Bruce Chadwick, former New York Daily News reporter, presents a breezy and colorful look inside the New York Police Department in the 19th century, before there was even a police force, when it was just a loose and disorganized group of blundering constables.
In “Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth of the NYPD,’’ readers are feted with some of the bloodiest crimes and horrific murders in our nation’s history, during a dangerous time when gambling, prostitution, crime rings, gangs, and drinking spun out of control amid an exploding immigrant population. In 1845, 36 percent of city’s residents were foreign born; rising to 46 percent in 1850 and 51 percent by 1855.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Chadwick reports, ``there was more gambling in New York in the 1840s and 1850s than any other time in American history until the establishment of legal gambling in Las Vegas a hundred years later.”
Most criminals greased the palms of the constables to look the other way.
Worse still, in the 1840’s, the police didn’t carry weapons, only nightsticks, triggering a number of police injuries.
One of the early reformers of the NYPD was New York Mayor William Havemeyer who in 1845 replaced all the old constables with a force of over one thousand police officers with a new chain of command, including police chief, several assistant chiefs, and precinct captains.
The mayor soon appointed George Matsell as the NYPD's first police chief who established a police academy, where officers could be properly trained with firearms, conditioning, fighting, and revolver marksmanship, along with serving the public’s needs, not just criminals
Police officers in New York weren’t equipped with guns until the 1850s.
Mayor Havemeyer, in fact, was the person who coined the phrase, “New York’s Finest,” when describing his police force.
Most fascinating in Chadwick’s history of the NYPD during this time, was the prominent role newspapers played in the eventual establishment of a police force.
In particular, the Penny Press (tabloid-style newspapers) and newspaper magnates like George Gordon Bennett of The New York Herald crusaded for a professional police force. In addition, the New York Sun was one of the early pioneers in police reporting; and a new journal in the 1850s, The New York Times (under the able leadership of its editor, Henry Raymond), began pouring large sums of money to produce the news, including the introduction of a "Police News" section each day, along with court news.
Despite some early reforms, corruption remained endemic within the NYPD; and the persistent crime wave wouldn’t show a dramatic decrease until the civil service was established in the 1870s.
Still, as Chadwick points out in his fascinating book, the NYPD became the model for other urban law enforcement agencies throughout the nation in the 19th century, including, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C.
--Bill Lucey
August 31, 2017
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