There was a pregnant silence, then a Black voice responded, “Police. Open the door.”

  I knew the disembodied voice was that of a Black man. I eased around to the peephole and sure ’nuff, hovering over the peephole was a sweaty black face….

  “How I know you’re police? And what you want anyway?” I shouted back.

  “Police! Open the door or we’ll break it down…. Police, open the…”

  As I unlocked the door, I couldn’t help but think that if I lived through the next few minutes, my life would never be the same.

  A phalanx of more than twenty cops in commando gear burst through the door. Dhoruba was pushed up against a wall and cuffed. Iris, disheveled, in her underwear, was told to sit on the sofa and not to move. The cops proceeded to ransack the apartment. They found an unloaded pistol in a dresser drawer, which made them search even harder. To Dhoruba, they seemed disappointed to find only that one gun on the premises.

  I was pushed, shoved and half dragged down four flights of stairs and thrown into the back of an unmarked police cruiser. The street outside was teeming with uniformed cops…. Sirens blaring, I was sped downtown squeezed between two Old Spice smelling detectives in the back seat of an unmarked police car. The ride downtown was pregnant with tension and the silence broken only by the sporadic crackle of police chatter over the car radio.

  From the radio chatter, Dhoruba got the sense that something heavy was going down. He was right. That night, similar raids and arrests were taking place all around Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, and the East Village, executed by a team of more than one hundred well-armed Emergency Service officers. Doors were busted down, Black Panthers chased down hallways, rousted from bed, cuffed, and thrown in the back of paddy wagons and cruisers. When it was all over, twenty-one people had been arrested; one further suspect—Sekou Adinga—escaped capture down a tenement drainpipe and disappeared into the early dawn. (He would resurface weeks later in Algiers alongside Eldridge Cleaver.)

  At central booking in downtown Manhattan, Dhoruba was held in an isolation cell. It wasn’t until he was brought into arraignment court the next day that he was hit with the full magnitude of what was taking place. The arrested Panthers, male and female, were marched into a courtroom packed with reporters, cops, and officials from the Manhattan D.A.’s office. Dhoruba and the other Panthers were being charged with more than two hundred counts of conspiracy. In one fell swoop, the Forces of the Law had tried to take out the entire upper echelon of the Black Panther Party in New York City.

  [ fifteen ]

  THE ROT WITHIN

  IN JUNE 1970, George Whitmore finally succumbed to the pressures of a criminal justice system that seemed determined to define him as a lawbreaker. It happened in New Jersey, where Whitmore had moved after separating from Aida. He was out drinking with Nate, his friend from the cross-country hitchhiking adventure. At some point that evening, Nate said, “Hey, I know a guy who stole something from me, and I’m gonna go get it. Will you help me out?”

  George had no idea what Nate was talking about, but he felt indebted to his traveling partner, so he agreed.

  At the time, George was working three days a week driving a truck for the Colson Lumber Company. Sometimes, like tonight, he got to keep the truck during off hours. He and Nate climbed into the truck and drove to the nearby township of Rio Grande, not far from Wildwood. George began to suspect something was wrong when Nate insisted they stop at a place called K
rown’s Record Store, and Nate got out of the truck with a crowbar.

  “Wait a minute,” said George.

  “I know what the hell I’m doing,” replied Nate.

  Too drunk to argue, George stood by as Nate started jimmying the door of Krown’s Record Store.

  Neither of them even noticed the police car as it turned off its headlights and pulled up slowly behind George’s truck. Patrolman Ronald Brown got out of the car, his gun drawn, and approached the two men.

  “Stop right there,” he said. “You’re both under arrest.”

  George was so inebriated he hardly remembered what happened. He woke up the next morning in the county jail and was told he’d been charged with attempted breaking and entering and possession of burglary equipment (the crowbar).

  It was all pro forma: a county defense lawyer informed George that if he pleaded guilty to attempted breaking and entering, the other charge would be dropped. He would be fined $150, placed on two years’ probation, and allowed to walk.

  It was a good deal; George took it. The only problem was that Colson Lumber wasn’t happy to hear he’d used the company truck in an attempted burglary. He was fired from his job.

  George was broke. His remaining NAACP Legal Defense Fund money had long since dried up. He was able to get by for a time on public assistance, but by October he was without money to pay his bills or help Aida out with the kids. At the end of his rope, George did something he’d never done before: he willingly set out to commit a crime.

  Again, it was late and he was drunk. Using the same crowbar he and Nate had used, George broke into Allen’s Delicatessen, a corner store on Route 9 in the town of Cape May Court House. It was 3:00 A.M. Police caught him coming out of the store with $132.32 in stolen cash in his pocket.

  George was charged with “B and E,” larceny, and possession of burglary tools.

  From his cell at the county jail, the biggest emotion George felt was shame. He wondered if he had messed up his case in New York by getting arrested. He wondered if his lawyers Miller and Beldock would now abandon him.

  To defend him, Whitmore used a local attorney. A few weeks after his arrest, as they talked in the county jail’s visiting room, the attorney suggested that they might be able to plea-bargain. By now, George had lost his glasses; he could hardly see.

  “Listen, son,” the lawyer said, “you’re gonna have to do some time.”

  “How much?” said George.

  “Well, I’ll get them to drop the possession charge. You cop to the B and E.”

  George sank back into his chair. Before he could take the deal, he needed to talk with his New York attorneys. He was afraid that if he were convicted of a crime, even a relatively minor first-time offense, Beldock and Miller would give up on him.

  Beldock was reassuring. Pleading guilty to a burglary charge, he said, should have little or no adverse effect on any ruling in the Borrero attempted rape conviction. “Take the plea,” he told George over the phone. “Do the time. We’ll deal with legal matters here in New York when you are released. And George?”

