Ex-Panthers Arrested Raiding Party Office

Cambridge police arrested five former members of the Black Panther Party and seized quantities of firearms and ammunition Saturday, according to a statement issued by the Committee to Defend the Panthers. Police refused to comment on the alleged incidents.

Saturday afternoon Angela Scott allegedly led a group of four other dissident former Panthers who broke into an apartment rented by the Committee at 76 Putnam Ave.

Cambridge police arrived at the scene, entered the apartment, and arrested the five. According to the statement, Detective Dominic Scalese then "collected a bagful of so-called evidence and left." He returned an hour later with a search warrant and confiscated all firearms and ammunition in the apartment.

Committee States

The statement claimed that everything in the apartment had been legally registered, and lawyers for the Committee charged the police with illegal search and seizure.

Kitty Harding, a spokesman for the Committee, accused Scalese of "having a personal vendetta against the Panthers." saying, "He's a dangerous man and wants to wipe us out." Harding said that Scalese had also been involved in the raid upon the "Juche" commune last week.

When questioned concerning the Committee's report of the incident, a spokesman for the Cambridge police replied, "We've been told not to say anything about that. In fact, until you mentioned it just now, I'd never heard of it."

The apartment, a residential collective of the Committee, was empty at the time of the break-in. "When we were tipped off about what was happening, we drove right over, but the pigs were already there," Harding said. "We wanted to settle it ourselves, without them, but they wouldn't let us."

Harding declined to say how the Committee was notified, or to elaborate upon the statement's expression, "correct action will be taken against [the police]."