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<\/a>Socialistic Gents & Saints Gangs Arrest 1949<\/p><\/div>\n
In the course of my research, I came across a fascinating case of a member of the Socialistic Gents from this time period.\u00a0 His street nickname was \u201cDoc,\u201d and the information I found on him is sufficient enough to report here, as sort of the inside to the bookends of the murder from 1947 and the shooting in 1949.<\/p>\n
Born in Brooklyn in 1930, and living at 99 Thatford Avenue, \u201cDoc,\u201d was one of five children born to parents who had moved from South Carolina to New York City in 1927.\u00a0 His Dad was a heavy drinker who did not provide support to his family, forcing them to become welfare recipients.\u00a0 Doc\u2019s father was a violent man; arrested for felonious assault, he was sentenced to Eastern Correctional Facility.\u00a0 His prison sentence all but killed the marriage, and Doc\u2019s parents separated.\u00a0 His mother either became or continued to be a promiscuous woman (it isn\u2019t quite clear) who lived with several men.<\/p>\n
Beginning with elementary school, Doc\u2019s school record was in shambles from beginning to end.\u00a0 When it came time to attend high school at Alexander Hamilton Vocational High School in 1945, he skipped so much that he was suspended for a week (one wonders if that was much of a punishment for the lad.\u00a0 Making him not attend school for not attending school seems like an odd punishment – but I digress).\u00a0 When he returned, he lasted seven months before he was discharged.\u00a0 High school just wasn\u2019t for Doc, even though his IQ was 100, which would have been good enough for him to make something of himself (100 might sound low, but it is actually quite high among most gang members I have studied who had their IQ’s tested).<\/p>\n
When he was a young teenager, Doc began associating with gangs in Brownsville – the Royal Counts and the Socialistic Gents – and joined in their fights.\u00a0 Doc enjoyed playing basketball and handball at recreational centers in public high schools.\u00a0 In the summer, he enjoyed swimming at the Betsy Head Swimming Pool, gambling and visiting pool rooms twice a week (one of them was on Pitkin & Thatford Avenues).<\/p>\n
But it was the gang life that brought Doc down.\u00a0 The first time he was caught by the police was when he was 14 years old.\u00a0 He was arrested on Nov.25, 1944 at 9:30 a.m. when a .32 calibre Johnson pistol that contained one cartridge was found in the pocket of his jacket that was hanging in a closet in his home.\u00a0 He said he found the revolver on the street.\u00a0 Doc was placed on probation and discharged on Jun.1, 1946.<\/p>\n
His next arrest came a year later on Jul.7, 1947.\u00a0 At around 9:45 p.m. a 16-year-old boy was taken to St. John\u2019s Hospital in Brooklyn because of a bullet wound in his right leg.\u00a0 A police investigation revealed that Walter Belmar had shot him at Dean St. and Ralph Avenue with a 6mm gun.\u00a0 After the shooting, Belmar went to a candy store located at Glenmore Avenue and Watkins Street, which was a meeting place for the Socialistic Gents and Royal Counts.\u00a0 He hung out there for awhile, and when he left, Doc accompanied him.\u00a0 When they got close to Doc\u2019s house, Belmar asked him to carry the weapon because he was afraid of holding it.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t bother telling Doc that the gun was used in shooting the 16-year-old.\u00a0 Foolishly, Doc agreed to hold onto the gun.<\/p>\n
The police questioned Doc about his possession of the 6 mm automatic Belgian pistol, which of course they found in the hallway of the building he lived in.<\/p>\n
While Doc waited for a hearing before the judge to see if he could get \u201cyouthful offender\u201d status, he got tangled up in another incident, this one the most serious of all.\u00a0 On Oct. 2, 1947, while he was hanging out on the corner of Watkins Street and Glenmore Avenue in Brownsville, a soldier passed by Doc and some of his friends.\u00a0 They chased the soldier down, fell upon him and attacked him.\u00a0 Doc later said it was because the soldier shot at or near them and that was what had precipitated their attack on him.<\/p>\n
And what did they do to the soldier exactly?\u00a0 After they seized him, Doc knocked him to the ground.\u00a0 The group then beat the soldier and stabbed him four times, with one of the stab wounds puncturing his lung.\u00a0 Later, the Judge took the soldier\u2019s initial aggression into consideration when sentencing Doc, so it appears that perhaps the soldier did fire his gun in their direction for some reason or another.<\/p>\n
Doc was found guilty of his original crime of possession of a pistol and was sentenced to a three-year term in an upstate New York reformatory.<\/p>\n
Doc\u2019s story doesn\u2019t end there because he ended up having an eventful time in the reformatory, which I won\u2019t go into here.\u00a0 What I will outline however, is another surprising picture I found.\u00a0 Going back to the 1947 murder, in the group of 17 Socialistic Gents who were rounded up by the police for the gang slaying and the 20 neighborhood robberies, Doc was in the list of those reeled in.\u00a0 Surprisingly, this was not mentioned in his personal report, so likely he was released because of lack of evidence which allowed him to continue his life of crime.\u00a0 Here is the picture of the 17 Socialistic Gents arrested in 1947 for the murder and holdups with Doc seated, second from the right:<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Socialistic Gents Gang Arrested for Homicide & Robberies<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of the pages on this website on my research on NYC youth gangs is from the 1950s.\u00a0 However, my research has also taken me to the late 1940s which is when gangs really started to get everybody\u2019s attention in … Continue reading