The NYPD loves to show off its diversity, but it often hides how hard and long it fought that diversity. Chenjerai takes us back in time to the real story of how the NYPD got its first Black cop – and how decades later, Black cops went to war with the NYPD’s union to push for civilian oversight of the police. But how effective is reform if the police are still only accountable to themselves? 

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.

Voices & References:

Edwin Raymond: https://x.com/edwinraymondnyc

Khalil Gibran Muhammed: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/khalil-gibran-muhammad

Natalie Cherot: https://nataliecherot.com/

Andrew Darien: https://directory.salemstate.edu/profile/andrew.darien

An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Cop-Change-Policing-America/dp/0593653165

The Watchmen: https://www.hbo.com/watchmen

The Congress of Racial Equality: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/congress-racial-equality-core

TRANSCRIPT

Chenjerai Kumanyika: It’s the last day I’m working on this show and I’m sitting in a totally silent room with ornate wooden bookshelves, mahogany tables, and a folder full of old letters. I’m at the research room in the Brooklyn Historical Society and I finish my work here. But there’s one letter I’m having trouble putting down. It’s a faded 61 year old letter from my father. The letter describes an incident of police brutality and announces the CORE. The Congress of Racial Equality is going to protest at a police precinct. Dear sir. On behalf of the victim of the brutal and inhuman experience described in the enclosed factsheet. The letter says, We are demanding an end to this cruel treatment of citizens by law enforcement officers from Birmingham to the Bronx. My father demands an investigation and that any officers found guilty should be fired and prosecuted to the full extent of the law and that justice be done. If addressed to the governor, the mayor, the police commissioner, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. A month after writing this letter. My dad and other activists handcuffed themselves inside an NYPD precinct to protest. In a surveillance video of him inside their precinct is one of the first things I found on this journey. In that video. He’s moving and I can see his face up close. But somehow, even though this letter is just typed words on a page, it makes me feel closer to him than that video. This letter helps me see him, but not through their lens. I’m reading his words and hearing his voice in my head, explaining why he was there. And it’s deep to hold this letter in my hands, knowing that in 1964 he held it in his hands before he sent it out. In response to my dad’s peaceful protests, the police commissioner said he was one of the three most dangerous men in New York. And the reason why he was so dangerous was because he was pushing for change the wrong way, the inconvenient way. And that’s something a lot of folks in power see as a threat when you ask them what what’s the right way to make change? A lot of times they’ll tell you you should just work within the system. You got a problem with the police, Why don’t you join the force, be the change you want to see? Because maybe if more Black people could be police, the cops might be less racist, less scared, and more connected to the community. And maybe that could keep us safe. If you look at the NYPD today, it seems like the folks that wanted that got their wish. Today, the chief of the police department, the deputy commissioner, and of course, the mayor, a former police officer, are all Black men. The NYPD loves to show off this diversity. But what it doesn’t love to show off is how hard and long it fought that diversity. And as New York’s police pushed back against immigration, they built themselves into a muscular political force that could silence critics and shut down any calls for change. From Wondery and Crooked Media. I’m Chenjerai Kumanyika and this is Empire City. Episode eight. Stay Dangerous. Imagine for a moment that you’re leaving work late one night in New York City. You headed to a saloon to meet your partner. But when you get there, there’s a problem. That’s the situation a Black man named Arthur Harris finds himself in. Way back in 1900.

Khalil Gibran Muhammed: As he approaches, he notices a random white man accosting his girlfriend. So he challenges this guy like, Hey, man, take your hands off of her.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: It’s not just any white guy, though. Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammed says the man Harris challenges is an undercover police officer named Robert Thorpe.

Khalil Gibran Muhammed: The two of them begin to fight because, of course, the Black man is defending his girlfriend. He doesn’t know right now that is a cop. The police officer clubs Harris and Harris responds by knifing Robert Thorpe.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: That’s a risky move because even though Harris doesn’t realize the man is a cop, stabbing any white dude as a Black man back then was dangerous and stabbing a cop even more so. Then things get worse.

