9781137321947

Becoming New York’s Finest
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Becomin g N ew Yo rk’s F i n e s t
R ac e, Gen de r, a n d t h e I n t egr at ion

of t h e N Y PD, 1935 –19 80
Andrew T. Da ri en
BECOMING NEW YORK’S FINEST
Copyright © Andrew T. Darien, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-32193-0
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-45817-2 ISBN 978-1-137-32194-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137321947
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Darien, Andrew T., 1970–
Becoming New York’s finest : race, gender, and the integration of the
NYPD, 1935–1980 / Andrew T. Darien.
pages cm
1. Discrimination in law enforcement—New York (State)—New
York. 2. Discrimination in employment—New York (State)—New York.
3. Sex discrimination against women—New York (State)—New York.
4. New York (N.Y.). Police Department—Offificials and employees.
5. Policewomen—New York (State)—New York. 6. Minorities—
Employment—New York (State)—New York. I. Title.
HV8148.N52D37 2013
363.208⬘0097471—dc23 2013019900
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrationss vii

Preface: Howard and Roger and Mee ix
Acknowledgmentss xix
Introduction 1
Part I Desegregation and Domesticity, 1935–1963

1 Meritocracy and the Illusion of Color Blindness 15
2 The Alter Ego of the Patrolman 43
Part II Civil Rights and Feminism, 1964–1972

3 Harlem and Civilian Review
w 73
4 Ladies on Patrol 103
5 Soul Brother or Policeman? 129
Part III Blue-Collar Backlash, 1968–1980

6 The Silent Majority Strikes Back
k 161
7 Welcome to Fear City: Last Hired, First Fired 189
Notess 203
Indexx 261
Illustrations
1.1 Welcome Home 28

1.2 Oh Boy, Free! 32
1.3 African American Policeman in New York k 34
2.1 Women Police Officers Inspecting and Practicing
with Handguns 50
2.2 Women Take Qualifying Exam for New York City
Police Force 56
2.3 Thanks Fellas 59
2.4 Dangerous Curves 60
2.5 Traffic Cop 60
2.6 Need Glasses 61
2.7 Plea Insanityy 62
3.1 African American Woman Being Carried to Police
Patrol Wagon during Demonstration in Brooklyn, NY
Y 74
3.2 The Fatal Shooting of Powell 77
3.3 Policeman Confronts a Group at Seventh Avenue and
126th Street during Renewed Violence in Harlem 78
3.4 Office Practices Basic Spanish Phrases 87
4.1 Sergeant’s Chariott 112
4.2 Look Behind 113
4.3 Sergeant Change to Civilian 113
4.4 Sergeant Change from Bathing Suitt 113
4.5 Cop Caption 52 122
5.1 Police Outside Nation of Islam Office 155
Pr eface: Howard and
Roger and Me
Howard
I had the honor of meeting with New York City Police Department
(NYPD) Commissioner Howard Safir in the late 1990s to discuss
an exhibit on the history of the department that the New York
Historical Society (NYHS) hired me to curate. A number of other
players attended the meeting, including NYHS president and future
public advocate Betsy Gotbaum, as well as Carol Safir, the commis-
sioner’s wife. The purpose of the meeting was threefold: to discuss
the possibility of borrowing documents and artifacts from the depart-
ment archives; to reassure Commissioner Safir that our exhibit would
fairly represent the department; and to explain the methodology of
museum exhibition and public history to Carol Safir, to whom the
department granted the responsibility of revamping its downtown
Police Museum.
This was an exciting moment for me as a historian whose work
rarely reached beyond the boundaries of narrow academic conferences
and journals. The NYHS had recruited me for the project because of
my research on the history of the police department, particularly that
on the roles of African Americans and women. I imagined that this
would be a unique opportunity to raise meaningful questions to the
public about the historical role of crime, law enforcement, citizenship,
and identity. I had some sense that debates that had validity among
academics might be taboo in public dialogue. I was not well prepared
for the defensiveness produced by questions deemed “political.”
Perhaps it was naive to expect that I could write a history of the
NYPD, let alone construct a public exhibit about it, without getting
embroiled in contemporary debates about the role of police in city
life. Maybe I simply did not want to acknowledge the power dynam-
ics at hand. I was merely a budding historian searching for answers
to questions about the city and its past whereas Commissioner Safir
x P r e f a ce
represented a formidable institution that guarded its reputation with

great vehemence. Safir’s literal and metaphoric stature was comically
impressed upon me in our initial meeting: the commissioner is a com-
manding 6⬘ 5⬘⬘ with an iron jaw and firm handshake, whereas I am a
humble 5⬘ 7⬘⬘. Our respective means of transportation reflected the
gulf between us. The Safirs arrived in a chauffeured limousine. I trav-
eled on an uptown C train.
The meeting was a quick lesson in the politics of public storytelling.
The discussion was, in part, to educate Carol Safir about the meth-
ods of imparting historical facts and ideas through the new Police
Museum. Carol Safir was neither a curator nor a historian, though she
was certainly someone who had vested interest in the positive depic-
tion of the department’s past. I urged her to think about what kind
of narrative she wanted to create on behalf of the Police Museum. I
explained that a history museum was similar to a written work of his-
tory in that it contained a thesis or particular argument that it wanted
to impart to its audience. Like a book, a museum supported that thesis
with evidence, divided the narrative into sections, and told the story in
a logical fashion. To my surprise, this suggestion made the Safirs inor-
dinately uncomfortable. Carol Safir replied that herr museum would
not be political but would instead present “the facts.” She reminded
me that the department had plenty of guns, batons, swords, whistles,
badges, monuments, and photographs that could be displayed with-
out a political objective. She would let the artifacts “speak for them-
selves” and “tell their own story.” The Police Museum, she asserted,
would be assembled objectively and open to the public so that visitors
could assign their own meaning to the history.
I concurred that the accessibility was a valid and worthy endeavor
but that absolute objectivity would be more elusive. She would do
better to think of objectivity as aspiration rather than an attainable
goal. I endeavored to explain that the museum, regardless of the intent
of its curators, would communicate certain messages to its audience
by virtue of the documents and artifacts selected, their arrangement,
and the text written beneath them. Full well knowing that a police
museum could be a public relations coup for the NYPD, and trying
to make a case for what historians and museum curators endeavor to
create, I explained that document selection, placement, and text could
tell a very compelling narrative about the centrality of the NYPD to
New York City history. It was unclear whether she simply did not
understand the significance of such an exhibit or if she sought to hide
her politics under the cloak of objectivity. Her firm and irked rebuttal
that she was interested only in “the facts” effectively ended further
P r e f a ce xii
dialogue. It was clear that Police Museum would maintain the blue
wall of silence.
The other memorable encounter during this conference involved
our discussion of Frank Serpico, the NYPD detective who blew the
whistle on police corruption and helped to initiate the damning 1972
Knapp Commission. Commissioner Safir himself raised the issue of
Serpico in the context of a discussion on academic writing on crimi-
nal justice. He warned us that we ought to be wary of academics
who wrote about the police department because there were a “lot
of radicals out there who aren’t interested in the facts.” The impor-
tant point he sought to establish was that people who questioned the
validity of the department’s endeavors were, by virtue of their inquiry,
untrustworthy. Serpico was, the commissioner claimed, “certifiable.”
Presumably he was referring to Frank Serpico’s poor mental health,
but he failed to note that the detective’s mental decline was the prod-
uct of being harassed by fellow officers who did not want him to
uncover their unscrupulous practices. Safir’s comment that Serpico
was certifiable became a means of dismissing the man, his claims of
corruption, and any general criticisms of the department. Like a good
cop, Safir knew that the best defense was denial and a good attack. It
was to his advantage to disallow certain questions from ever being put
on the table. In so doing, the commissioner was a true professional—
civil, polite, and ingratiating.
The meeting sent a clear message to the staff of the NYHS that
the commissioner did not want anything controversial in the exhibit.
The directive to “just include the facts” meant not asking ques-
tions. The exhibit’s final incarnation, titled “New York’s Finest,” was
not the most representative or substantive view of NYPD’s past. A
diverse group of collaborators on the NYHS did their best to shape
the final product. Nervous administrators, designers more concerned
with appearance than content, and restrictions on funding prevented
us from assembling an especially compelling exhibition. We glossed
over episodes of police brutality, harassment, and racial profiling,
and instead dedicated an inordinate amount of space to celebrate the
heroic work of police officers. The point is not that the latter narra-
tive was false. Many police officers had been noble, professional, and
heroic, but our prominent featuring of this dimension overwhelmed
equally important stories about policing, social control, brutality, race,
and gender.
The exhibit was not without its merits. We were able to raise a
few critical issues about the history of the department, including an
inquiry into the history of corruption. However, this small piece was
xii P r e f a ce
dwarfed by a larger exhibit that barraged visitors with valiant images

