Ten O'Clock News; Black community on Stuart case

[Beeping] [Bill Owens] You have dealt us an injustice. [Reporter] Anger is too mild a word for what these Black community leaders expressed today. Try rage, try fury. [Graylan Ellis-Hagler] This time however the night riding was not the action of white-robed bigots but instead the actions of a mayor, Mayor Raymond Flynn, who so quickly jumped to conclusions. [Don Muhammad] And there are some public officials who gave credence to that. I want to know now, will you call Mr. Charles Stuart an "animal"? [Reporter] According to these Black leaders, Boston police with the mayor and the media in tow, rushed to conclusions in the Stuart case and they say racism is what greased the tracks. [Muhammad] When anybody wife is killed, the first automatic suspect is the husband. Except when it happens in the Black community. When it happens in the Black community, the automatic suspect is a Black man. And we're tired of that.

[Reporter] To a person, all the political and religious leaders here today charge the media, the mayor, and the police with simply ignoring vital information in the Stuart case, information they say was circulating on the streets of Roxbury within a day of the Stuart shooting. [Muhammad] The rumors came to me by phone that Charles Stuart was a drug addict. And if the street knows it, don't tell me that they should not have known it. [Ellis-Hagler] The fact of the matter is, is the day of the shooting on the 24th I believe, we had a discussion in my office. And people in recovery sat down and said Charles Stuart did a shooting. [Reporter] Reverend Graylan Hagler runs a recovery center for addicts out of his church in Roxbury. [Ellis-Hagler] You have one person with me going repeatedly back and forth to the police department saying Bennett is not the person and sharing what knowledge that that person had, which was from rumors and from knowing where Bennett was, and who Bennett was, what Bennett was into, that he kept sharing and the police department's official response was "well we believe we got

who serves our purposes." [Muhammad] To apologize is nothing. That's like stabbing me in the back and pulling the knife out and telling me, "I'm sorry". No, you got to nurse me back to health. You gotta take me back to where I was before you did this to me. This community has been absolutely devastated. [Reporter] There were cries today for the resignation of Mayor Flynn and police commissioner Roach. Some call for some sort of restitution for Mission Hill residents. But the bottom line among these people is that Blacks in Boston, especially in Mission Hill, were dealt a grave injustice when police, public officials, and reporters were too easily taken in by a dreadful hoax. For the 10 O'Clock News I'm Jan Von Mehren.