Before the NYPD existed, New Yorkers strongly opposed the idea of an armed police force – until a powerful news publisher changed everything. After a grisly murder takes place, the city’s newspapers sensationalize the story, blame the cops, and a new force is born. But will these cops work to solve the case or will they spend their days hunting something–or someone–else?

 

From Wondery, Crooked Media and PushBlack.

 

Empire City is made with a commitment to ensure the stories of those who were and are still impacted by the NYPD are always part of the stories we tell ourselves about the police, about America, and about democracy.

 

https://wondery.com/links/empire-city/

 

Voices & References:
Ed O’Donnell https://edwardtodonnell.com/
Greg Young https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/about-us
Alan Singer https://www.hofstra.edu/faculty-staff/faculty-profile.html?id=1412
Wilbur Miller https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/history/people/_emeriti/miller.php
Jon Wells https://www.jonathandanielwells.com/
Mariame Kaba https://mariamekaba.com/
The Bowery Boys podcast https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/bowery-boys-first/bowery-boys-podcast

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: When my daughter asked me what the police do, I didn’t know what to say. And I’m still figuring out how to answer. How did that story that the police keep us safe become the story that so many people believe? To answer that. I need to get to something bigger than Tobias Boudinot in the kidnaping club. I need to know the real reasons why New York’s first professional police department started. Tracking down the early history of the NYPD. It’s kind of overwhelming. Where do you even start?

 

[robotic voice over]: Thank you for calling the New York City Police Museum. The museum is currently closed.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The New York City Police Museum seemed like an obvious first stop. A quick visit to the website tells you they’re dedicated to preserving the history of the New York City Police Department, the world’s largest and most famous police service. Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for.

 

[robotic voice over]: The museum is closed. We cannot accept memorabilia donations or respond to requests for information. Thank you.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Well, that turned out to be a dead end. But I still like to find someone who worked inside that museum who could at least give me a sense of what clues might have been in there about the NYPD’s beginning. So I started calling people connected to the museum.

 

[robotic voice over]: How can I help you?

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Being a good journalist is kind of like being a salesman. Every time one door closes on you, you just tell yourself, no problem. I’m just one more phone call away from success.  I thought I was getting closer to learning what the museum might have taught me about the history. When I found the phone number for the office of Howard Safir. He’s a former NYPD commissioner who helped get the museum off the ground. Hi. I’m looking to speak with Howard Safir.

 

[unknown speaker]: Who may I say is calling?

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: My name is Chenjerai. And. Yeah, my name is Chenjerai.

 

[unknown speaker]: Okay, hold on one moment. [music plays] Howard is unavailable.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So I couldn’t talk to Howard either, but I wasn’t giving up. Eventually, my producer, Sam, found someone else who was even better qualified to give us some real tea on how the police museum dealt with the NYPD history.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: So, I’m Edward T. O’Donnell.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: O’Donnell is a historian who curated exhibits for the Police Museum back in 1999.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: I got a call from Mrs. Howard Safir, wife of the chief of police in New York City, to see if I would have a meeting to talk about the police museum.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The police commissioner’s wife was also the head of the New York Police Museum’s board, and when she got it on the phone, she told him.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: We’ve got you got the space, we got the stuff, but we don’t have any. We don’t have a historian.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So Ed agreed to help.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: I don’t think I’ll ever have a stranger assignment.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Ed says that at first the police museum was open to the public, but it wasn’t much of a museum.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: It was a basically a room in the police academy full of historical junk. So there was literally like a display case full of handcuffs, a display case full of nightsticks, a wall covered in old helmets. And so they were historical, but there was no interpretation. It was just like cool police stuff organized by category.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But there were plans to turn it into something bigger and grander.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: They got, you know, a ton of money, private money to really make it go big time. Hired a first class architectural firm to build the museum. And then, like, halfway through architectural firm said, how are we going to tell the story?