Khalil Gibran Muhammed: The police officer dies the next day and it sets off a riot where the newspapers reported that something like 10,000 white men took to the streets attacking random Black people wherever they could find them. Black men and women are pulled out of buildings. They’re just randomly beat on street corners. There are ubiquitous cries to lynch people. 600 police reserves are called out to stop the violence.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: When the police get there, they see white people chasing Black folks. But instead of stopping them or arresting them.

Khalil Gibran Muhammed: Policemen would join in the chase of the frightened colored man, catch him, club him if he resisted, and then drag him away to the police station. It was the worst racist violence directed towards Black people since the draft riots of 1863.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: This incident has become known as the Tenderloin Riot. And when it finally dies down, as usual, members of the Black community start organizing. They form a group called the Citizens Protective League. They gather first person accounts of police brutality and other hate crimes during the riot so that everything the cops did is on the record. And when the cops try to lie about it, the survivors have all the receipts. Some call for Black folks to arm themselves, strap up and form self-defense committees. Other folks call for a different solution. Maybe we wouldn’t have all these problems with the police if we had some Black cops on the force. It’s not the first time Black folks have called for this. But after the Tenderloin Riot starts to gain a little more steam because this time, the violent racism of white police is on full display in front of all kind of folks.

Khalil Gibran Muhammed: So here you have journalists, white papers reporting on police officers joining in the pogrom against the Black community, abusing them, accepting that white citizens have a right to punish them and then arresting Black people. Some newspapers actually call it the police riot.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And it kicks off a pattern of riots, racist police responses and more calls for Black officers. When people talk about Black cops being the solution to police brutality today, I kind of roll my eyes. But reading the stories back then, it’s kind of moving to me to see Black folks trying everything they can to make police work for us and believing or at least hoping the Black cops might make us safer. But in the early 20th century, keeping Black communities safer wasn’t a priority for the folks in power. In 1909, a Black preacher named Reverdy Ransom sends out a different kind of appeal from the pulpit of New York’s famous Bethel AME Church. Ransom preaches that it’s time for the self-respecting and law abiding members of the race to take a strong stand against the lawless Negroes of New York City. For Ransom. Hiring Black police officers isn’t about ensuring the safety of the Black community. It’s about making sure that some Black folks, the troublemakers, stay in their place. And that is a message white New Yorkers and some only Blacks can get behind. The sermon makes front page news in a Black newspaper that’s been taken over by Booker T Washington. The New York Gauge blasts out the headline Negro Police for New York Solution given for putting down lawlessness among Negroes, stopping fights with policemen. For me to hear a Black preacher in Black newspapers talking about lawlessness among Negroes is kind of infuriating. Like, what about the lawlessness of so-called law enforcement? What about the lawlessness of the conditions folks are forced to live in? But the fear of rioting Black folks finally moved city officials to say, we never said you can’t have any Black police. If Black men think they can pass the police exam, they can try. And one Black man is ready and willing to call their bluff. His name is Samuel Battle and he’ll become the NYPD first Black police officer. I learned a lot about Battle from a scholar, an advocate named Natalie Cherot. Cherot uses her research to fight false convictions in the criminal justice system. But she also has a deep connection to Sam Battle.

Natalie Cherot: I’m Samuel Battle’s great granddaughter.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Battle died before Natalie was born. But as a kid, she soaked up all the information she could about him.

Natalie Cherot: I spent my whole life with his widow and my grandmother, his daughter, constantly talking about stories about my great grandfather.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Sam Battle came from Newburn, North Carolina, a town of folks who freed themselves from slavery. These people built one of America’s first free Black communities. And Battle’s father was one of the town’s founders. As a young adult, Battle left his home in search of a different life. And that’s how he winds up in Harlem as a luggage handler in Manhattan’s bustling Grand Central Station. He lives blocks away from Ransom’s church and probably even saw the headline on the front page of the New York Gauge calling for Black cops because within the year, he talks to Black community leaders. Buy a book called How to Be a Policeman for $0.50 and decides to apply for a job with the NYPD.