of officers nobly serving on the city’s behalf. The exhibit contained a
number of items of which, we thought, the commissioner would be
proud: depictions of police officers fighting crime, working with chil-
dren, capturing criminals, and keeping the city safe. We also included
a memorial wall to honor officials killed in the line of duty, comple-
mented by no parallel memorial wall for innocent civilians killed by
police officers. Even the exhibit’s title capitulated to the commis-
sioner. I had proposed adding a question mark to the exhibit title
to acknowledge that this was an open debate rather than a definitive
statement. In the end, the NYHS staff found even this minor conces-
sion to be too provocative.
Despite our extensive efforts to honor the department and the men
who served on its behalf, the Safirs ultimately perceived our exhibit as
a menace to the department’s authority. I was shocked to learn that
the Safirs referred to “New York’s Finest” as the “Serpico Exhibit.”
The exhibit’s onlyy reference to Frank Serpico came through a single
photograph of Al Pacino as Serpico in a panel dedicated to film and
television representations of the department. Safir could have just as
easily referred “New York’s Finest” as the “Sipowicz exhibit,” but
his affection for Dennis Franz and “NYPD Blue” would not have
allowed him to flog our exhibit in the same manner. For Safir, Serpico
was a symbol of someone who ominously crossed the “thin blue line”
by breaking the police wall of silence. Tainting our exhibit with the
Serpico label allowed Safir to dismiss any potentially critical discourse
it might have raised.
Throughout the course of the exhibit, the NYHS invited police
executives, academics, and local politicians to serve as guest speak-
ers and join in a public dialogue with New Yorkers about the chang-
ing nature of policing in New York. Among the invited guests was
William Bratton, the former commissioner who initiated many of
the crime reduction changes for which Commissioner Safir has been
credited. This invitation apparently raised the ire of both Safir and
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani who thereafter privately disparaged the
exhibit. Some NYHS staff reported that Mayor Giuliani had been so
perturbed by the Bratton invitation that he cut the city’s funding for
the NYHS.
The most critical lesson from the exhibit came in the form of the
public’s reaction. We included a notebook at the exhibit’s exit that
invited visitors to record their impressions of both the material assem-
bled and their experiences with the NYPD in general. Guests pro-
vided an interesting array of approving and condemning comments
P r e f a ce xiii
iii
regarding both the exhibit and the department itself. After reading
through the widely divergent comments, a NYHS employee contently
smiled and commented that we had “got it right” because we had been
attacked “equally from both the right and the left.” I shared his sat-
isfaction that we presented various points of view and that the public
interpreted out exhibit on multiple levels. I did not believe, however,
that this confirmed we “got it right.” The litmus test for whether or
not our narrative told the “truth” was not alienating equal numbers
of New Yorkers across the political spectrum. We were not simply an
objective and neutral voice amidst a sea of polarized citizens.
The “true” version of events surrounding the police department
may upset a majority of New Yorkers for a multitude of reasons. I
disagreed with my colleague’s assumption that everyone attacking the
exhibit from the left or right was politically biased and, therefore, eas-
ily dismissed. Our version of “New York’s Finest” was merely one nar-
rative among many. It was neither apolitical nor objective. The ways in
which we marshaled facts, assembled our exhibit, selected documents
and artifacts, and wrote text to support a particular perspective was
political. This is very different from suggesting that the exhibit had
no facts, or that there was no real, verifiable evidence. We certainly
endeavored to remain factual and tell the truth but deployed facts to
support what we believed were the most representative stories of the
department’s past. Furthermore, the “truth” is not some discrimi-
nate middle point between the left and right. While there may be no
absolute truth about the department’s past, any honest interpretation
of it must be critical. It is the very nature of what historians do. We
examine, prod, explain, criticize, and marshal evidence as we aspire
to the truth. Competent historians tell multiple truths from a host of
political positions, right, left, and center.
Roger
There may be no absolute truth in history but evidence certainly
matters. As I danced around the delicate project of putting together
the NYHS exhibit, I conducted extensive research on the history of
integration of African Americans and women in the NYPD in the post-
war period. One of the richest sources for this topic has been the oral
histories conducted with African American and female pioneers in the
NYPD. In a pre-Internet age, these historical figures were not always
easy to identify. I began with a series of names found on a document
at the Chicago Historical Society from the fraternal organization for
New York’s black police officers known as the Guardians. I located
xiv P r e f a ce
a similar list for policewomen when rummaging through the Police

Archives. If a member had a unique enough last name, was still alive,
and lived in New York City I was able to identify him or her in the
phone book. Without formal introductions I would place unsolicited
phone calls and hope for the best. Over time my list grew and I had
the privilege of interviewing seminal players in the movement for
policewomen’s rights such as Felicia Shpritzer, Gertrude Schimmel,
Kathy Burke, and Olga Ford.
The case of the Guardians proved more difficult. This was a more
established fraternal organization that had put out its own news-
letter for decades and had a potential treasure trove of documents
to explore. Interviews can be enlightening, but are best comple-
mented by old-fashioned paper records. Each Guardian I interviewed
dircected me to Roger Abel who had been the president of the orga-
nization in the early 1970s. They referred to Roger as the “historian”
of the Guardians because of his in-depth knowledge of the depart-
ment, as well as his warehousing of old institutional records. If I
wanted to tell the story of integration in the NYPD meeting this man
was imperative.
I can still remember how dumbfounded I was by our initial con-
versation. At this juncture, I had practiced an introductory script to
establish credibility with and gain access to potential interviewees. It
was clear that Roger was going to be a tough customer. He politely
explained to me that he did indeed serve as Guardian president and
had collected many of the organization’s materials in his home. He
even offered to grant me an interview but said that any review of his
documents would be impossible. It was not clear to me why this was
the case, but I got a clue when he responded gruffly that he was “tired
of being ripped off by white academics.” Roger made reference to
a Columbia University graduate student who wrote an irresponsible
and inaccurate depiction of the Guardians. Had I not been thrown
off guard by Roger’s stonewalling, I would have communicated a glib
response about the superior moral rectitude of graduate students from
New York University.
He concluded our conversation by inviting me to conduct an oral
history with him so that he could set me straight on the history of the
Guardians. He did note that his office was in Bedford-Stuyvesant and
that he would be accessible only in the late evenings. I believed this
to be some sort of litmus test for how much I was literally and meta-
phorically willing to enter the black community. I was game. We set an
interview for 9 p.m. later in the summer. In the meantime, I learned
through the grapevine that some of Roger’s defensiveness had to do
P r e f a ce xv
v
with his long-term project to write a history of the Guardians. His