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And that’s when Ed got involved. When he showed up, the first thing that made him raise an eyebrow was the staff. Most museums have positions like curators, archivists and docents. But the police museum was run by police regular NYPD. Either way, Ed got to work. He started writing up the plan to organize the police museum to tell the truth about the history. But most of the public never got to see what Ed wrote.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: They wanted me to write about the New York City Police Department, but without using the words violence or corruption [laughs] which is effectively impossible.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: They were serious about this. So serious that the museum’s director, an active NYPD sergeant, would personally edit Ed O’Donnell’s work.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: I saved the document because he just struck entire pages, just lines right through lines right there. And then he rewrite sentences where I would say, this officer was indicted for corruption or what have you, and just would say, this officer was let go.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Maybe I’m naive, but that kind of direct censorship surprised me.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: It was a very interesting experience and a good example of, you know, they’re trying to do public history, but with a real institutional agenda.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: When the museum finally relaunched in 2000, there was a big gala to celebrate.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: Opening night was amazing. You know, got to meet the many members of the cast of Law and Order. They were all there. It was very, you know, glitzy event.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But about six months later, the museum director got caught up in a corruption scandal. The New York Times and the Daily News reported that one of the police sergeants was using the museum to accept gifts of luxury cars and office space that went against police regulations. And by the way, this was the same sergeant who wouldn’t let Ed use the word corruption when writing about the NYPD. He and the other officers were promptly reassigned. [music plays] For the past eight years, the museum’s website has read, the museum is currently closed. Please check back for updates so it’s clear I’m not getting in there. But Ed told me that when he was researching for the museum, he learned a lot from old newspapers. And that turned out to be amazing advice. It turns out that newspapers have more to teach us about New York’s first professional police department than you might think, because they didn’t just report on it. The newspaper played a key role in defining what police would do and shaping what we’re told about the police. For the next 180 years. From Wondery and Crooked Media. I’m Chenjerai Kumanyika and this is Empire City. Episode two. If It Bleeds It Leads. Like the beginning of a lot of true crime stories. The creation of the NYPD starts with a murder.

 

Greg Young: So the year is 1841. And there was this young woman named Mary Rogers, a very lovely young woman who worked at a tobacco shop. A cigar store over there actually was where the cigar shop is, believe it or not.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Greg Young hosted the Bowery Boys podcast, and he’s an expert on old New York. Greg and I are standing next to a Gilded Age fountain in City Hall Park, right across the street from Mary’s Tobacco Shop.

 

Greg Young: Everyone is smoking. Everyone from City Hall, all of the all of the politicians.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And this woman, Mary, she’s the plug. She sells them good tobacco and chats them up.

 

Greg Young: She actually kind of a local celebrity. You know, both for her beauty, but also, like, it seems like she had good rapport. She had an interesting personality.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: One day in the summer of 1841, Mary’s lifeless body is found floating in the Hudson River. So just imagine you’re living in 19th century New York and you’re hearing about this murder, but who’s going to solve it? In addition to the constables, the other main authorities in the city are these guys called watchmen because in theory, they keep watch over the city. But keeping watch doesn’t really have much to do with solving crimes.

 

Greg Young: Law enforcement. When it came to like true detective, work, it was almost nonexistent.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But you might think that people in a growing city with a murderer on the loose would want a real professional police force like what we have today. But Greg says back then, large numbers of uniformed men walking around with weapons and the authority to arrest folks is the last thing most New Yorkers want, for a very good reason.

 

Greg Young: In the early 1840s, you still had people with living memory of the Revolutionary War. It was considered completely un-American because we did so much to get them off these shores. Many, many New Yorkers at that time had that fear constantly.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: They were like, no, I remember this. This is real. This could happen.

 

Greg Young: To have this kind of like what many like, consider like a private uniformed force that was going to be armed and given the power to, to enforce laws of their own whims. Sounded very much like an invading army to people.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But there is another group of professionals who are gaining clout in this city, and they immediately get involved in finding out what happened to Mary Rogers.

 

Greg Young: What is kind of shocking, though, is how the sort of detective work about the whole thing, or everything about the case, was being driven and dictated by the newspapers. The press of the day filled the newspapers with every single detail and rumor about this particular crime. And, and they were kind of driving the solving of things.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yes. The media. If you know the media like I know the media, then you know nothing is more provocative than the body of a dead white woman. That kind of crime allows journalists to titillate their readers with descriptions of her beauty and horrify them with gory details, and then set themselves up as righteous avengers, asking readers to contact them with tips that can help solve Mary’s murder. And the guy who’s the most successful at this is James Gordon Bennett, the publisher of the New York Herald. Bennett takes the story of the Mary Rogers murder and runs with it.

 

Alan Singer: His goal is to exhilarate the breakfast table.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Alan Singer is a professor at Hofstra University and a former social studies teacher. And I feel like if he’d been my teacher, I might have been more into social studies because we share an interest.