  “What, Mister Beldock.”

  “Stay out of trouble.”

  “Yes, Mister Beldock.”

  Whitmore pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine months.

  He did his time at the Cape May Court House county jail, just down the street from the deli he’d tried to rob. For the next nine months, he didn’t have to worry about rent or any other bills. He was George Whitmore, forgotten man.

  George wasn’t able to make rotgut hooch while doing county time; they didn’t have the facilities. That was one thing he noticed: in prison, the days passed more slowly when you couldn’t get drunk.

  THE VENERABLE DISTRICT attorney stood at a microphone before flashing lights and television cameras—a rarity for the white-haired eminence of 100 Centre Street. By assuming the task of delivering news of a criminal indictment directly to reporters, Frank Hogan was signaling its importance in the larger scheme of criminal justice in the Big Town. The personification of Irish Catholic rectitude, Hogan stood stiff and motionless—underplaying, Stanislavsky would have called it, seizing command through a Zen-like force of will rather than histrionics.

  In a simple monotone, Hogan let his plain words drive home the message: “The grand jury has returned an indictment containing twelve [major] counts, all felonies, charging members of the Black Panther Party with conspiracy to bomb New York City department stores, Macy’s, Alexander’s, Korvette’s, Bloomingdale’s, Abercrombie & Fitch, during the Easter shopping season. These bombings were to be coordinated with similar bombing attacks on the Forty-second Police Precinct station at Third Avenue at One hundred and sixtieth Street in the Bronx and six locations along the New Haven Railroad right of way…. And the target date was April third, tomorrow.”

  The Black Panther Party had also planned to bomb the Bronx Botanical Gardens and the city subway system, Hogan added. In total, the indictment included 156 separate criminal counts.

  If headlines could scream, the following day’s papers would have contracted laryngitis. “Smash Plot to Bomb Stores,” read the Daily News, with a subhead: “Indict 21 Panthers in Store Bomb Plot.” The New York Times declared, “Bomb Plot Is Laid to 21 Panthers; Black Extremists Accused of Planning Explosions at Macy’s and Elsewhere.” The Post updated the arrest tally in their afternoon edition: “Nab One More in Panther Bomb Plot.”

  Filled with quotes from “sources close to the investigation,” the articles explained that the police had conducted more than a dozen raids around the city, confiscating “African clubs, spears, cane swords and a long-barreled gun that shoots fire, like a flame thrower,” along with guns, knives, and other weapons. To many, the haul seemed to confirm Buckley’s prediction that the Mau Mau were on the rise in America. But the exotic assortment of spears and clubs could hardly have sufficed to pull off the kind of plot described in the indictment. A spokesman for the prosecutor tried to explain the discrepancy, telling the Times, “We believe they have other material packed away. We have not recovered everything.” A police spokesman reported that detectives had contacted the department stores named in the indictment and that “precautions had been taken.” The stores themselves were taking “special security measures.” The Daily News noted that “additional police [were] being assigned to the area around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, focal point of [the] Easter Parade.”

  In all of the newspapers accounts, the Panthers were characterized almost exclusively by police and prosecutorial sources. The Daily News described the party in New York as consisting of one hundred “hardcore” members and three thousand “fringe” members, a portrait that was “pieced together from information supplied by police who infiltrated the outfit, foiling the alleged plot only a day before its scheduled execution, and from others close to the three-year investigation.” Party members strictly followed “the hard-line Mao philosophy, using the so-called Red Book of the Chinese Communist boss as their text.” “The gang” was “run on military lines,” and party members, according to the police, “have infiltrated the school system, with some Panthers working as teachers.”

  The Panthers were also linked to Cuba. “High police sources” claimed that the New York Panthers were being financed through Cuban officials at the United Nations, though there was nothing in the indictment to back this up and the charges were never substantiated.

  And, as if all this weren’t enough, there was this: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is quietly probing the possibility that Panthers represent a ‘national conspiracy against the white power structure’—a possibility supported by the fact that individual Panthers range the nation on Party business.”

  The investigation and arrests were presented as a rousing victory for the NYPD. A lead editorial in the Daily News noted that the indictments were the results of “superior police work.” It seemed to promise an end to the NYPD-Panthers conflict that had raged for more than a year. The indictment in Manhattan of what wo
uld come to be known as “the Panther Twenty-one” showed not only that the Black Panthers were hostile toward cops, but that they were determined to kill innocent people—black and white—on a prominent Christian holiday. They were communists, terrorists, and “black extremists” all rolled into one.

  They were also a terrific diversion.

  There’s no doubt that most police officers genuinely felt the Panthers were a threat to their lives; lethal shoot-outs between police and Panthers had been occurring around the country for some time. But in New York City, the war with the Panthers served an additional purpose: it gave the NYPD a convenient way to frame their ongoing battle in heroic terms—good versus evil, law and order versus anti-Americanism and disrespect for the law. This took the focus off a growing problem within the department: a degree of moral rot among its members that, if exposed, would make the Harry Gross corruption scandal of the late 1940s look like a minor infraction.

  Deep within the bureaucracy—in the Lindsay administration and, by extension, among sources “in the know” within the police department—there were disturbing signs on the horizon.

  Nearly two years earlier, in 1967, a Lindsay administration official named Jay Kriegel had been approached with explosive information about the systematic corruption in the NYPD. Through an intermediary, two plainclothes cops—one a patrolman, the other a sergeant—described to Kriegel exactly how the pervasive system of illegal payoffs within the department worked. Money from illegal narcotics, gambling, extortion, and other criminal rackets—some of it skimmed from criminal operations outside the department, some of it generated by dirty cops within—had become the norm in virtually every division in the city. And not only did the higher-ups in the department know about it, they were benefiting from it, collecting payoffs via bagmen and other designated emissaries.