The Algiers Motel Incident

by John Hersey

  4. Real Nice

  “Next morning,” David Senak told me, speaking of that Monday, “they told us to come in at twelve. So we were there, and we had a roll call, and they split the station into two groups, one had to stay in the precinct and the other one went to Tenth to reinforce their units over there. And so they assigned me to a car, and most of our duties was in and around Oakland, because the day preceding, of the start of the riots, they also burned Oakland out, pretty much to the ground. And so we were contained in that area, chasing people away from the buildings and stuff.

  “That day I was carrying a shotgun from the Department that they issued to us. The third day I carried my own gun. An officer always prefers to have his own gun. You’re taking your life in your hands when you use someone else’s gun. Every gun is a little different. Personal guns are registered with the Department—I mean sidearms would be, not rifles and shotguns. Anyway, the shotgun I carried that second day was from the station; I think it was a Browning automatic or something. Real nice gun.”

  5. Haul and Run

  “Auburey would fight,” Mrs. Pollard said to me one evening, “but he ain’t going to fight against no gun. Because, he tell me, that quick as a person will draw a gun, he’ll haul and run in a minute.”

  “Monday,” Thelma told me another time, “he went down to the corner store and bought a lot of potato chips and junk like that, and after that he stayed home on Monday, too.”

  6. Nothing You Could Do

  “We were driving,” Robert Paille told me, “we were patrolling back and forth, we were all inside these vehicles and that, with guns and that, and all you could see was through a little small glass there.” Monday was a hot, windy day; the temperature hit ninety degrees in the afternoon, and the wind blew twelve to seventeen knots from the west; the humidity was not excessive. “And when they told you to jump out, you got out there, and you stood in formation across the street, you know, and they were throwing bottles out and everything at us there, and we’d look out for each other. We’d say, ‘Watch out, there’s a bottle coming.’ There was nothing you could do. There was one fellow there, he had a watermelon there, and he was throwing watermelon at the photographers and everything else. Nobody was safe. But you had nothing you could do. You just stood there. You got into your vehicle, you drove to another location, and while you were driving there they were burning up that location you had been at.” By the end of the second day 731 fires had been set. “Nothing you could do. Then you’d get out there and you’d stand out there, and I noticed these people on the side, they all had smiles on their faces and everything else, just like they had just accomplished something. I couldn’t understand that, and I asked one fellow, ‘What’s wrong with you people?’ And he said, ‘If you think you’ve got it now, just wait until later on; we’re going to really get you fellows,’ and that. So this was the general impression I got from these people: They didn’t want any help or nothing, all they wanted to do was take over themselves.”

  7. Anarchy, More or Less

  “This wasn’t actually strictly a race riot,” Ronald August said to me. “That’s not my idea of a race riot. It was racially involved, but a race riot is where the white and the colored clash. I didn’t see this at all. To me it looked like anarchy, more or less. The percentage of agitators in the colored people, and the rubbydubs in the white people there were also agitators—all started looting and raising hell, so to speak. If people want to call it a race riot, that’s their prerogative, but a race riot is not geared in that way, I don’t believe. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  8. Not within the Confines

  Michael Clark, under cross-examination in the conspiracy hearing by Attorney Kohl:

  Q. Where did you spend Monday?

  A. I don’t remember.

  Q. And when you say you don’t remember, you are telling this Court under oath that you just have no recollection, right? It is just not within the confines of your mind . . . ?

  A. I don’t know if I was at the Algiers or over to Momma’s or over to my cousin’s or where I was.

  9. A Lot Were Screaming

  “I don’t want to seem to be exaggerating any,” Ronald August said to me, “but they must have had five, six hundred stacked in the garage there at the Tenth, and we’d take them in there, and it was a mess. They took your picture when you brought an arrest in, because they were all giving phony names. A lot of these people we brought in were screaming we were violating their constitutional rights, and civil rights, by taking their picture. And a lot of them were intoxicated, because they had quite a bit of access to the liquor stores.”

  “The area where they kept all the cars and that there,” Robert Paille said to me, “it was like a big garage that they had them all sealed in there, and they had these tanks and everything else lined up along the outside there. You could see the people just bulging out of these places. We had different shifts, you know; some of us would go there and some of us would stay in the precinct. I’ve been on a detail over there, where I had to guard prisoners when they were coming out. Put them in buses and took them away. And they were, you know, all mad and everything else there, ready to fight.”

  10. Senak’s First Killing

  Detroit Police Department, Report on Case Investigated for Warrant Recommendation, Complaint Number DD 386913:

  “Patrolmen Donald Van Loo, David Senak, and William Croft were assigned to Scout 13-6. At approximately 1:25 p.m. on July 24, 1967, they were on routine patrol driving north on Second Avenue, Patrolman Croft was driving the automobile, all the officers were armed with 12-gauge shotguns. At Euclid Avenue they noticed the front window of the Food Time Market partially broken out and a colored male, later identified as the deceased, stepping out of the window carrying a bag and some bottles. Patrolmen Van Loo and Senak exited the scout car. . . .”