 

Alan Singer: As a high school teacher, you had to be able to rap, right? I used to call myself Reese’s Pieces because I’m better than Eminem.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And yeah, I wonder, yeah, I wonder if you ever wrote a rap about James Gordon Bennett.

 

Alan Singer: He doesn’t deserve one.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Bennett is a legend in media. And if you think papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post are influential today, they have nothing on the sheer power of the New York Herald and its earliest years. This is before radio or TV. Politicians can’t speak directly to the public, but Bennett can, and he’s using his reach to set the political agenda. So when Mary Rogers is murdered, Bennett starts talking a lot of smack about New York’s dusty, disorganized police.

 

Alan Singer: He used the difficulty in solving the case to denounce police incompetence and the moral disintegration of the city.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Bennett watches what the police are doing, and he tells his readers, hey, yo, the police don’t have the answers. He calls the watchman sleepy guardians of the night, and he points out that they didn’t collect any intel on the case. He complained that the police are too slow. Then floats his theory about the murder without any real evidence.

 

Alan Singer: It’s almost like Tucker Carlson where he doesn’t say it. He suggests it.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Now, look, some of Bennett’s reporting is problematic, like racially problematic. But I didn’t want to reduce an important figure in the history of journalism to his worst moments. So I asked Singer to discuss this in a more nuanced way.

 

Alan Singer: He was an anti-Semite and racist.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Couldn’t have put it better myself.

 

Alan Singer: The pages of the Herald released with racial slurs, including the N-word.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Early in his career, Bennett staunchly pro-slavery, and he makes that known in his paper. And when Mary Rogers is murdered, Bennett’s approach is let’s blame this on the people the New Yorkers are really scared of. That’ll sell a lot of my papers.

 

Alan Singer: The paper postulates, without evidence that the woman was murdered by a gang of rightist miscreants or Negroes.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And Bennett’s fake news is even more reason for him to talk about how ineffective New York’s police are. He says these guys are horrible at solving murders, and actually, he’s not even sure if they want to. He’s pointing to the idea that the police are corrupt, not just incompetent or?

 

Alan Singer: Both.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Both.

 

Alan Singer: He wants a police force. He wants an organized police force because otherwise the city is in chaos.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But even as the Rogers case goes cold, Bennett continues to ratchet up his diatribe on the city’s police. In one article, Bennett criticizes the fact that New York’s watchmen and constables are like private contractors working for hire. He writes.

 

[voice over]: It appears crime is made to support police. It sets their table. It is their meat, drink and lodging. Abolish crime and police starve.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But Greg Young thinks that all Bennett’s hype about police incompetence isn’t really about solving Mary Rogers murder. And it’s not even about reporting the news.

 

Greg Young: I mean, maybe I’m cynical here. Maybe they are genuinely concerned about the safety of the city, but like, I’m sorry, building up the idea of this crime wave that’s happening is selling papers.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So wait a minute, Greg, are you saying that the media has an economic incentive and centering crime, which then structures how policing happens?

 

Greg Young: I mean, this is the beginning because it is the first time that, like, there is a center of American media and they are all truly powerful.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So Bennett uses his power to make it bigger than just Mary Rogers. He got their attention with one dead white woman. Now he starts complaining about something powerful New Yorkers care about even more. Bennett starts railing about how bad police might threaten their wealth.

 

Alan Singer: The issue is disorder. The whole sense of you go out, you step out your front door and you’re in this disorderly, disgusting place. It really upset a lot of people.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Nobody likes a sloppy, chaotic city. But historian Wilbur Miller says that a very specific group of people were really worried.

 

Wilbur Miller: The disorder threatens capital directly. In that way, if the city gets a reputation for disorderly ness. Who’s going to want to do business here?

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Wealthy white folks, insurance companies, business owners and merchants are especially concerned.

 

Wilbur Miller: It’s an articulate segment of the population that pressure politicians to act somewhat. And they voted to.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: After getting a burglary tip in a wealthy residence overnight the following morning, Bennett writes.

 

[voice over]: Considerable noise is made by these rascals, and yet no watchman hear them.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And he announces his solution to the problem.

 

[voice over]: It’s time we establish a new night police to protect the property of our citizens. Some wealthy and powerful New Yorkers are already debating that idea. Trying to figure out what a modern police force might look like. And actually, let’s talk about that word police for a second.