reticence about white academics seemed genuine enough, but the
professional competition component was not to be discounted.
Uncertain of how to handle the situation, I met with Robin
D. G. Kelley, one of my dissertation readers and a prominent African
American historian. He validated Roger’s concerns and made it clear
that this was a matter of personal, intellectual, and professional trust.
We agreed that my project, which looked at the integration of African
Americans and women into patrol work as a means of exploring post-
war identity politics, was in no way in competition with his institu-
tional history of the Guardians. He recommended that I provide
Roger with a copy of my project proposal and, in the spirit of profes-
sional collegiality, copy every single Guardian related documentt I had
collected during the course of my research. This included dozens of
newspaper articles, periodicals, pamphlets, and correspondence that I
had gathered from various libraries and archives. His final advice was
to deliver the package to the interview without asking for anything in
return.
I packed up my audio recorder and cardboard box full of materials
and delivered them to Roger’s office at the prescribed time. Bedford-
Stuyvesant has been a cultural center for Brooklyn’s black population
and featured prominently in the 1960s protests and rioting against
police brutality. At the time I was a Brooklyn resident myself, liv-
ing in the largely white and affluent neighborhood of Park Slope.
An avid runner, I had dashed through most of Brooklyn’s neighbor-
hoods, including Bedford-Stuyvesant, but this was my first pedestrian
voyage into “Bed-Stuy” at night. I was most struck by the number of
residents who looked at me as if I did not belong. None of their stares
was hostile, but rather suggested that I might be lost or confused.
It is entirely possible that no one stared and that I had projected my
own anxieties onto the neighborhood’s residents. It was time for my
education to begin in earnest.
Much to my surprise, Roger could not have been more amiable.
Like Howard Safir, Roger engulfed my hand in a firm handshake but,
unlike his predecessor, welcomed me with great warmth. His cheerful
greeting was a pleasant surprise given his brusque phone demeanor.
Like Safir, Roger possessed a set of iron-clad convictions, and his ver-
sion of the truth about the Guardians and the NYPD. The purpose of
my meeting with Roger was, of course, different from that with Safir.
Whereas I met with Safir as part of a larger group to fashion an exhibit
at the NYHS, I interviewed Roger as part of my own project on the
integration of African Americans into the NYPD. In theory, I was
xvi P r e f ace
the researcher, historian, and interviewer, but Abel’s experience, age,

stature, and domineering personality dictated the interview. He was a
greatt interviewee because of his knowledge of the department and his
skills as a raconteur. I learned as much as could hope from such a sea-
soned veteran of the department’s 1960s racial wars. That said, I was
overly deferential, failed to take command of the interview, and was
less engaged in the process of give-and-take that constitutes the most
effective oral histories. Roger had been around the block too often to
let a civilian academic 30 years his junior control the interview.
In certain ways Roger and the commissioner were mirror images
of one another, equally passionate and convinced of the righteousness
of their perspectives. Roger’s story of race in the NYPD was one of
grotesque and overt brutality, harassment, and corruption. It was also
a tale of valiant efforts by African American police officers to challenge
the institutional racism of the department and to serve honorably on
its behalf. I had been largely sympathetic to his view both because
of my own politics and the evidence that I had found in the histori-
cal record. Nevertheless, I was left with gaps, questions, and doubts
about particular dimensions of his narrative. It would take years of
documentation and exploration to fill in some, though by no means
all, of those holes.
At the end of the interview I presented him with my treasure trove
of documents, for which he thanked me. We had been late into the
night at this juncture and he offered to escort me back to the subway.
We were in the private office of his security agency, and I could still
see his gun hanging from the back of his chair. His was a generous
offer of protection but also one that I interpreted as another test. He
seemed to be asking whether or not I felt safe to walk through a black
neighborhood alone at night. At 5⬘ 7⬙ and 135 pounds, I exuded lit-
tle confidence walking through any neighborhood alone at night but
declined the offer. We shook hands and parted ways. I encountered no
problems in the half-mile walk back to the train but did notice some-
one following me as I descended the subway stairs. Roger had indeed
escorted me. It was a touching paternal gesture.
I suspected that would be our only conversation, which was vali-
dated by a long silence. A few months later I happened to be attending
a track meet and saw Roger walking through the stands. He joined me
and we spent a portion of the afternoon watching and talking about
track. It was a bizarre coincidence. I had learned through Roger’s oral
history that he had a track scholarship to New York University but
had to drop out when he was drafted for the Vietnam War. He was
unable to return to school and joined the NYPD in order to make
P r e f a ce xvii
ii
ends meet. I had been a doctoral student at New York University and
previously ran track at the University of Michigan. Track provided
us with another common bond, and we whittled away the afternoon
watching and discussing the sport. He told me that he had read the
proposal for my project and thought that it was brilliant. I know he
was being overly complimentary for the sake of collegiality, but this
validation coming from a past president of the Guardians was never-
theless meaningful. One always fears that if a historical actor could
actually read the histories of himself or herself, he or she would be
appalled.
In subsequent months Roger and I spoke on the phone and he
gradually released pertinent documents to me. If we did not form a
friendship, then we certainly established mutual professional respect.
I was never able to gain full access to his collection, but the intel-
lectual exchange that we shared over the next couple of years was
inordinately valuable to me. I am quite certain that I did little or noth-
ing to change his perspective on the department. His primary aim in
writing The Black Shields, s which he published shortly before his death
in 2010, was to celebrate the valiant work of black police officers in
the NYPD. His subjectivity and level of conviction matched those
of Commissioner Safir. The certitude of these men enabled them to
tackle the herculean challenges of their professional lives, but hardly
rendered them impartial observers of the department’s past.
I raise this issue of objectivity because it informs a central argument
of this book. The ideal of objectivity has been a fundamental part of
the NYPD’s ideology since its inception as a professional department
in 1845. While the departmental credo of “keeping the department
out of politics and keeping politics out of the department” has been
a noble goal, it too often has been a means of masking the politi-
cal objectives of the police brass, managers, and the rank-and-file.
Each of these groups has marshaled the objective ideal on its behalf
to defend corruption, brutality, sexism, harassment, intimidation, and
most important for this story, the exclusion of women and African
Americans from their ranks.
Acknowledgments
A ny writer who has taken decades to complete a single work of his-