Natalie Cherot: It’s just not out of thin air when you think of it in this context of what his father did, that audacity that makes him go, Hey, I could be a cop. Well, my daddy walked free and was free before we even declared it. So I’d be a cop. Sure, why not?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Natalie says his confidence is a trait she’s always felt in her family.

Natalie Cherot: He could see vacuums of, like, power. He would be like, I’m going to see an opportunity. I’m going to grab it here.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But integrating a police force that doesn’t want to be integrated is going to be harder than Battle thinks. By this time, activists had pushed Brooklyn’s police force to hire four Black men. Their names were Wiley Overton, Phillip Hadley, John Lee and Moses Cobb. Back then. Brooklyn’s police are separate from the NYPD, and some of those Black cops are relegated to working as doormen, not even allowed to patrol. One of them shares a house with Sam Battle’s sister, Sophia. And when Sam Battle announces that he’s going to try to integrate Manhattan’s NYPD, they all worked together to help him prepare for the exam. And after studying for weeks, he walks into a test center as the only Black candidate among 600 officers. And he passes the exam. But Battle was about to learn that pulling up his bootstraps and getting on the force was the easy part.

Natalie Cherot: When he joins the police department, he’s having trouble even getting police officers to talk to him. Just to purely say anything.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: One day he comes to work to find a note waiting for him. There’s a hole in it about the size of a bullet. And a message reading Nigga if you don’t quit, this is what will happen to you. Continues to be ignored and has for years. But then something changes. One afternoon, a young Black man in Harlem runs up to a white NYPD officer and grabs his hat to troll him. Obviously, no cop likes that. But this cop feels really humiliated, escalates the situation and arrests him. Members of the community watching this blatant abuse of power. Alike. Hell, no. And they step in and resist the arrests in the melee. Somebody breaks the cop’s jaw. So he pulls out his gun and fires two shots. One of those shots kills a Black bystander named Ephraim Gathers. And just when it looks like the community’s about to roll out some street justice on the cop. In steps Samuel Battle. Battle throws his body in front of the white officer and yells out, This man is a policeman. He waves his club and clears the crowd. This Black cop put his life on the line to save a white cop instead of the Black bystander bleeding to death. You already know Battle’s white police peers love that response.

Natalie Cherot: Like, what a way out of all the things he did to prove himself, that was how he got accepted.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: From that point forward, the NYPD realizes that Black cops are their best weapon against accusations of racism. For instance, the few years later, when rumors started circulating in the Black community that a white cop had beat up a 16 year old Afro-Latino kid.

Natalie Cherot: My great grandfather and another Black detective were sent to take a photo op with this child so everybody could know that the child was safe.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Some people argued that Sam Battle was a hero for taking the picture with that kid. Maybe he even helped cool down an uprising. But Natalie’s not buying it.

Natalie Cherot: So did he stop an uprising? Like stopping an uprising means addressing the structural conditions that stop uprisings. A photo op is not going to resolve any of that.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And the struggle continued even after Battle took that picture. As Battle tried to convince the community that the kid was safe. A white cop shot and killed another Black kid named Floyd Hobbs. But you can see how the NYPD was starting to use Sam Battle. His job was to smooth things over.

Natalie Cherot: And that in 1935 was probably considered to be deeply innovative. Now, we don’t even blink when that happens. We have entire police departments that are really, really good at PR and really, really good at utilizing Black officers in times of strife. That’s a very common strategy. I noticed police departments rolling out his image and rolling out a story more in 2020 than I ever did.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Five years ago when the city of New York put up a sign to commemorate Battle, they chose the exact location where he saved a white officer who killed a Black man. Almost as if that’s how the NYPD wants him to be remembered. And it’s a hell of a lesson on what’s expected of Black folks to put on their blue uniform. Battle’s story has become legendary outside of the NYPD, too. Like an HBO series The Watchmen, a show that explores the relationship of white supremacists and police departments. There’s a scene showing new cops being sworn in. An older Black lieutenant named Battle walks up to a young Black recruit who knows who Battle is.

