Police and the Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New York

This scrupulous debut from historian and policy analyst Guariglia traces “how race shaped modern policing and how, in turn, modern policing helped to define and redefine racial boundaries in New York.” Focusing on the period between the New York City Police Department’s founding in 1845 and WWII, Guariglia contends that the NYPD drew on “colonial methods” from abroad to police the city’s growing immigrant population. For example, he details how NYPD commissioners Francis Vinton Greene and William McAdoo, both veterans of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, deployed tactics developed on the archipelago, most notably “ethnic squads” that enlisted members of the policed communities to join official patrols. (The NYPD’s early 20th-century German and Italian squads were particularly helpful when it came to surveilling those communities.) Guariglia excels at teasing out the numerous ways the NYPD helped enforce racial boundaries, including by shutting down interracial “Black-and-Tan” nightclubs (which served Black and white patrons) and offering Irish and Italian officers opportunities to “consolidate their ‘whiteness’ ” by meting out violence against Black New Yorkers. He also draws parallels with more recent eras of NYC policing (the post-9/11 Demographics Unit, which spied on Muslims, is reminiscent of Progressive-era ethnic squads, according to Guariglia). The result is a damning investigation of the NYPD’s past. (Nov.)