TITLE: Search and Destroy: A Report by the Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police

AUTHORS: Roy Wilkins and Ramsey Clark

YEAR: 1973

PUBLISHER: Harper & Row

LOCATION: New York

Read as a scanned PDF here (33.6 MB).

Description From Back Cover:

This report pursues the truth of an episode that occurred early on December 4, 1969, at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago. It was a time of darkness, cold, rage, fear and violence. Facts are not easily found in such company.

The episode was a predawn raid on Black Panther Headquarters by Chicago Police. The raid took slightly more than ten minutes. Two young men were dead, four others seriously wounded.

This book is a culmination of three years of privately sponsored investigations into the circumstances surrounding this raid and the deaths of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

A Commission of Inquiry, led by Roy Wilkins, Arthur Goldberg (succeeded by Ramsey Clark), and a staff under the direction of Herbert Reid, present Dean of the Howard University Law School, undertook to determine the facts surrounding the raid and the killings. These, then, are the findings, -- a thoughtful document and a harrowing indictment of official endorsed lawlessness, racism and violence.

Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Chicago Incident on December 4, 1969

1. Police-Community Relations in Chicago at the Time of the Raid

2. The Plan for and Purposes of the Police Raid

3. The Opening Moments of the Raid--The Issue of the First Shot

4. The Pattern of the Shooting

5. The Shooting of Fred Hampton

6. Was Hampton Drugged at the Time of His Death?

7. Conduct of City, County, and State Officials in the Aftermath of the Raid

9. Conclusions