Mark Edward Allen

Mark Edward Allen was a young Black man who died in police custody in Monrovia, California. Arrested on November 16, 1971 by Monrovia police on suspicion of shoplifting a leather coat, he was booked at 5:11 p.m. and was soon found dead — police claimed he had strangled himself to death with his pants through the jail bars. A Black police cadet, Keith Lowden, said Allen had been brought in shirtless, in a state of "complete emotional excitation," with scratches across his body, and he was pronounced dead on arrival at Arcadia Methodist Hospital. The Black Panther (December 11, 1971) reported the death as a police killing. NOTE: this is a death-in-custody case rather than a conventional prosecution.