Black Panthers Give Grievances

Militant Group Meets with City and Police Officials

DAVID BURNHAM / New York Times 7sep68

[More on the Black Panther Party]

David Brothers, the leader of the Black Panther Party in Brooklyn, stood up, turned around and removed his shirt.

The men sitting at a large polish table — including the two top police commanders in Brooklyn, representatives from the office of the Mayor and the executive director of the Civilian Complaint Review Board — looked toward Mr. Brothers.

"The shoulders and upper back were a mass of ugly bruises," recalled one participant of the meeting.

Mr. Brothers's action was his answer to a question from Bernard Jackson, executive director of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, who had told a group of Panthers at the meeting that the city needed their help to preserve peace and had asked them "to tell us what happened."

The meeting came one day after a group of about 150 white man — many of whom were off-duty, out-of-uniform patrolmen — attacked a small group of Black Panthers and white sympathizers on the sixth floor of the Criminal Courts Building in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

Barry Gottehrer, the chairman of Mayor Lindsay's Urban Task Force, said in an interview later that the meeting was held at the request of the Black Panthers. However, the Black Panthers said the meeting was held at the request of Mr. Gottehrer.

But whoever called it, the purpose was to try to smooth out the troubles between the militant black group now being organized in the slums of New York and police.

At the meeting, in addition to Mr. Gottehrer, Mr. Brothers, Mr. Jackson and it doesn't Panthers, were Assistant Chief Inspectors Lloyd Sealey and Michael T. Chimenti — the commanders of Brooklyn North and South — representatives of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee and lawyers for the Panthers, William M. Kunstler and Gerald B. Lefcourt.

Mr. Gottehrer said the Black Panther leaders at the meeting told him that the party members "must do their saying — but that they would do it through the legal process."

Mr. Gottehrer and other participants at the Thursday night session met from 9: 30 to 11:30 in a second-floor office of a building at Madison Avenue and 48th Street. They said the Panthers defined "their saying" in terms of a 10-point program including full employment, and end of robbery of Negroes by white men, decent housing, black oriented education, exempting black men from military service, and immediate and of what they called police brutality, the release of all black prisoners and the three-trial and future trial of all black men by Negroes.

Mr. Gottehrer said the meeting was one in a series of discussions is group — the Urban Task Force — has had with the Black Panthers in the last two months and that he expected further meetings to be held.

He said that during the Thursday evening meeting he had read the statement of Mayor Lindsay and Police Commissioner Howard R. Leary about the attack on the Panthers and told them that "we feel the Mayor and the Commissioner are different from what they [the Panthers] feel they are."

The attack on Mr. Brothers and a few other Black Panthers and white sympathizers occurred when they came to the Brooklyn Criminal Court Building Wednesday morning to be present for a preliminary hearing of three Black Panthers arrested August 21 for assaulting a policeman.

Immediately after the melee, when Panther and one white girl were seen with blood trickling from their scalp wounds in their heads and Mr. Brothers said he had been kicked "20 or 25 times.

Mr. Kunstler said yesterday that Chief Judge Stanley H. Fuld, of the Court of Appeals, has agreed to hold a hearing next Tuesday on a request for a further reduction in bail for the three Black Panthers arrested providing this date was acceptable to the Brooklyn District Attorney.

In five appeals, bail for the three young Panthers has been reduced to $20,000 for George Correa, $10,000 for Daryl Baines and $2500 for John Martinez.

In another development belly at Golden, the chief assistant attorney in Brooklyn, questioned five top members of the Law Enforcement Group of New York about that organization's possible involvement in the attack at the Brooklyn courthouse.

Among those questioned, according to Mr. Golden, were Robert Raggi, chairman of the group, Lieut. Leon Laino, an original founder and Archie Harris, a civilian who has served as its publicity director.

Mr. Golden said the leaders of the Law Enforcement Group, initially formed to demand the resignation of a Brooklyn criminal court judge because he allegedly permitted disorderly conduct in his court by supporters of two Black Panthers who are being arraigned, repeated earlier public denials that they had instigated the attack or urged their members to go to the courthouse for the hearing.

He also said that not one "allegedly them" had so far lodged a complaint with his office. "This investigation may take longer than it normally would," he said, "because of the apparent lack of cooperation."

Mr. Golden added, however, that his investigators were out actively seeking witnesses and that "our people have talked with people associative with the Black Panthers."

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