[clip of The Watchmen]: He’s on the force because of he. Sorry to hear that.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: As the new recruit accepts his badge, battle whispers to him.

[clip of The Watchmen]: Beware of the Cyclops.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Beware of the Cyclops. In the show. The Cyclops represents white supremacists who have infiltrated the police department. But in real life, racial supremacists weren’t some separate group of white people that had to infiltrate the police department. White supremacy was the order of the day. The default position for white folks backed by Jim Crow law. In the decades to come, more and more Black officers would join the NYPD. But as their ranks increased, so did the hostility against them. Until finally, white police would pull out all the stops to secure their power. It’s a hot summer night in New York City in 1964. Over 50 years since Sam Battle joined the force. And now there are over a thousand Black NYPD officers. But, of course, tensions are still high between police and Black folks in the city, and the chain of events is about to kick off that’ll force Black police to choose sides. It starts in Harlem when a white building superintendent tells three Black boys to get off the steps of a building.

Andrew Darien: He had called them dirty n-words. He threatened to wash them clean.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Historian Andrew Darien says the boys tell him, Leave us alone, bro. We just chillin. But the superintendent is kind of unhinged.

Andrew Darien: He starts spraying them with a garden hose when they refuse to move.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The boys fight back by throwing bottles and garbage can lids. And that’s when the cops get involved.

Andrew Darien: And upon hearing a commotion, an off duty officer comes up from a nearby basement store where he had been shopping.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The white off duty officer fired three shots, killing one of the boys. He was 15 years old. And the next day, Harlem erupts. All fed up, folks rise up, throwing bricks, rocks and Molotov cocktails at cops.

Andrew Darien: People don’t riot for no reason, and they’re not rioting because of a single incident. They’re rioting because of the day to day brutality that they experience and that has accumulated for a long period of time.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The protests spread to Brooklyn and last for almost a week. Over 100 people are injured. Nearly 500 arrested. And in the end, it’s the same old story. A grand jury cleared the cop of any wrongdoing. New York City’s oldest Black owned newspaper, the Amsterdam News, comes forward with three demands. First, fire, the white cop that killed the kid. Second, hire more Black and Puerto Rican officers. And third, figure out some real way to let regular people have oversight of the NYPD. Now, you may not be surprised to hear most of the cops hated these ideas at this point. A civilian complaint review board does exist. The problem is that the so-called civilians on the board are white NYPD officers. So the police review themselves and generally cleared themselves of any wrongdoing. And that’s how the cops like it. Well, most of the cops by now, the NYPD has a growing Black population inside of its ranks. Police officers related to people in the Black community. And they bring a different perspective. They form a fraternity inside the NYPD called the Guardians.

Andrew Darien: The guardians say if we are here to keep the peace with this community, you have to do your work to make sure that they aren’t brutalizing our citizens.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And the guardians support civilian review that actually includes civilians. And a Black NYPD officer and Guardian member named James Hargrove says. They don’t just support it passively.

[clip of James Hargrove]: We while we campaigned for it. We lobbied for it. We did everything we could for it.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: They lobbied for it. They did everything they could for it. And they weren’t the only ones pushing for real civilian review. All of this is happening around the same time that my father and other court protesters handcuffed themselves in a police precinct. And it’s around the same time he wrote that letter. They put out a flier with details on the recent beating and killing of Black and Puerto Rican folks by the NYPD. And at the bottom of that flier, it says, We demand a public review board now. But instead of listening to their totally reasonable demand, police officials attacked them and ignored their calls. So finally, they think to themselves, if the city isn’t going to take these claims to court, we’ll make our own court. One evening, Black folks across the city pour into a church on 35th Street. I imagine my dad is there moving chairs and tables and one of the church’s main halls to set it up like a courtroom. People who have been beaten and victimized by the police sit on one side and a ten person panel of civilian sits on the other to bear witness to their stories. The panel includes the founder of the ACLU, a senior church minister, a former judge and the director of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, the same group my dad is a part of. The police commissioner and the accused officers are invited, but they want no part of it.