 

Wilbur Miller: The word police comes from the Greek word polis, which means a city. And for a long time, police meant anything to make the city more orderly. So it started off as a very general sense, and it became specific much later.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So the idea of policing is very old. And so is the idea of police reform. City council members, military folks and philanthropists are essentially debating how to make the police better. And they’re just the most recent in a long line of people who’ve been trying to make the police work in New York for almost 200 years, going all the way back to the Dutch rattle guys. But there aren’t a whole lot of places you can look to for examples of something that works better. I mean, they could look to Boston, Boston had draw up the plans for a publicly funded police force in the 1830s. But it’s only on paper theory that hasn’t been turned into practice. And if we want to keep it all real, they could turn to South Carolina and the Charleston city Guard that was formed 60 years earlier. But, of course, one of the main jobs of the Charleston City Guard is squashing slave rebellions and enforcing a curfew on Black people. So if you’re trying to figure out how to create a police force that can solve murders, deal with unruly communities, and protect wealth, you might as well go to the experts at the core of the British Empire. Robert Peel’s famous London Metropolitan Police is a functional, modern department for growing city. And even though that example comes from America’s former oppressors, the British. After James Gordon Bennett’s media crusade. British style police don’t sound so bad. So in 1844, New York Mayor James Harper takes a cue from the British and establishes a new force of 200 police.

 

Wilbur Miller: Harper’s police was established. It was uniform. They had to be a native born American to even qualify for the police force.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The uniform he puts them in is blue with the letters MP on a standing collar, which looks a lot like the British police, and similarities with the Brits. Don’t stop there. Harper also has some strong feelings about Irish Catholics.

 

Wilbur Miller: So Harper was a nativist and a nativist was essentially anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant. Now, most of the immigrants coming into New York in the 1840s, in 1844, were Irish Catholic immigrants.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Right now, Irish are so identified with the police that it’s hard to imagine a time when you’re saying, when Harper started his police, it was the exact opposite. But this was white people hating on other white people. Right?

 

Wilbur Miller: Yes, it’s white people hating white people. They barely saw them as white.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Harper doesn’t really want Irish Catholic immigrants working for him, but they’re the ones being policed. And of course, James Gordon Bennett weighs in on New York’s new force. He says—

 

[voice over]: We have no police in New York under Mayor Harper worth a straw.

 

He doesn’t see these police as much of a step up from the constables and watchmen. Plus, he’s a Catholic. Harper’s police look like a British standing army on the streets of New York City.

 

Wilbur Miller: People hated him. People rioted against it.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Harper loses his next election after just one term, and a few months later, his police are abolished. But within months, Newark will create the nation’s first professional police force. Irish begin to apply, and these new recruits will get an annual salary. They’ll be given a rulebook, training and badges. And within a few months, the department grows from about 200 to 800 men. This sounds like the police force that James Gordon Bennet’s Herald has been fighting for. But what about the rest in New York? What’s going to happen when they see an even bigger standing army than Harper’s police on the streets? [music plays] It’s a scorching summer day in New York City in 1845. 800 men are gathered outside of a police station house. They’re running military style drills. A captain runs a call and response with the men.

 

[clip of captain]: Attention, squad! Shoulder clubs. Carry, clubs.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And a man named Mike Walsh is standing on a corner nearby, glaring at him with disgust. Walsh is a young, working class Irish politician, and even though he’s in politics, he lives in one of New York’s most impoverished areas. And when he sees this new police force in his neighborhood, it pisses him off. Greg Young and I are on a visit to the part of New York where Mike Walsh lived. Today, the neighborhood is part of Chinatown, but back then it’s called Five Points. When Irish immigrants moved to New York. They often come here. There’s a swamp right in the middle, and blocks of crowded tenement buildings start to get even more packed. I can just imagine that these folks want more from their city, but like, probably not more police.

 

Greg Young: Well, it’s just astonishing because we’re so close to where City Hall is, right? There’s just like the striking, dichotomy of like, we’re right here. We need help. This police force is not really going to be for us, is it?

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But Mike Walsh doesn’t just stand around mean mugging police. He also produces a newspaper where he gives a brutally honest take on what New York’s police look like from his perspective. We dug up his paper. It’s called The Subterranean, and he’s writing for a more niche audience than James Gordon Bennett.

 

Greg Young: His newspaper isn’t quite like, but the Herald and those things were. This was all very much an organ of his own political thoughts. You know, outside of, like, standing in a square and yelling at people, like publishing your own newspaper was your best way of getting your ideas out to people.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So while a media leader like James Gordon Bennett is saying things like.

