Looting and burning began to occur in Newark on a wide-scale basis.
Before long, the Guard was called in, and the shooting increased. The
chief of staff of the New Jersey National Guard testified that there
had been too much shooting at the snipers. His opinion was that the
Guard considered the situation as a military action. Newark's director
of police offered the opinion that the Guard may have been shooting at
the police with the police shooting back at the Guard. "I really don't
believe," he said, "there was as much sniping as we thought."
By the time the shooting had ended, twenty-three people had been
killed. Of these, one was a white detective, one was a white fireman,
and twenty-one were Negroes. Of the twenty-one Negroes killed, six
were women, two were children, and one was an elderly man
seventy-three years old. The Kerner Report also stated, as did the New
Jersey report on the riot, that there had been considerable evidence
that the police and the Guard had been deliberately shooting into
stores containing "soul brother" signs. Instead of merely quelling a
riot or attacking rioters, some of them were apparently exploiting the
situation to vent their own racial hatreds.
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