: No policeman will appear. We do not believe in carrying on courts or public lynchings.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The first person to testify is an auto mechanic named Jesse Roberts. Roberts incident and so many others is what my dad wrote his letter about. He sits down in the chair across from the panelists and tells his story. One day a few months ago, he had gone to the police to report his car stolen. But when he got there, the police accused him of having marijuana. Roberts says they took him upstairs, locked him in the detention pen, stripped him naked, blindfolded him through hot coffee on his body and beat him for several hours. I can only imagine what it was like for Jesse Roberts to tell a story in public in front of respected members of his community and finally be heard. When the hearing is over. The national director of CORE says that the time for talking is over. We need civilian review now. He says regular people, community members, should have oversight of the police that serve in their communities. People shouldn’t have to wait for the next Lexow, the next big police commission until violence and corruption that cycles back around every 20 or so years. I’m not saying that everything was all good between activists like my father and Black police, like the Guardians. It definitely wasn’t. But what I am saying is that for years, Black New Yorkers dreamed that Black police officers could stand in support of their community. And now on the one issue of civilian review, Black police and Black activists are finally on the same side. One group that’s not on that side is rank and file white police. They’re disgusted with the mere idea of being reviewed by civilians.

Andrew Darien: They depicted it as a radical and communist civil rights inspired measure.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: When historian Andrew Darien describes how police talked about civilian review back then, it sounds like how they talk about it right now.

Andrew Darien: They said it would give criminals the upper hand. There was a lot of talk about it, handcuffing the police in the streets.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And the conversation back then is being led by a man named John  Cassese.

Andrew Darien: Everybody knew who John Cassese was. He’s a really seminal figure. Most white rank and file officers had a good deal of affection for him.

Chenjerai Kumanyika:  Cassese is a tall Italian-American police officer who’s elected president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, or the PBA, for short. Around this time, the PBA has become the official union of the NYPD.

Andrew Darien: He was an outspoken critic negotiating for the rights of officers to be able to control their work environment.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But John  Cassese has a problem. His police force doesn’t really know how to act like a union and fight like a union. He hasn’t gotten them to organize and push for the conditions they want. But what Cassese does have working in his favor is tens of thousands of pissed off cops.

Andrew Darien: He and a significant lion’s share of his constituency really saw themselves as victims. They saw themselves as victims of police management. But later they would also come to see themselves as victims of civil rights, advocacy and feminism.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And if Cassese wants a strong union he’s going to have to get them even more riled up. Have you ever heard that saying the is if you’ve been living with privilege, equality feels like oppression? Well, John Cassese knows that there are three things his white cops hate more than anything else. Liberals, powerful women and Black equality. So he turns to the media. He starts calling out hiring initiatives led by management, the city elites.

Andrew Darien: There’s a new cadet program for Black and Hispanic youths in the 1960s. They first call them community service officers. And they’re trying to make them into full fledged officers. And Cassese just can’t stop talking about racial preferences and preferential treatment and disparaging affirmative action.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So when activists and Black cops start demanding civilian review, John  Cassese focuses all his union’s rage on that.