tory has accrued multiple debts to various mentors, librarians, col-
leagues, archivists, students, and family and friends who have offered
a bounty of encouragement, support, and patience.
Becoming New York’s Finestt began as a doctoral dissertation at New
York University and in many ways is the product of the stalwart sup-
port of my advisor Daniel J. Walkowtiz. It was in Danny’s labor his-
tory seminar that I learned of the many complicated racial, ethnic,
and gender dimensions of the American working class. He challenged
my idealistic preconceptions about the working class, offered mul-
tiple avenues to pursue scholarly inquiry, and instilled confidence in
my academic journey by nurturing my inner sitzfleisch. It was also at
New York University that I had the great honor of working with Linda
Gordon, for whom I served as research assistant. The rigor and disci-
pline with which Linda approached various book projects, academic
organizing, and conferences became the template for my own scholar-
ship. Her reading of my manuscript and our many conversations about
the trajectory of women’s history has proven invaluable in shaping this
project. Robin D. G. Kelley appropriately took me to task numerous
times for my simplistic approach to race and policing and helped me to
navigate the tricky political and personal dimensions of writing on such
a combustible topic. Many fine historians at New York University and
Columbia University served on my committee or otherwise provided
astute feedback, including Alan Brinkley, Martha Hodes, Kenneth T.
Jackson, Carl Prince, David Reimers, and Marilyn Young.
Librarians and archivists have offered their graciousness and assis-
tance in countless ways. I am especially thankful to Kathleen Collins
and Ellen Belcher of the Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice. They were essential in helping me track down sources,
navigate through NYPD Annual reports, and contextualize various
pamphlets, reports, and records within the larger secondary literature
of race and gender in the NYPD. Likewise, I am very much the benefi-
ciary of the staffs at the Municipal Archives of the City of New York,
xx Ack n o wl e d g m e n t s
the Museum of the City of New York, the New York Historical Society,
the Chicago Historical Society, the Elmer Holmes Bosbst Library at
New York University, and the Widener Library at Harvard University.
This history would not have been nearly as complete had I not had
the opportunity to speak with the historical actors who are featured so
prominently in it. The oral histories that I conducted with black and
female pioneers in the NYPD were no small part of my larger educa-
tion on race, gender, and policing. Historians rarely have the privilege
of speaking with their historical subjects. I want to thank all of my
interviewees for the insight they provided, and to extend a preemptive
appreciation for not telling me upon reading this book that I got it
all wrong. A special thanks to Roger Abel, Cathy Burke, Olga Ford,
James Frazier, James Hargrove, William Johnson, and Sylvia Smith.
In many ways, the intellectual exchange and camaraderie of fel-
low graduate students was the greatest source of sustenance during
this project’s inception and thereafter. I was the beneficiary of the
great minds and fellowship provided by Louis Anthes, Kathleen Barry,
Mark Elliott, Michael Lerner, Neil Maher, I. Scott Messinger, Debra
Michals, David Quigley, and David Tsirulnik.
I have had the good fortune to land an academic position at Salem
State University where my colleagues have provided similar intellectual
and emotional sustenance. The brilliant editing skills of Gayle Fischer,
the vision and forthrightness of Jamie Wilson, and the sound judg-
ment and generosity of Brad Austin have made Becoming New York’s
Finestt a far more interesting book than it would be otherwise. The
History Department at Salem State University has been a nurturing
home to thrive as an educator and historian. The remarkable work of
my students inspire me every single day I have the privilege of being
in their classroom.
The only person who is as intimate with, and surely equally fatigued
by, this project is Stephanie Erber, for whom I have accrued the great-
est debt. Stephanie has been an unwavering enthusiast for this project,
from its early inception many years ago through the constant revi-
sions, uncertainties, and efforts at abandonment. She has also been
my most reliable and thoughtful editor, reading numerous drafts and
offering essential ideas about how to write more clearly, craft an argu-
ment, and marshal evidence in a coherent manner. She has been a real
trooper, spending Sundays alone, and later with our boys Isaac and
Eli, while I hacked away at the project.
This book is dedicated to Simeon Kinsley and Leonora Dmitrovsky,
who gave me the social conscience and pragmatism to tell the truth,
however much, like all good New Yorkers, they may have argued
about it.
Introduction
T he New York City Police Department (NYPD) takes great pride

in its efficiency as a crime-fighting unit and in the competence of its
individual officers. At the core of its identity is the notion of “New
York’s Finest,” a professional department that recruits the most capa-
ble, talented, and industrious New Yorkers, independent of personal
connections. Many of the city’s residents have long venerated the
department’s professionalism as well as the hard working blue-collar
virtues of its officers. Some citizens revere the NYPD as the most
effective and progressive law enforcement institution in the nation. Its
cops have come to be associated with the positive qualities of sturdi-
ness, devotion, virility, and heroism. Still, this impression has been far
from uniform. Many detractors have described the “finest” as brutish,
corrupt, bigoted, ominous, and provincial. The wildly divergent views
of the city’s police force reflect a divided citizenry and the compli-
cated racial, ethnic, gender, and class politics of the city.
The public face of the NYPD in the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury was a large, burly, tough, blue-collar, Irish man. Some Italian,
Jewish Polish, Greek, and other Eastern and Southern European men
secured police jobs, but their whiteness afforded them a relatively quiet
assimilation and did little to change the public’s generally positive view
of its officers. At the same time, this alleged meritocracy essentially
closed its ranks to African Americans and women. The NYPD brass
made periodic black and female hires in the first half of the twentieth
century, but deemed the majority of African Americans and women as
unfit for police duty. Power brokers associated African Americans with
crime and, therefore, on the other side of the “thin blue line” between
civilization and anarchy. African Americans were more often the tar-
gets than the agents of policing. Women also warranted police atten-
tion, but, unlike African Americans, were the objects of protection.
The NYPD reflected a general societal view that women’s vulnerabil-
ity made them potential victims who were disqualified for police work.
African Americans and women each constituted less than 1 percent
of the departmental force before World War II.1 These exclusions are
2 B e co m i n g Ne w Y or k ’s F i n e s t
noteworthy, but equally remarkable is how African Americans and

