"To Strike at Anything White"

A disputed verdict touches off rioting in Miami

They're guilty! They're guilty! They're guilty!" wailed Mrs. Eula Bell McDuffie in the corridor outside the Tampa courtroom. But an all-white jury had just acquitted four white former Dade County police officers of charges relating to the death of her son, Arthur McDuffie, 33, associate manager of an insurance office, who was fatally beaten last December after an eight-minute police chase for speeding on his motorcycle. News of the verdict flew through the black sections of the Miami area, and within a few hours an angry black crowd gathered outside the Dade County Public Safety Department headquarters. Soon it numbered more than 5,000. The besieged Dade County police radioed for help.

The black demonstrators broke through the building's double doors and then ripped them off their hinges. A rescue force of 75 Miami city police with clubs, shotguns and attack dogs charged into the crowd. The demonstrators answered with rocks and cries of "Pigs!" The police finally smashed their way through a side entrance into the Public Safety headquarters and secured the building, but the violence spread. Eighteen major fires started and burned out of control. The crack of sniper fire echoed through the sweltering night.

Center of the storm was Liberty City, a sprawling area of mostly rundown storefronts on the northwest side of the city. This was near where McDuffie, a former Marine and the father of three children, had lived. White motorists who strayed into the area were hauled from their cars and beaten. Police found one man with his ear and his tongue cut off and a bullet wound in his abdomen. A red rose had been stuffed into his mouth. Near African Square Park, a car repeatedly drove over two white men who had been beaten up and left lying in the street. "They just dragged these couple of guys out and stomped them to death," said one eyewitness. When a police van drove up, young blacks stoned it. The police managed to pick up the bodies, then sped off.

Even ambulances were showered with rocks as they tried to pick up victims. One ambulance driver suffered an eye injury when a rock shattered his window. More fires started--about 50 in all--and firemen couldn't get to many of them. "Utter chaos," said one fire department dispatcher. Just before midnight, Governor Bob Graham alerted the National Guard, and 1,000 troopers with M-16 rifles streamed into the embattled city.

"What you got here," said one black, "--you could call this verdict the straw that broke the camel's back. There wasn't no justice for the black people. They shoved everything down our throats. So now even the kids are out." Said a black educator: "They wanted to strike at anything white."

Miami's blacks, who make up about 15% of the city, have long shared the grievances of other urban blacks, but they have won little redress--or even attention --because of the increasing Latinization of greater Miami (the Latin immigrants now represent 37.5%). And though the new violence was not directly connected with the recent influx of Cuban refugees, that influx threatened to put additional pressure on the neglected blacks. But the McDuffie killing was itself a cause of rage. Judge Lenore Nesbitt called it "a time bomb" when she granted a defense request to move the trial to Tampa.

The prosecution seemed to have a solid case. There were several other policemen who had witnessed the killing. Three testified that they had seen one defendant, Alex Marrero, beat McDuffie as he lay handcuffed and motionless on the ground. Marrero admitted hitting McDuffie but said that McDuffie had reached for Marrero's gun.

The trial had lasted seven weeks, but the jury took only two hours and 45 minutes to acquit the defendants on all 13 counts, ranging from second-degree murder to tampering with evidence. Said McDuffie's sister Dorothy, "We despise the verdict. We hate it." The U.S. Justice Department, too, was appalled. It said it would press for indictments of the ex-police for civil rights violations.

As a baking sun rose over Miami Sunday, the toll stood at nine dead, four of them blacks, 125 injured. Nearly 200 had been arrested. A dozen fires still sent up great black billows of smoke, and there were continuing reports of looting. Police imposed a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. on the debris-strewn streets.

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