  ——

  Joseph Chandler’s widow said later that he had gone out at about one o’clock to get her a pack of cigarettes.

  ——

  “I saw this fellow,” David Senak told me, “climbing out of a fresh hole in the side of a supermarket window. I was in the back seat; my two partners were in the front seat. The driver slammed the brakes on, we jumped out of the car, the man saw us and started running across us. We were coming north on Second, he started running south right across us into the alley, and just before the alley he dropped the packages he had in his hands, he had some whiskey, wine or whiskey, groceries of some sort. It was a fresh B. and E. I hollered for him several times to stop as he was running across us; he paid no attention and then he turned into the alley. My partner [Van Loo] and I followed. We were both carrying shotguns. I called two times while he was in the alley for him to stop, and then we fired on him. I fired two times, I guess, and my partner fired three times at him. The man didn’t slow up at all. Gad, I couldn’t—I still can’t believe it. Went up the alley for about a house or two and then cut over, back north. He hit a fence and vaulted the fence. One or both of us fired as he was going over the fence—this was a range of eight to ten yards, close. And he vaulted this fence and just kept running. And my partner, who was in the car [Croft], cut around the other side, but he couldn’t get there fast enough to get this guy, and in the meantime there were people coming out of the store, so he blocked the entrance of the store, and so we just went back there and assisted him, thinking that this man got away.”

  ——

  Report, Complaint DD 386913:

  Chandler “climbed over the second fence (height of fence four feet six inches, covered with a vine which extends above the fence to a height of five feet six inches) and continued for approximately twenty feet, where he stumbled and fell. The deceased got up and continued diagonally across Euclid and between the houses on the north side of the street (130 & 150 W. Euclid). The deceased then ran east in the alley north of Euclid, east of Second, to the rear of 119 W. Philadelphia. . . .”

  ——

  “We hit the man,” Senak said, “wit
h I think four shots, and we hit him three times in the legs. I can’t believe it. This man must have been in top physical shape. We were shooting double-O buck, hit this man three times in the legs, he didn’t flinch, and there were witnesses all around who saw this. Man didn’t flinch. He vaulted this fence, and apparently he was hit while he was going over the fence, didn’t hurt him a bit, or seemingly. . . .”

  ——

  Report:

  “. . . where he attempted to crawl under a car parked in the rear of that address. Mrs. Alline Sims of 119 W. Philadelphia saw the deceased attempting to crawl under the car and immediately summoned her husband, Joseph Sims. The deceased asked Mrs. Sims for a drink of water and told Mr. Sims not to call the police but to get his wife at 81 W. Philadelphia. . . .” Mr. Sims did, however, call the police. “Scout 13-7, manned by Patrolmen Edward Riley and William Peplinski received a Radio Run to 119 W. Philadelphia: ‘In the rear a shooting.’ ”

  ——

  “We had no way of knowing this,” Senak told me, “because we were in the station making arrest cards out on the three people we had caught in the building. This was an unrelated incident as far as they were concerned. We called in the shots to the Homicide Bureau, that we had taken shots at someone but they were uneffective. Later they told us the shots did take effect. . . .”

  ——

  Report:

  “Scout 13-7 conveyed the deceased to Ford Hospital where he was pronounced DOA at 1:45 p.m. by Doctor Tauber of the Hospital staff. The deceased was suffering gun shot wounds to the right foot and right buttock. On July 25, 1967, an autopsy was performed on the body of the deceased at the Wayne County Morgue by AME Clara Raven, who gave the cause of death as shotgun wound of the right buttock, penetrating liver and right lung with massive hemorrhage, Chart #5604-67.” I asked David Senak, “Was it routine at that point to call in shots?”

  He replied, “Well, we weren’t that busy then. See, at night, at night you—I imagine there are so many shots fired at night that you just couldn’t.”

  11. A Sandwich

  “They had to start some more men to Ten, as I remember,” Senak told me, “so they shoved my two partners to Tenth, and then they kept me in the station for a while. They were having prisoners booked and photographed in the station. It was real hectic. The station was just a big jumbled mess then. They had Guardsmen there that were just coming on, and Guardsmen that hadn’t been given anything to eat for ten or twelve hours. Food started coming in about Monday afternoon from the officers’ wives; the inspector’s wife made some sandwiches, the first sandwiches they got was from the police officers’ wives themselves. I had a sandwich.”

  12. Just Staying Around

  “Monday Auburey was home,” Sortor told me, “then we went over and was staying around Melvin’s house. He came around there. We just stayed around.”

  13. No More Jeering

  “I was scared,” Ronald August told me. “I can recall, the second night, laying underneath the scout car being shot at. And my radio, the walkie-talkie, was telling us to evacuate the area, although, hell, we were afraid to get from underneath the cars. We were in the Thirteenth Precinct, La Salle, I know the street was La Salle. We had windows smashed out; there was one particular Ford wagon we had, that the radiator leaked. What happened I don’t know, but they were using everything they could find that would roll on wheels. Cars that were waiting for the scrapyard they put back on the road. But we’d run from one end of the precinct, and we’d get there, and either there’d be nothing there or you’d make an arrest, and you’d take him in to the station, and I don’t know, it was quite a mess.