 

[voice over]: It’s time we established a new night police to protect the property of our citizens.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: In his paper, he calls city council corrupt and incompetent, and he calls the mayor—

 

[voice over]: A brainless, rich loafer.

 

Greg Young: He’s also a very spirited, spicy individual, getting frequently into, like fisticuffs with people. He was sued many times for libel.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I actually love reading Mike Walsh’s paper. It’s not just because of the way he trash talks the mayor. It’s because he’s criticizing them without it feeling like it’s just to sell papers. He’s telling you firsthand that the fix is in.

 

Greg Young: Mike Walsh wasn’t against the idea of a police force. He just understood very well that there was no way that an effective, competent, uncorrupted police force was ever going to happen with any of the people that were involved here in New York government.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Walsh isn’t just accusing rank and file officers of being corrupt. His criticisms go straight to the top of the organization.

 

Greg Young: He said some nasty things about the first superintendent of this police department. He was just like, this person was an incompetent clown.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: That person is George Matsell, the first head of this newly professionalized force. And the reason Mike Walsh hates him has a lot to do with who Matsell works for.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: Matsell is a representative of a very powerful, by far the most powerful political machine operating in New York before the Civil War.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: That political machine is the Democratic juggernaut called Tammany Hall. And according to historian John Wells, they control almost every part of the city government and run things based on what’s good for their agenda, regardless of whether it’s good for the city.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: And Matsell, as the police chief is right at the center of that.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: George Matsell is a New York native. One newspaper describes him as a big man, both physically and mentally. His sharp wit and 350 pound frame makes his presence known in every room he enters. He spends his 20s in the New York State Militia, rising to the rank of major sergeant. When he gets back to New York before he knows it. He’s on the radar of Tammany Hall politicians. They figure he has the military experience and he’s loyal to us. He’ll play ball however we need him to. And so elected officials choose him to turn New York’s ancient and corrupt system of constables and watchmen into a professional force.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: He institutes a pretty rigorous system of discipline for officers who are found not to be on duty, or to be asleep, or to be drinking, or otherwise not carrying out professionally the duties that they’ve been assigned.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Matsell makes sure that while they’re on duty, officers check in every hour.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: He kept rigorous records of the comings and goings of the officers who was jailed, what they were jailed for.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: With pressure from the newspapers and New York’s wealthy ruling class. It’s clear to Matsell that he needs to unleash New York’s new police on crime. Well. Sort of. Mary Roger’s murder case had kickstarted the process that led to the creation of this new force. But the police never solved that. There’s a lot of crime happening in the wealthier parts of the city. Business people are stealing their employees wages and exploiting them. Wives and mistresses are being beat up and assaulted by their husbands. Servants are being abused. And we know that across town, Black people are being kidnaped. But that kind of crime isn’t what the big newspapers are outraged about. And George Matsell doesn’t focus police on those kind of safety issues. Instead, he makes sure his officers pay attention to particular parts of the city. The parts of the city are full of poor folks and Black folks that the Herald has been complaining about, because those areas scare or just annoy elite New Yorkers.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: Particularly around the riverfront, and particularly in poverty stricken areas like Five Points.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And they start to put a whole lot of energy into policing folks in those neighborhoods for doing pretty ordinary stuff.

 

Wilbur Miller: Drunken people on the streets, fighting in the street. So it’s not as though the crime is really serious.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Wilbur Miller says it wasn’t really what folks were doing. The focus was more about the kind of folks that were doing it.

 

Wilbur Miller: Essentially what the behavior they objected to really, in the end, was working class behavior.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Or just trying to make some money. One day, an officer walks up to a Black woman who’s selling apples on the street.

 

Wilbur Miller: And that was illegal if you did it in front of a store front. So he says you have to move on. She says, what do you mean I have to move? You move on. She says, well, I’m not going to move on. You can kiss my ass.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Hearing this. Help me understand why people like Mike Walsh hate New York’s new police, and he peppers every sentence with personal insults about them. Walsh calls Matsell.