women would fill the NYPD ranks in the postwar period.
The democratic promise of the New Deal and World War II set the
foundation for the modern civil rights and feminist movements and
thereby initiated new conversations about the function, practices, and
personnel of urban policing. This political climate intersected with
and encompassed a number of problems endemic to police depart-
ments in general and New York’s in particular: a shortage of police
personnel, a local mandate to reduce crime, a renegotiation between
police departments and local communities, and a call for police sensi-
tivity. These problems and sentiments resulted from a prevailing view
that police were antagonistic to social change. Politicians, activists,
academics, and police management reconsidered recruitment prac-
tices in light of rising crime rates, urban riots, and antiwar violence.
The NYPD, like many departments across the nation in the postwar
period, opened its doors in the two new groups of officers, primarily
African Americans and women, but also Latinos and, later, Asians.
The justification for the inclusion of African American men and
women of all backgrounds often focused on their differences from the
white men who constituted the rank-and-file. Police executives, pub-
lic advocates, and politicians who paid lip service to equal opportunity
and treatment concurrently emphasized the purportedly unique and
essential skills of the new recruits: women’s inherent sensitivity and
communication and African Americans’ familiarity with the ghetto.
Police recruiters then issued women and black recruits the contradic-
tory task of serving as gender and racial specialists and assimilating
into the department’s otherwise stagnant culture. Police supervi-
sors told African American cops that they were no different from
their white peers, yet exclusively assigned them to black neighbor-
hoods. They asked women to adopt male traits and d redefine the job
as feminine.
Integration did little to resolve identity conflict. White rank-and-file
officers and their managers denigrated black cops who interjected
racial politics and civil rights into policing. They accused African
American cops who questioned policing practices in black communi-
ties of putting color ahead of their duty as officers. Black cops who
“acted white” by shutting their mouths, upholding the blue wall of
silence, and assimilating into police culture faced recrimination as race
traitors. Women were similarly damned. Male police officers dismissed,
mocked, and criticized feminine women as ill-equipped to meet the
physical demands of the job. The same men scorned and condemned
tough and rugged women for being masculinized by policing.
I n t r od u ct i on 3
Becomingg New York’s Finestt is the account of how and why the
NYPD stepped up its recruitment of African Americans and women
in the period immediately before, during, and in the 35 years after
World War II. It follows a parallel story of white male rank-and-file
cops under siege from an increasingly controlling management and
critical public. Civil rights and feminism unfolded at the very moment
in which police officers faced declining salaries, challenging work con-
ditions, and managerial control. At this critical juncture, the rank-
and-file came to perceive the mere presence of African Americans and
women as a threat to department’s esprit de corps. Becomingg New
York’s Finestt tracks how the predominately white and male rank-and-
file retaliated against both police managers and their newly integrated
peers. It shows how these cops, sworn to neutrality, instituted work
stoppages, threatened to strike, advocated for unionization, joined
radical political organizations, and marched through the city streets
to advocate for their own welfare.
At the center of debates about New York policing was the ideal
of the NYPD as an apolitical meritocracy that rewarded talent, skill,
and hard work. Policemen regarded their jobs as a reflection of their
competence rather than a privilege secured through nepotism or
discrimination. Becomingg New York’s Finestt shows how, when con-
venient, officers adhered to the departmental credo of “keeping the
department out of politics” and “politics out of the department.” It
also demonstrates how they employed the principle selectively to safe-
guard their positions. Their self-professed neutrality enabled them to
deflect criticism, protect their jobs, and resist integration. It describes
how the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) ran a cynical cam-
paign against integration, discounted its own political advocacy, and
appropriated the language and tactics of civil rights and feminism to
counter the progress these movements promised.
New York cops are an ideal lens through which to illuminate chang-
ing debates about integration and identity. There may be no urban
figure more recognizable, revered, or scrutinized than the New York
City patrolman. He has been a public employee in the nation’s most
populous and media-saturated city. The swagger and virility of the
NYPD, featured in local tabloids, national media, film, television, and
literature, has captured popular imagination. Theodore Roosevelt,
Lewis Valentine, Howard Leary, Frank Serpico, William Bratton, and
Howard Safir have been household names, their celebrity eclipsed
only by the fictional men and women of the NYPD: Theo Kojak,
Barney Miller, Andy Sipowicz, and Lenny Briscoe. The New York cop
figures prominently in the popular history of politics, social relations,
and popular culture.2 Academics in sociology, psychology, and crimi-

nology, similarly fascinated by the men and women of the NYPD,
prominently showcase them in landmark studies of policing, sex and
gender roles, ethnic bonding, race, and civil rights.3 With no dearth
of popular and scholarly works on the NYPD and its officers, why are
so few written by academic historians?
Historians, surely intrigued by the many compelling stories involv-
ing New York cops, sense that they are on shaky terrain in describ-
ing events through potentially distorted, unsubstantiated, unreliable,
erroneous, or nonexistent sources. Historians’ work is built on docu-
mentation and verification of reliable sources, which are inordinately
difficult to obtain from the NYPD. The unwritten code of a blue wall
of silence—in which police officers limit cooperation with investigators
when one of their own is accused of impropriety—informs a general
departmental aversion to trusting outsiders or sharing information.
The NYPD archival curator, for example, informs historians inter-
ested in police research that personnel records have been destroyed,
are protected, or simply do not exist. Even potentially illuminating
documents like NYPD Annual Reports, though helpful in building a
skeletal framework of the department, lack detailed personnel infor-
mation. Cops themselves, including the retired, are often reluctant to
speak frankly about their service.
Academics who write about police in disciplines outside of history,
and historians who research subjects other than police, grapple with
similar problems of bias, documentation, and verification, but policing
is especially challenging for the historian. Skilled academics in crimi-
nology, psychology, sociology have been able to secure the funding,
resources, and access to conduct studies of men and women in polic-
ing, but their works have the luxury of studying particular depart-
ments in a single moment in time. Their worthwhile research, much
of it supported by the Ford Foundation and Police Foundation, is
fashioned to shape contemporary law and order policies rather than to
explain historical relationships.4 Sociologists, criminologists, and psy-
chologists offer snapshots of different departments in single moments
in time. The historian recognizes that the citizens who perform police
work operate in a highly fluid society in which roles, perceptions, and
identities are always in flux. Neither cops nor the world in which they
function are fixed. Understanding the ever-shifting role, function,
self-conception, and public image of officers mandates that historians
explain change over time. How, then, to tell the historyy of policing?
The dearth of archival materials and a blue wall of silence certainly
render it a challenge.
The prominence, function, and image of police officers provide

too rich a subject for historians to be debilitated by their method-
ological challenges. The internal documents of the NYPD may tell
partial truths, contain distorted information, and be otherwise inac-
cessible, but there is a dynamic public story about the police to be
found in municipal archives, political correspondence, published
reports, pamphlets, records of public commissions, popular books,
magazines, and newspapers. Embedded in these sources is an ever-
changing and important narrative about Americans’ perceptions of
policing and the citizens whom they deemed capable to perform its
work. Criminologists, journalists, politicians, pundits, civil rights
advocates, feminists, and everyday citizens who debated the quali-
fications for police work shaped national perceptions of manhood,
whiteness, and the working class. Public and private debates about
NYPD personnel, however particular to New York City’s unique eth-
nic composition and political landscape, reflected postwar America’s
clash over identity politics. A close explanation of those debates, the
paths chosen and not, helps us understand the possibilities and limits
of integration.
Most academic studies of black police were produced, not surpris-
ingly, during the height of debates over their recruitment in an intense
climate of social change in the 1960s and 1970s. Nicholas Alex’s sem-
inal and often brilliant Black in
n Blue: A Study of thee Negro Policeman,
published in 1969, demonstrated the relationship between social
unrest in black communities and departments’ recruitment of black
citizens for police work.5 Likewise, James Alexander’s Blue Coats,
Black Skin, a 1978 study of the black experience in the NYPD since the
late nineteenth century, documented the designs of police executives
to ease tensions between the department and members of the black
community by hiring black cops.6 Stephen Leinen, who worked as a
uniformed police officer in the NYPD in the mid-1960s, conducted
fascinating oral histories with black New York City cops in the 1980s.
He wrote astutely in Black Police, White Societyy about the impossible
balancing act of being a black officer in a world dominated by whites.
Yet it was Alex who most eloquently noted the identity conflict this
produced for black cops. “While the population at large identified the
police uniform as a symbol of authority, power, and legal status,” Alex
argued, “the black cop has an identity of his own, independent of his
police uniform. He is still a member of an ethnic category visible as
such.” 7 To properly understand ethnic identity, however, it needs to
be defined in relationship to the invisible white power structure, and
seen as a part of a larger gender and class system.
Becomingg New York’s Finestt investigates identity conflict from the