Andrew Darien: And even though in many ways this is a racial issue for the white rank and file, I think it is yet another example of how management is trying to control them. And they see it as a kind of class bottom up issue for them.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: When New York Mayor John Lindsay attempts to add four civilian members to the civilian complaint Review Board Cassese loses his shit. He basically says this doesn’t have anything to do with safety or police brutality. The problem is liberals and activists who want to turn your city over to criminals and make it more dangerous for you. The PBA creates a petition and gets enough support to turn it into a ballot question. The PBA has over $1 million in their Treasury and Cassese says he’s willing to spend every single dollar to defeat the CCRB measure. He starts popping up on radio programs. [clip of Cassese]

Andrew Darien: And he’s not just talking about law and order. He’s not just talking about potentially handcuffing the police, but he’s making this an explicitly racial campaign by constantly referring to the Black and Puerto Rican peril or by saying that he’s sick and tired of giving in to minority groups and that he was for once going to stand up for white man’s rights.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Eventually,  Cassese’s racist commentary, gets completely unhinged and the PBA replaces him as chief spokesman. But their campaign to kill the CCRB continues to build. The PBA bankrolls racially inflammatory posters on the sides of New York City skyscrapers like one depicting a white woman coming out of the subway with a big shadow behind her. The text reads, The civilian review board must be stopped. Her life, your life may depend on it. Ultimately, it would be up to the voters. On November 8th, 1966, people went to the polls. Including police officers.

Andrew Darien: Every one of the 1300 members of the Guardians Association voted unanimously in favor of civilian review.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But 1300 Black cops are nothing compared to a department of 27,000, let alone a city of 7 million.

Andrew Darien: Fear ultimately wins out. In the end, New Yorkers end up voting basically 2 to 1 against civilian review, and it breaks down along racial lines. Black and Hispanic New Yorkers vote overwhelmingly in favor of civilian review. I think it’s as high as 80%. Most white New Yorkers vote against it. The more that you are working class, less educated and potentially bordering the same neighborhoods with these communities of color, the more likely that these racial fears are going to be touched off.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And just like that, the PBA wins its first political fight, the first of many fights that would stave off police reform efforts. And that becomes a centerpiece of what the union is there to do entrench police power. The people working for police accountability never gave up. Almost 30 years later, in 1992, the civilian review board was composed of half civilians and half police officers. Newark’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, proposed to make it all civilians. And to make it truly independent by removing the police commissioner from the process. But by then, the police union was a political juggernaut and they went off.

[news clip]: They marched around City Hall Park in a peaceful and orderly fashion. But then minutes later, thousands of cops stormed through the barricades and ran on top of cars. The rally was organized by the Cops union, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and they brought all their big weapons to protest the CCRB changes.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Despite the power of the union in their protests, the CCRB was eventually changed to an all civilian board, which seems good except for one problem. The board is under the New York Police Commissioner, so if the commissioner gets a verdict they don’t like, they can just toss it out regardless of the evidence. So there’s no real accountability coming from the outside of the department. But what about a cop trying to make change the right way from the inside? When you look back at the racist push back against integration and the fight against civilian review, all that happened when white police officers were a large majority in the NYPD. But in 2006, that changed. The NYPD became what’s called a majority minority organization. This means that collectively there are more Black and brown NYPD officers than white ones. And some days when I walk the streets in New York, the only cops I see are Black and brown. Recently, I caught up with a police officer who started two years after that shift. His name is Edwin Raymond. What’s going on, man?

Edwin Raymond: Good, good. I’m good.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Thank you so much for coming out man.

Edwin Raymond: How you feeling?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I’m all right, man. I was up late reading your book, so you owe me some food. You know what I’m saying? And I was surprised to learn about his early experiences with New York police. Edwin was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. And cops in Edwin’s neighborhood started targeting him at a young age.

Edwin Raymond: At 15. For whatever reason, they just kept stopping me, man, you know? And I didn’t know what it was at first.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But this wasn’t like once or twice.

Edwin Raymond: So he just kept stopping me, frisking me. Throwing me up, accusing me of things. It just didn’t make sense. And this continued for three years.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And over time, Edwin noticed something different about the cops that were harassing him.