 

[voice over]: A pitiful lump of meanness, a renegade wretch, a walking mass of moral and physical putrefaction.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And he calls the police—

 

[voice over]: Asses and blatherskites.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: By the way, I had to look up the word blatherskite, and it means a person who talks a lot of nonsense. You’re welcome. What he calls a preposterous. To even consider the fact that Matsell would be the head of an effort to reform the police. So just imagine, on that hot summer day when Walsh, these New York police doing a military drill like the British Army with even some of his fellow Irishmen among them, presume that the officers aren’t wearing uniforms, but they’re all wearing badges, chanting and marching in unison. Some of these cops are even people that Walsh knows. And seeing them makes his stomach turn. He tells them they should resign, and he calls the ones that decide to stay—

 

[voice over]: Servile dogs.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: A week later, he creates a banner that reads no standing army of license thieves to meddle in pilfer, and starts parading around town with the residents of Five Points cheer. As Walsh ramps up his criticism, he argues that the new police are rife with corruption. He goes as far as publishing a list of men from the old guard of constables and watchmen, who are now part of the new force. He says these dudes were part of the old, sloppy, corrupt police. You know they ain’t qualified to protect and serve us. But Walsh doesn’t have anywhere near the reach of James Gordon Bennett and the Herald. Walsh is a scrappy city politician trying to build his clout and be a voice for the working class. His paper doesn’t have the buy in from the powerful to exert real pressure. But Bennett’s paper can move policy. And a few blocks away on Newspaper Row. The Herald is singing a very different two. Bennett writes that Matsell is receiving universal satisfaction amongst New Yorkers, he says—

 

[voice over]: Matsell vigilance never slumbers. There’s no such word as fail in his vocabulary.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: He calls the men serving under Matsell intelligent and competent, but with praise from politicians in New York’s most influential media leaders, Matsell’s force continues to grow and become more present in people’s lives, with hundreds of men joining up. But what is a reform, better trained, professional police force mean for Black New Yorkers? The answer is about to become terrifyingly clear. If you had been near City Hall on the afternoon of October 27th, 1846, you would have seen something that New Yorkers had never seen before. Hundreds of police officers with badges standing on duty. The most visible display of police power that New York has ever seen. About a year after this new forces form the mayor since New York’s first police chief, George Matsell, to solve a problem. And not surprisingly, the problem is free Black people. At first it’s just one Black person, a man named George Kirk. Kirk is enslaved in Georgia and figures out a way to escape to New York.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: And so he took the opportunity to steal away, on a ship as the ship made its way from Georgia up to New York City. He was discovered.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The ship captain finds Kirk when he docks at the harbor, and he’s determined to send him back. So Kirk starts screaming out for help. Some Black stevedores on the dock. Here is cries in mobilize and Kirk’s defense.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: They realize that he’s about to be arrested and they whisk him away and hide him.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: New York’s abolitionist community has grown stronger and bigger than it was in the days of David Ruggles. And this is past the days of the Kidnaping Club and Richard Riker there are even some abolitionist judges, Black abolitionists, run to a local judge named John Edmonds and say, you can’t let this captain just send George Kirk back to Georgia. The judge says the captain, the brought Kirk in isn’t his master, and he rules Kirk free. The courtroom rings out in cheers.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: And for a time, it looks like George Kirk is going to remain in New York City, a free person.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: This pisses off the ship, captain. And he’s not alone. Not surprisingly, the court case gets covered by James Gordon Bennett, and he focuses his outrage on Black resistance. What’s wild is that Bennett’s article about Kirk is focused on stopping more Black people from getting the right to vote. When he sees Black folks using the courts to free Kurt. What he sees is political power, and he’s like, if Black folks are this riled up about a slave, imagine if more of them can vote.

 

[voice over]: The first city in the union would be under the control of a violent and ignorant mob.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The ship captain goes over the judge’s head and urges the mayor and other politicians to arrest George Kirk, because the captain knows they’ll be sympathetic.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: They’re the ones who are out front defending slavery. That means that they’re the most significant protectors of what they see as the right of the South to reclaim its runaway property.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The mayor commands the police chief to get Kirk so Matsell  sends home 900 police officers to hunt down one man. And I have to imagine who knows one of those officers. But this time, it isn’t just him and a few rogue cops. It’s the most police that New York has ever assigned to one task. I know how nervous I feel whenever I get unfairly pulled over by just 1 or 2 police officers. I’m highly aware that every word and movement I make could result in me losing my freedom or my life. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be chased down by 900 police. And because there’s so many of them. New York’s abolitionist community don’t fight back at that moment. The police arrest George Kirk without a fight. And, of course, Bennett is thrilled by the actions of the police. He says so the next day in the Herald.