Depression of the 1930s through the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. It also
builds upon the works on African Americans in policing by examining
the invisibility of white ethnic identity to explain the intransigence of
racial structures of power. Any explanation of race and policing requires
scrutiny of the racial conceptions of white management and rank-
and-file officers. Becomingg New York’s Finestt acknowledges Leinen’s
concern that including women for his study would have “uncovered a
unique and particular set of gender related problems that would have
greatly complicated the organization, analysis, and presentation of the
book.”8 Racial structures of power must be explained in conjunction
with gender politics. Likewise, gender politics cannot be understood
without noting how they are informed by race. It is also imperative
to demonstrate how race and gender intersect with narratives about
class and citizenship.
Alex’s penetrating follow-up to Black in n Blue, New York Cops Talk
Back: A Study of a Beleaguered Minorityy analyzed the perspective of
the predominately white rank-and-file officers in the NYPD.9 This
informative work demonstrated how officers’ conceptions of work-
ing-class virtue, masculinity, and race informed their conservative
politics about race and radical politics in challenging the prerogatives
of police management. John H. Burpo’s The Police Labor Movement, t
William J. Bopp’s The Police Rebellion, Allen Z. Gammage and Stanley
L. Sachs’s Police Unions, s Paul Chevigny’s Police Power, and Arthur
Niederhoffer’s Behind thee Shield, all published in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, drew similar portraits of the ideological outlook of white
rank-and-file police officers.10 Each of these works is magnificent in
its exploration of the multiple categories of identity, but the sociologi-
cal outlook is often divorced from historical context. The experiences
of cops from all backgrounds must be situated within a process of
change over time that examines the civil rights movement, the growth
of feminism, urban unrest, and the changing nature of work in the
middle of the twentieth century.
W. Marvin Dulaney’s Black Police in n America a uncovers many of the
historical roots of, and consequent problems with, black recruitment.
The work is informed by an agenda to compel departments to hire
black cops. Dulaney, a former cop and proponent of African American
police, writes that “black officers can improve the overall relationship
between the police department and the African-American commu-
nity and reduce the number of shootings by police as well as cases
of police brutality.”11 Dulaney may be correct in his assessment, but
his own evidence suggests that hiring black men and women without
restructuring the police station or its culture only engendered new

hierarchies. He also elides the dubious history of black cops integrat-
ing into a culture of brutality, harassment, and corruption. Rather
than making a case for who should perform police work, Becoming
New York’s Finestt explains the social forces, historical moments, and
categories of identity that shaped the employment practices of police
departments. The policy implications of this analysis, such as police
recruitment, are left for those who make policy, rather than those who
write history.
Pilot studies of women in police work raised similar questions
about identity, particularly the struggle for women to perform tradi-
tionally male work while maintaining their femininity. Similar to his-
tories of African American police officers, works on women in policing
treat categories of identity, in this case, sex and gender, as constants.
Definitions of masculinity changed over time, just as racial groupings
changed with new waves of migration to the city. The categories of
male and female, like black, white, Hispanic, American, citizen, and
worker, did not hold fixed meanings. They differed among commu-
nities and within historical moments. Any explanation of how these
categories operated requires an examination of who had the power to
define them and how and why that changed over time.
Post-1960s studies on gender and law enforcement such as Catherine
Milton’s Women in g Alice Mulcahey Fleming’s New On the
n Policing,
t and Peter Horne’s Women in
Beat, n Law Enforcementt built a case for
women’s inclusion in police work by defining aspects of femininity
and its suitability for policing. Subsequent studies like Joyce L. Sichel’s
Women on n Patrol: A Pilot Study off Police Performance in
n New York City,
Susan Martin Ehrlich’s Breaking and d Entering: Policewomen on
n Patrol,
l
Connie Fletcher’s Breaking and d Entering: Women Cops Talk about Life
in thee Ultimate Men’s Club, and Kerry Segrave’s Policewomen n offered
pioneer histories that celebrated the first women to challenge male
resistance in the police station.12 These works, like their counterparts
on race, provide informative sociological snapshots of identity roles,
but nevertheless treat them as fixed. Their primary aim was to increase
advocacy for women in police work. Becomingg New York’s Finestt com-
plements this analysis by investigating how post–World War II ideals
of gender roles and the changing nature of work afforded women
opportunities to negotiate with their identity, reshape it, and define it
in ways that created new employment opportunities.
Just as W. Marvin Dulaney’s Black Police in n Americaa provided a
more comprehensive historical view of black cops, Dorothy Moses
Schulz’s terrific book, From Social Worker too Crime Fighter, analyzed
women’s participation in police work within multiple historical

moments. Schulz demonstrates with aplomb the many ways in which
ideals of masculinity and femininity informed departments’ employ-
ment practices, as well as how they changed over time. For Schulz, the
late 1960s and early 1970s were a watershed in which women “moved
out of a specialized, gender-based role into a genderless, general polic-
ing one.”13 Becoming New York’s Finestt departs from this analysis and
suggests that in the late 1960s there were powerful continuities in
rhetorical strategies surrounding gender as well as race, which help
to explain the 1970s backlash against women and African Americans.
One cannot assess accurately the gender and racial dynamics of the
police labor market after 1970 without appreciating the simultaneous
way in which languages of difference adapted to new social and politi-
cal contexts. Economic and political opportunities continued to be
defined by race and gender.
Much of the literature on the race and gender in policing falls into
the criminal justice advocacy category, making the case that women
and African Americans have served as competent police officers. The
history in Becoming New York’s Finestt at times supports such a conclu-
sion but has no stake in its outcome. Rather, it uses the experience of
the NYPD—the nation’s most studied, emulated, revered, and reviled
law enforcement agency—as a prism to explain identity politics in
the postwar period. Becomingg New York’s Finestt explains the promise
and pitfalls of what would formally come to be known as affirmative
action. It explores how racial and gender identity became embedded
in certain work tasks, and how transformative moments allowed for
the shifting of these categories.
Chapter 1, “Meritocracy and the Illusion of Color Blindness,”
explains how the ideology of World War II, the Double V Campaign,
military desegregation, and two Harlem riots became the impetuses
for African American recruitment in the NYPD. It explores the mer-
itocratic principle and race neutrality as articulated by military and
police officials. It shows how police commissioners during and after
the war opened their doors to African Americans, advanced racial har-
mony, and promoted an ethic of professionalism, objectivity, and color
blindness. It also demonstrates how police managers denigrated racial
politicking as a violation of professionalism. It explains how African
American cops were disparaged by their white peers, who themselves
were engaged parallel battles with management over wages, work-
ing conditions, and unionization. This chapter outlines how all three
groups competed against one another for resources, political legiti-
macy, and public attention.
Chapter 2, “The Alter Ego of the Patrolman,” provides a brief

