An officer raised his hand.
“Sir, we’ve arrested you before. Your lawyers always…”
“This time it’s different,” Crawford interrupted. “This time, we’re not giving him a chance to call his lawyers. This time we’re going to make this arrest as public and humiliating as possible. We want every Black man in Harlem to see his hero in federal handcuffs.”
Crawford described the plan. Thursday, November 14th, during lunch service at Wells Restaurant. Bumpy ate there every Thursday at precisely 12:30 pm. Same table, same order: medium-rare ribeye steak, mashed potatoes, and cognac.
“We surrounded the building at 12:45 p.m.,” Crawford explained. “Four teams: north, south, east, west. Local police blocked the intersections. Nobody got in or out. We got in at 12:47 p.m. We arrested him while he was eating. And we had him in a car headed to the federal jail in three minutes.”
The agents nodded. It was a solid plan. Overwhelming force, public humiliation, maximum psychological impact.