 

[voice over]: This riotous disposition on the part of the Negroes manifested itself yesterday to such a dangerous extent that in bringing the slave to court, the assistance of the mayor and a strong body of police was necessary to prevent a rescue. Chief of Police Mr. Matsell and his arrangements to prevent any symptom of a riot were admirably planned.

 

[voice over]: Bennett is clear. This is what police should be about. This is what they should do. George Kirk’s story is important to me for two reasons. First, historians differently than how these kinds of stories usually end. Weeks after his arrest, city officials dropped the charges against him and set him free. It’s a major victory. But the second reason that Kirk’s victory matters is that cases like his lead to something that would transform policing all over the United States. In 1850, the federal government passes the Fugitive Slave Act.

 

Edward T. O’Donnell: But essentially, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 turns police forces across the North into iterations of the New York Kidnaping Club, and every community in the North and its police department is being put on notice that it is exactly what is supposed to unfold.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: When John Wells says the Fugitive Slave Act required every police department in the North to act like a kidnaping club. It really drove home the point for me. I shared that with organizer Mariame Kaba. She agreed, but she made one important correction the Fugitive Slave Act didn’t just turn every police department into a kidnaping club. It also turned every individual white person into a potential kidnaper. It’ll now be a felony for anyone to give aid or comfort to anyone accused of being a runaway. I don’t believe so. Even those Black folks who rescued George Kirk could now be charged with felonies for helping him. New York becomes a testing ground for the first cases of the Fugitive Slave Act, and eventually, the U.S. Marshal’s Office gives George Matsell an inscribed double barreled shotgun for his help, ensuring that New York would not protect Black freedom. Growing up, when I thought about slave patrols, I thought of a ragtag group of white men in old timey clothes, armed with shotguns and chains, chasing after Black folks through wooded areas down south. The image was of a very specific southern lineage between slavery and policing. What I never thought of was the relationship between newspapers, Wall Street and a unified force of almost a thousand police marching through the streets of Manhattan with batons and badges to capture a supposed runaway.

 

Mariame Kaba: Why are cops from New York? Why would they even care so much about enslavement, and particularly about black people?

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I’m back on the streets of New York with Mariame Kaba.

 

Mariame Kaba: They are the caretakers of those people who rely so deeply on slavery remaining to exist in this country. People would defend that to the death.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Mariame Kaba says to understand why George matzoh police New York in the way he did. You need to understand his job before he became a police officer. So she takes me to a building that was once the U.S. customs house where George Matsell used to work. It was the headquarters where officials collected taxes on everything that was imported into the city. And this mattered because George Matsell knew the importance of protecting the city’s economy. But to really help me get how people like George Matsell viewed the world. Mariame Kaba directed my attention to four statues that adorn the front of the building.

 

Mariame Kaba: These pieces are highly, very racist images of what they call the four continents.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The marble sculptures of four larger than life women meant to personify America, Europe, Asia and Africa. America, as you might imagine, is depicted in the most positive light.

 

Mariame Kaba: You see America as kind of upright and you see, like the torch in hand.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: She’s victorious, a leader, and ready to spring into action. And then there’s Africa.

 

Mariame Kaba: The only nude statue is Africa.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The whole image she’s kind of slumped over and fallen.

 

Mariame Kaba: It’s, you know, the image of the kind of backwardness of Africa. She’s not awake.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Wow. Yeah. I’m really seeing, like, now. That you see it, it’s funny how that just. This sort of ideology is just embedded in these statues, like.

 

Mariame Kaba: Right.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The message is clear. Businesspeople in the financial capital of the country didn’t look at Africa as a nation they could respect. They saw it as a backward land to profit from. And George Matsell understands that the trade of human beings is a big part of New York’s economy. And that’s what has to be protected. If I was a New York police officer, I’d want to distance myself from all this history. But it doesn’t seem like they want to. Today’s N.Y.P.D. claims 1845 as the origin of the New York Police Department, the moment they claim, they became modern and professional. If that’s true, then we have to recognize that this is what modern and professional means to them. Acting like an army, targeting poor neighborhoods, kidnaping folks. A former NYPD commissioner even said that the job of an officer in 2020 was essentially the same as the job in 1845.

 

[robotic voice over]: The face of policing has changed a lot since 1845, but the nature of the work itself has not.

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Which makes this hidden history an even more chilling preview of how the NYPD defines danger for the next 180 years. And the next big test comes a few years later, when politicians get a taste of how police can supercharge their careers. That’s next time. [music plays] Empire City is a production of  copy paste