  “One fellow in the station was shot, they had a machine gun, and I don’t know what all the guns they had; this was the police officers posted around the Tenth Precinct, and so on and so forth. One fellow was shot trying to escape. And after that, these people were tame. I mean, no more jeering us or calling us any names. After that shot rang out, there was no more noise. I believe it was the second night, Monday night.”

  14. Partially at the Algiers

  Mr. Kohl, continuing his cross-examination of Michael Clark:

  Q. Now Monday night, Mr. Clark, where did you spend your time? Where were you?

  A. Which Monday night are you talking about?

  Q. Well, we are talking about the 24th of July. The riot started Sunday as you indicated, or Saturday night, and now we are over to Monday. You have already testified you don’t know where you spent the day. . . .

  A. Wait a minute; the night before it happened?

  Q. That’s right.

  A. Where did I spend it?

  Q. Yes, sir?

  A. Partially I was at the Motel.

  Q. I beg your pardon?

  A. Partially I was over at the Algiers.

  Q. When did you go to the Algiers on Monday?

  A. I don’t remember.

  Q. When did you leave the Algiers on Monday?

  A. I don’t remember.

  15. You Couldn’t Defend Yourself

  “I was just like everybody else,” Paille told me. “You never knew when somebody would take you off or something of the sort there. I understood that there was a few of these snipers had these night scopes where they could actually see in the night through the scope there and pick you right off, no matter if you had the lights off or not. We used to patrol the streets with the lights off and all. If they had something like that, you couldn’t defend yourself. We all thought that there was some organization behind it, that there were some experienced men there behind those guns, and there were quite a few people shot up in there by it and all. We never knew what to expect next. Like one time there I had gone out there and a building was on fire; it was at night. And the firemen were being shot at, we couldn’t see where the shots were coming from. So the firemen they just got out as soon as they could, you know. Slid down these poles and everything else and took off. There was nothing you could do. They were shooting from dark windows and everything else. You can’t see them anywhere.”

  16. Night Ride

  “I went to the Algiers that night,” Charles Moore told me, “but Adams wasn’t there. In the lobby I saw this white girl, about eighteen or nineteen, talking on the telephone; she was pregnant, and she was crying, and I heard her telling her mother that she was scared by all the rioting and she wanted to get home and she couldn’t get a cab to take her to the airport. So I offered to drive her out there. I’d never seen her in my life before. She wanted to get to Columbus, Ohio. Her name was Nancy [Nancy Stallnaker, traveling companion of Juli Hysell and Karen Malloy]. So I drove her out to Metro; it was about two o’clock in the morning. She bought a ticket, but she couldn’t get on a plane until the next morning, so she asked me to take her back. So pretty soon they stopped us, here was a state trooper stopping us at a roadblock, me with a little white girl in a miniskirt, giving Algiers Motel as her home address. Minute I tried to say anything, he said, ‘Sit there and shut up.’ I had my temporary license—from where this other guy had run off with my real one; and now the guy tells me, ‘It ain’t stamped right.’ We had to sit there fifteen, twenty minutes. Searching the car. She’s crying. She kept saying, ‘They’re going to shoot us.’ So I finally just took off without my license, wasn’t stamped right anyway, guy says. I just drove off. Nobody bothered us. I let her off at the annex at the Algiers. Adams was not in his room, so I just went on home.”

  17. Rooftop Chase

  “Then,” Ronald August told me, “I can recall going across a rooftop trying to get this sniper. I was going across the rooftop, and this wire came off a telephone pole, out of the alley, and you know how they’ll come across these flat roofs about ankle high. I kind of scratched my face up.”

  18. Don’t Get near the Doors

  “Fred had called me on the Sunday,” Mrs. Temple told me, “and I’d told him to get home, get a bus Monday. He said, ‘If the buses are running I will get one.’ I forgot to ask the address. He’d just said, I
’m on Woodward.’ So the next evening, Monday, he called and told me not to come for him, they were shooting near there. I said, ‘Don’t get near the doors, son.’ And he said, ‘Tomorrow for sure I’m going to try to get home.’ ”

  19. Back Out

  “They had so many people being booked,” David Senak told me, “that they didn’t have enough men to fill out the arrest cards and process them, so that I had to stay in the station and help them until I went back out on the street later that night, but just for a little while, and then we came back in. Nothing happened. I started at twelve that day, and I think I got home about two thirty that second night.”

  I asked him, “Did you sleep any better that night?”

  “No.”

  7

  AN OUT-OF-DOORS MAN

  1. I Lost Interest

  Robert Paille told me the story of his life:

  “Born in Detroit, I’m thirty-one.

  “My father and my mother were both raised in Canada, on a farm, they were Canadian-French. And my father’s always been hard-working and that there, and he was a lumberjack since he was fourteen years of age. He’s always had a hard life because his mother and father died before he was fourteen. He’s always had to dish things off for himself, but he’s never missed work, as far as I know. He’s always gone from one job to another. He’s dead right now. He was a lumberjack in Canada, and over here he was a carpenter. We both built this house over here, my brother and I and him.