Edwin Raymond: At 18, what was different was the officer was Black this time. All the other encounters were white cops. And I quickly just written that away to racism, you know. But when it was a Black cop, same behavior that confused me.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: These cops were the successors of Sam Battle. The people who should have understood Edwin and worked to keep him safe. But for some reason, they weren’t acting that way. Which surprised Edwin.

Edwin Raymond: I need to understand why even he sees me as as suspicious.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: In 2008, at the age of 22, he enrolled in the NYPD Police Academy. And Edwin says his classes didn’t ignore the department’s history.

Edwin Raymond: The first trimester of the police academy, we learn about the history of the police and just other just other historical points, like Samuel Battle essentially being the first Black officer.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But everyone says by teaching that history, the NYPD was really just checking a box instead of addressing systemic racism. His real lesson about the current NYPD and race. Came from one of his teachers who showed him a scene from the movie Crash, where a white cop pulls over and assaults a Black woman. It’s a lesson on racial profiling.

Edwin Raymond: Like if you see someone that you want to pull over because of their race, don’t just pull them over because of their race. Wait for a traffic infraction and now you can pull them over. Because of their race.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Edwin’s instructor wasn’t telling him not to profile. He was telling them how to get away with it.

Edwin Raymond: And this was an Asian man. You know, I’m like, whoa, Interesting. You know, because I don’t realize it’s structural yet. I’m thinking that this is this instructor, what he wants to do and maybe what he’s wrongfully teaching. I don’t realize the whole damn system would actually reward cops who think that way, who move that way, who end up getting arrests that way.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And no matter how hard he tried to resist it, Edwin started feeling the worst parts of policing, taking root in his own mind.

Edwin Raymond: So I remember, there’s three of us. We’re in plainclothes. We’re at New Lots subway station. And on the other side of the turnstile, there’s a gentleman asking people to swipe him in. Right.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: No one was in danger here, but this was exactly the kind of person that Edwin was trained to focus on.

Edwin Raymond: So everyone’s just walking by him and then he starts to walk towards the exit gate because if you enter the exit gate, that’s also theft of service. It’s the same charges if you jump the turnstile. So when he goes towards the exit gate, I look at my sergeant, I look at the other officer like, get ready. You know, it’s about to go down. And then one of the last passengers, an old grandma. He’s like, Ma’am, ma’am, you’ve got a swipe? You got a swipe? She reaches into her purse. And she swipes him on to the train. And, brother. I was so upset. Wow. I was so upset. I was like, Damn, this was supposed to be my collar. Right. And I was like, I was pissed. And it took me about five minutes to then say to myself, wait, wait, wait. Edwin. Did you just get upset because a Black man didn’t break the law? Are you serious right now? Did you just get upset because he did not break the law? And that’s when I said, Yo, wake up, bro. Remember who you are.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: What Edwin slowly comes to realize is that his job is just to deliver the numbers that will make his department look good. And the fact that he’s a Black cop doesn’t really matter.

Edwin Raymond: In terms of changing the systemic issues. It’s not delivering what we think it is that common sense appeal that having Black people in these positions gives folks is just not what’s actually happening. It looks good, right? It it triggers a sense of pride because you’re filling in the void with what you think is happening behind the scenes, but it’s not actually happening.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Edwin says he didn’t become a cop to profile his own people, but the department will punish him for not arresting enough folks. And when he complained, the department retaliated against him and it impacted his career as well as the lives of the people he policed. So in 2015, he decided to go public as a whistleblower. He was joined by 11 other officers, all speaking out about the race based quota system. Edward became the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the city and police department. Ultimately, the lawsuit was dismissed by the courts in 2022. Years later, Edwin decided to retire from the force. His journey had shown him that there were too many obstacles for him to make change from the inside. And what it showed me was how much the NYPD works against the people in uniform who try to be honest. Good cops. Even though the force is more diverse than ever, all those diverse faces are still protecting the same system. In 2023, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, the NYPD’s first Black woman to hold that office throughout more substantiated CCRB complaints than any previous commissioner in history. And her replacement, another person of color, Edward Caban three out hundreds of CCRB cases before he resigned. Edwin and I walked up to Sam Battle Plaza in the Schomburg Museum in Harlem together. I was born in Harlem, and we reflected on all the history that led to both of us being here. As Edwin tried to come to terms with the 15 years he gave to the NYPD, he explained why getting the safety we need means we have to get to the root of the problem.

