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The book poignantly captures the disjointed lives of the volatile black youths —their periodic fits of rage, their more normal sullenness, their fierce loyalty to one another. Just as absorbing is the anguish and frustration of their parents, their fury at the police and the courts, tempered by the knowledge that they could not do much about it. Above all, one could scarcely find, in journalism or in fiction, a more revealing portrait of a certain type of policeman. David Senak, 24, known as "Snake," served for a year and a half on the vice squad, and he apparently enjoyed his work. It seemed as if his career had consisted of one case after another in which a man or woman had confronted him with some obscene gesture or lascivious remark. Senak admitted to Hersey that a "bad aspect" of his work was that he had never fallen in love with a girl before he joined the force. His arrest of some 175 prostitutes had given him, he said, "a sort of bad attitude toward women in general. I know all women aren't prostitutes, but I think subconsciously it affects me. I go out with a lot of real nice girls and I just can't seem to, you know, get really attached to them." When Hersey asked him if he thought women are "essentially evil," Senak replied: "Who gave who the apple?"
Charge of Harassment. What particularly seemed to enrage the police at the Algiers Motel, according to the Negroes Hersey interviewed, was the presence of two young white prostitutes. Senak, said a witness, ripped the clothes off one with the barrel of his shotgun and ordered the other to undress before the officers. He demanded to know why they preferred Negroes as clients. "What's wrong with us, you nigger lovers?" Another cop then chimed in: "We're going to fill up the Detroit River with all you pimps and whores."
At first the police denied knowing how any of the three had been shot. Subsequently two cops changed their story and admitted shooting two of the Negroes. Charges of murder were brought against two of the police, though not against Senak; one case was dismissed and one is pending trial. Last month Senak, two other cops and a Negro night watchman were all indicted by a Federal grand jury for conspiring to deprive the victims of their civil rights. Most of the witnesses to the shooting, as well as members of their families, told Hersey that they have been constantly harassed by the police. Some have been jailed, some beaten.
Though he was suspended from the force, in a sense Senak still is on the job. Last October, he was driving in Detroit with two prostitutes—one white, one black. He says they jumped into his car before he could stop them; they say he invited them. Whatever the case, all occupants of the car admit that a fight ensued. Senak pulled a knife, and both girls ended up badly cut. They reported the incident to the police but refused to press charges. "The reason I got in trouble all over again," Senak told Hersey, "was because I was overzealous. It was my instinct of a police officer—though I was suspended."