On August the 12th last a Negro named Arthur Harris was with his wife at 41st Street and 8th Avenue. He says that he left her to buy a cigar, and when he returned he found her in the grasp of a man in citizen's dress. This man was a police officer, named Robert J. Thorpe, who had arrested her, as he claimed, for "soliciting." Harris says that he did not know Thorpe was an officer, and that he attempted to rescue his wife. The policeman struck Harris with his club, and Harris retaliated with his penknife, inflicting a mortal wound, and then ran away. Thorpe was attached to the 20th Precinct, and was much liked by his comrades. Policemen thronged his home, and his funeral, on August 16th, was attended by Chief Devery, Inspector Thompson, and other officials. Harris, the murderer, had disappeared, and many policemen who were interested in Thorpe were seized with a desire of vengeance on Negroes generally. During the day of the funeral there were rumors of coming trouble, and those colored people who have illicit dealings with the police--keepers of gambling, disorderly, and badger houses--seeing the signs of coming trouble, closed their places and kept off the streets. Several officers told informants of mine that they were going to punish the Negroes that night. There are numerous gangs of rowdies in the district who are hostile to Negroes and friendly with the unofficial powers that are now potent in police affairs. There was an understanding between the forces that night that resulted in the holding of the streets for hours by crowds of roughs who raced up and down Broadway, 7th and 8th Avenues, and the side streets from 34th to 42nd Streets in pursuit of Negroes, and were not attacked by the police except in one or two cases where they invaded Broadway hotels hunting for colored men. The unanimous testimony of the newspaper reports was that the mobs could have been broken and destroyed immediately and with little difficulty. In many instances of brutality by the mob policemen stood by and made no effort to protect the Negroes who were assailed. They ran with the crowds in pursuit of their prey; they took defenseless men who ran to them for protection and threw them to the rioters, and in many cases they beat and clubbed men and women more brutally than the mob did. They were absolutely unrestrained by their superior officers. It was the night sticks of the police that sent a stream of bleeding colored men to the hospital, and that made the station house in West 37th Street look like a field hospital in the midst of battle. Men who were taken to the station house by officers and men in the station house were beaten by policemen without mercy, and their cries of distress made sleep impossible for those who lived in the rear of the station house. Colored men being denied official protection, many of them obtained weapons, and if they were found armed, or if revolvers were found in their houses, then official brutality was redoubled.