history of women in policing, from matrons to the Policewomen’s
Bureau, with a focus on policewomen during World War II and the
1950s culture of domesticity. In contrast to African Americans who
secured jobs as a result of ghetto rioting and civil rights advocacy,
women gained a foothold in police work by making a case for the
relevance of femininity. Chapter 2 explains how World War II con-
cerns with social hygiene, morality, and female delinquency, as well as
the postwar concerns with delinquent boys and girls, enabled police-
women to make the case that they could be the ultimate comple-
ment to police work performed by men. It explains how women who
sought expanded roles in the NYPD defined themselves as the alter
ego of the patrolman. Policewomen advocates contrasted the physi-
cally imposing, combative, and heroic policeman with the nurturing,
motherly, and protective policewoman. These strategies culminated
in a 1963 court case that secured women officers the right to promo-
tion. This chapter demonstrates the perils that came as women made
gains into the male domain of police work.
The centerpiece of the third chapter is the Harlem Riot of 1964,
which compelled the NYPD to establish a temporary Civilian Review
Board that provided citizens recourse in cases of police brutality. The
board received the backing of Mayor John Lindsay, Senators Jacob
Javits and Robert Kennedy, and Police Commissioner Howard Leary.
Despite such support, civilian review ended in 1966. The PBA brought
down the board, which it claimed would handcuff the police and pose
a threat to law and order. Although New Yorkers came to reject civil-
ian review through a referendum vote, great pressure remained to pla-
cate citizens of Harlem and other black residents of the city. Opposing
forces would ultimately fashion a compromise that centered on the
recruitment of racial minorities for patrol work. Putting more African
Americans and Puerto Ricans on the beat, though not without its
opponents, proved to be more politically feasible than civilian review.
This chapter demonstrates how changing the racial composition of
the force did little to furnish New Yorkers with additional recourse
against violent or abusive officers, fundamentally restructure the
police station, or prevent management from re-ghettoizing minorities
into subordinate roles within the department.
Chapter 4, “Ladies on Patrol,” illustrates how many of the same
political pressures that led the NYPD to recruit minority men com-
pelled it put the first women on patrol in 1972. Women, police man-
agers claimed, were more naturally sensitive and communicative,
and, therefore, could potentially ease violent encounters with the
public. Some women embraced this role, claiming that their femi-
ninity afforded them essential policing skills that men lacked. Other
women downplayed feminine characteristics and simply demanded
that they be treated as absolute equals. Most women tried to make
the case for patrol work for bothh of these reasons. Specifically, this
meant explaining the critical need for feminine skills while arguing
that women, as human beings, were capable of performing anyy type of
job, however physically demanding. This chapter shows how women
tried to convince police management and an interested public that
they could infuse patrol work with beneficial feminine qualities, but,
if required, be every bit as tough as men. While those two ideas were
not necessarily mutually exclusive, police executives, the media, and
rank-and-file male patrol officers often defined them as such. This
chapter shows how opponents of gender integration in the police sta-
tion simultaneously attacked women patrol officers as masculinized by
the job and not “man enough” to do it.
Chapter 5, “Soul Brother or Policeman?” follows the African
American police officers that the NYPD hired in the wake of the
Kerner and Crime Commission reports. It shows how the depart-
ment embraced minority recruitment on the condition that African
Americans cease civil rights advocacy. Rank-and-file cops demanded
that their new peers unequivocally embrace standard policing prac-
tices, swear absolute allegiance to the department, and adhere to the
blue code of silence. From the perspective of the NYPD brass, assign-
ing African Americans to ghetto beats served a dual purpose. It made
efficient use of their purported skills and placated civil rights activists
who demanded greater minority representation among police ranks.
This chapter tracks the experimentation with new policing groups in
minority neighborhoods like Community Service Officers and the
Preventative Enforcement Patrol. The chapter describes the intense
racial climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s New York, includ-
ing showdowns between the PBA and the Nation of Islam, the Black
Panthers, and the Black Liberation Army.
Chapter 6, “The Silent Majority Strikes Back,” focuses on New
Yorkers who presumed themselves to be the victims of the social
movements of the 1960s. These New Yorkers saw the literal and
metaphoric officer as best capable of righting past wrongs by punish-
ing protestors, arresting delinquents, employing violence to enforce
order, and restoring the system of fair play and equal opportunity as
it purportedly existed in the 1950s. As the fraternity culture of the
police station broke down, many white males joined the silent major-
ity, rallied through the PBA, and took to the streets of New York. This
I n t ro d u ct io n 11
chapter outlines four critical episodes in which police demonstrated an

emboldened willingness to stamp out social protest: a violent confron-
tation with students at Columbia University in 1968; formation of the
right-wing Law Enforcement Group (LEG) later that year; the tacit
approval of the construction workers’ riot of 1970; and the forma-
tion of the antifeminist Policemen’s Wives Association in 1973. These
incidents reveal a police force no longer willing to pay homage to the
apolitical departmental code of neutrality. They also demonstrated the
ways in which the politics of race and sex in and outside the force
became implicated in struggles over national identity.
Becomingg New York’s Finestt concludes with an examination of New
York’s 1975 fiscal crisis, police layoffs, and the “Fear City” campaign
initiated by the rank-and-file. Thousands of police officers lost their
jobs in the reduction, with attrition rates much higher among black,
Puerto Rican, and female officers. The PBA rank-and-file protested
but did nothing to address its racial or gender inequities. The senior-
ity system fit squarely within their system of fair play. For the PBA,
the most important story of the layoffs was the devastating impact on
the number of officers on the streets and the difficulties this posed for
policing the city. If anything, the crisis offered them an opportunity to
turn back the clock on integration by embracing a purportedly color-
blind and gender-neutral seniority system. The Fear City campaign
was a ploy to scare visitors from coming to the city, force the depart-
ment to rescind the layoffs, and heighten racial anxieties over what
PBA President identified as “the black and Puerto Rican peril.” In this
increasingly conservative climate, women and minority cops found
themselves on the defensive. In a city overrun by crime, power brokers
pushed aside African American and women cops to make way for the
old rank-and-file. Disorder in the streets would be policed by those
men New Yorkers imagined to be sturdy, resolute, devoted, virile, and
heroic. The skills of African Americans and women that purportedly
made them well suited to police work in the 1960s—sensitivity, com-
munication, and ghetto specialization—rendered them secondary and
expendable in the 1970s.
Part I
Desegregation and Domesticity,

1935 –1963
1
Meritocracy and the Illusion o f

C olor Blindness
I remember as a kid in grammar school I would never pledge allegiance

because I thought it was a lie. If I didn’t pledge in elementary school,
why now? Sure, I wanted America to win the war. Why? Because I lived
in America! That was a war [in which] I felt we were right, especially
because the Japanese attacked us. [But] I have always had problems
with the way blacks were treated. You will find that some blacks will say
we’re fine now. But things should be much better. There are things we
lost that we can never gain now. After the war we had Levittowns and
black [soldiers] couldn’t buy these seven thousand dollar houses that
are now worth one hundred and fifty thousand! That’s why we we’re
in the projects. I lived in the projects as a cop! The government was
already in the housing market. The [white] veterans had low mortgage
rates, guaranteed loans. [The] government said we will not get involved
in integration. [White] veterans got into college, but many blacks did
not. Some people say things are better now. But for me, we have lost
so much. Things have destroyed us. We can’t live like other folks. I’ve
never been patriotic because I believe black folks have been treated
poorly. It’s sad.
—James E. Frazier, US Army Veteran and
Retired NYPD Sergeant1
J ames Frazier’s bitter memory of lost opportunity stands in stark

contrast to the euphoria many black soldiers, police officers, and other
citizens experienced in the heady days of World War II. The Double
V campaign had roused the hopes of African Americans that a vic-
tory over fascism abroad would be coupled with a similar one over
racism at home.2 If Americans were convinced of the horrors of Nazi
racism, they reasoned, surely they would not tolerate racial discrimi-
nation in the United States. Black military service, as in every other
major American war dating back to the American Revolution, became
a crucial link between civil rights and nationalism.3 Americans long
had revered the military as a model meritocracy that promoted indi-