Edwin Raymond: As long as this white supremacy, as long as discrimination is baked into the ingredients, we’re still going to get the results that we’ve been seeing that we you know, we we have to remember at the end of the day, the police are not the system itself. They are the muscle of the system. And the muscle will always reflect not just the laws, but the values of a society.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Before you listen to this series, you probably knew there are some problems with the police, but maybe you thought they’re still our best shot at safety. Whether we could solve whatever’s wrong with police, with enough good apples and the right reform. And maybe you thought that the NYPD and the 18,000 other police departments across the country were created to prevent crime. But this institution, the NYPD and policing in America, did not arise in good faith from people trying to keep you and me safe. And if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this series, it’s this. Year after year. When you hear politicians roll out the same tired ideas that have failed for over a century about training or diversity, but checks and balances like there’s some kind of new innovative solutions, now you have the history to know that when they say that we’ve been there, we already tried that. And the stakes are too high to keep repeating this cycle again and again. When I started this series, I wanted to reveal the untold history of the NYPD so it doesn’t stay hidden. And in the years since, I’ve seen my daughter Eniola go from saying that the police are here to keep us safe.

Eniola Kumanyika: They they keep people safe.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: To fearing the police, fearing that they’ll take her away, take her to jail.

Eniola Kumanyika: What if it does? What if it does happen?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: How is it going to happen? She’s asking these questions based on what she’s seen the police do in her community. And I’ve struggled with the answers. But then I thought of the words of organizer Mariame Kaba. Hope is a discipline. It’s okay to feel sadness and rage. But like David Ruggles, Elizabeth Jennings Graham and the ancestors on who’s shoulders, we stand. We must be intentional and relentless about finding our way forward. So while Eniola will know the truth about police, she’ll also learn about the stories of resistance. Well, you know what Eniola? We’re not going to let that happen because we’re going to. We have lots of people. We can keep each other safe. Okay.

Eniola Kumanyika: Yeah. We have Aunty [?]. We have grandma.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Grandma from cop watchers to mental health workers. From abortion providers to people protesting war from a father who turned up inside the police precinct. To my mother, who has dedicated her life to public health. We’re the most safe when we treat each other’s lives, especially the lives of people in crisis, as precious and take responsibility for each other.

Eniola Kumanyika: They never want us to get hurt.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Hurt and we can all wrap around each other and then everybody will be safe and know and we won’t go away. When you stand on the right side of history, people will say you’re uninformed to say you’re using the wrong tactics and they’ll even say you’re dangerous. But the NYPD’s own history has taught me that for us to stay safe, we have to stay dangerous. Empire City is made with a commitment to ensure that the stories of those who were and still are impacted by the NYPD are always part of the stories we tell ourselves about the police, about America, and about democracy. And those impacted people include Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, Mark Davidson, Eric Garner. Sean Bell. Amadou Diallo. Ramarley Graham. Akai Gurley. Kimani Gray. Deborah Danner. Saheed Vassell. Kawasaki Trawick, Abner Louima. Frankie Arzuega. Clarence Jones. Javier Payne. Nicholas Heyward Jr. Win Rosario. Marilyn Rivera. Natasha McKenna. Jasmine Heise. Shantel Davis. Benita Browder. Marsha P Johnson. Sylvia Rivera. Dounya Zayer. Christina Gonzalez. Emily Waters. Zoe Leonard. And Genesis Gutierrez. To learn more. Go to Crooked.com/EmpireCity. Or check out our show notes.