viduals based on aptitude and effort rather than family background.
That meritocratic principle had been fundamental to Americans’ self-
conception, but its racial dimension was heightened in the domestic
and international fight against Nazi racism. Black soldiers embraced
the opportunity to demonstrate their competence, challenge old racial
norms, and shore up their patriotic credentials. They hoped that this
was the war in which they finally consummated their hard-fought
rights.
As the nation mobilized to fight on behalf of democratic prin-
ciples domestically and overseas, long-accepted racial practices came
under attack. In New York, the police department found itself at the
center of racial conflict as two massive riots rocked the city during
the Depression and World War II. In 1935 and 1943, black citizens
demonstrated against police harassment, economic inequality, hous-
ing discrimination, and political impotence. As residents of Harlem,
Bedford-Stuyvesant, and other parts of the city stood their ground
against a largely all-white police force, the NYPD brass appeared to
change course. Police commissioners during and after the war opened
their doors to African Americans, advanced a platform of racial har-
mony, and, in theory, promoted an ethic of professionalism, objec-
tivity, and color blindness. And yet, despite such lofty ideals and
aspirations, African American citizens and black cops in the postwar
period remained embittered by the treatment they received at the
hands of the NYPD.
In order to understand why so much promise resulted in so many
dashed hopes, it is necessary to explore the difference between rheto-
ric and reality and the illusiveness of the concept of color blindness.4
After the riots, the NYPD brass found ways to manipulate the lan-
guage of race neutrality to its public relations advantage. Promoting
color-blind policies helped to cool off the protests, but did little to
substantively change policing practices or the deployment of black
cops. Management expected black cops to be politically neutral
automatons who took orders from their superiors. It hired black citi-
zens in response to rioting and civil rights protest, but used “color
blindness” and “professionalism” to ensure that these hires eschewed
racial advocacy.
At the same time that the brass appeared to reshape its policies in
black communities, it fought bitter battles with the rank-and-file over
pay, hours, benefits, and other aspects of patrol work. Police officers
accused management of bargaining in bad faith and meddling in their
political lives. In order to beat back criticisms from the Policemen’s
M er i t ocr a cy an d C o l o r B l i ndnes s 17
Benevolent Association (PBA), NYPD management employed a strat-

egy similar to the one they used to quash black cops who advocated
on behalf of civil rights. Management held up the ideal of the officer
as an apolitical professional whose objectivity and neutrality was cen-
tral to his job. From this point of view, any kind of advocacy, even that
as tame as improving wages and benefits, could be branded as destruc-
tively political. The PBA resisted such characterizations of its labor
activism, but then used the same rhetoric to criticize black peers who
put civil rights on the police agenda. Thus began a protracted postwar
struggle among these three groups about the meaning of democracy,
professionalism, and objectivity.
The Harlem Riots of 1935 and 1943

The strategic hiring of black police officers during Harlem’s riots and
the postwar period had antecedents that went back to the late nine-
teenth century. Very few black citizens had served as policemen in
New York since the 1890s. Police officials circumscribed their activ-
ity by assigning them to plainclothes, restricting their beats to black
neighborhoods, barring them from carrying guns, and prohibit-
ing them from arresting whites. The NYPD had hired its first black
police officer in 1891 and placed almost every subsequent officer in
Harlem’s 28th and 32nd precincts or Bedford-Stuyvesant’s 79th.
Because white police officials viewed these precincts with disdain
and often contributed little manpower and resources to them, black
police officers understood that these were the least desirable posts.
Black cops also knew that the department’s clustering of them in these
three precincts meant fewer opportunities for promotion. The prime
areas for advancement, such as the Detective’s Bureau and Police
Headquarters, completely excluded black cops. 5
The NYPD had a pattern of hiring black citizens as tactical responses
to racial crises, a strategy that sought to pacify white New Yorkers
concerned about black crime and black New Yorkers threatened by
brutal white officers. The NYPD hoped to contain black crime and
ease tension between the black community and members of the police
department by selectively assigning blacks to areas like Harlem. An
Irish-dominated police management believed that it treated black
cops like other ethnic groups. When NYPD Captain John Campbell
hired New York’s first black police officer back in 1891, for example,
he explained to the New York Times, “I have decided to place [Wiley]
Overton on special duty in the colored district of which Hudson
Avenue is a central point . . . there is nothing at all surprising in that, is
there? If I had an Italian policeman, wouldn’t I naturally assign him

to the Italian quarter?”6 Campbell was convinced that members of
particular ethnic groups would make competent officers if they shared
the same background as the citizens they policed. His belief rested on
the assumption that there would be greater mutual trust between the
patrol officer and the community. It did not, however, ensure that
these officers would be any less corrupt or brutal than those who pre-
ceded them. It also mistakenly treated race and ethnicity as one and
the same. The case of African Americans as a politically, economically,
and socially marginalized group made their experience quite different
from white ethnic groups.
When Harlem finally exploded in 1935 and 1943, the department
responded by ratcheting up recruitment of black cops. The first upris-
ing began on March 19 when Jackson Smith, a white southerner and
the manager of a Harlem branch of the S. H. Kress store, spotted
a 16-year-old black Puerto Rican boy by the name of Lino Rivera
shoplifting a knife from his store. Smith grabbed Rivera and hauled
him out in the street. During the ensuing scuffle, Rivera bit him. A
white policeman named Donahue arrived on the scene and brought
the youth back into the store. He asked Smith if he wanted Rivera
arrested, but Smith declined to press charges. The events of the fol-
lowing 15 minutes are unclear. Donahue stated that he had taken the
boy down to the basement, and later released him from a door that
opened out to the back alley. Some residents began to yell that they
took the boy in basement to beat him. Rumors spread that the boy
had been killed. Some women tried to search the store for a corpse.
Instead of explaining that the boy was safe, the store shut its doors
and police began arresting onlookers for unlawful assemblage. This
episode was followed by protest, demonstrations, arson, and destruc-
tion of property, later known as the Harlem Riot of 1935.7
Mayor La Guardia, a popular politician who fashioned himself a
champion of New York’s dispossessed, appointed a commission to
investigate the conditions in Harlem, a move that targeted the ghetto
environment rather than its residents. The commission identified
discrimination in municipal and private employment and the eco-
nomic plight of black New Yorkers as major causes of the riot, but
also pointed to other, potentially more determinative factors such as
“insecurity of the individual in Harlem against police aggression.”8
African American New Yorkers perceived the NYPD and its com-
missioner, Lewis J. Valentine, to be indifferent to their complaints
of police brutality. The commission concluded that police tactics and
brutality had eroded civic virtue among black citizens who believed
that “their lives, in the estimation of the police, were cheap.”9 It also
contended that Valentine was “too busy, unsympathetic or uninter-
ested to cooperate with community activists who sought to address
the problem.”10 Valentine discounted such criticisms and offered his
own interpretation of his department’s relationship with the black
community. “Police courage, efficiency, and integrity had won the
confidence of law-abiding citizens,” boasted Valentine, contending
that it was “only hoodlums who resented the NYPD.”11
Mayor La Guardia, who often had been more sensitive than most
white politicians to the problem of police brutality, chose not to take
a firm stand against the NYPD. He initially recommended that a bira-
cial committee of Harlem citizens be organized to solicit complaints
about police behavior. However, this idea never came to fruition
because La Guardia decided that community control over the depart-
ment would have demoralized the police force.12 Between 1935 and
1943, La Guardia increasingly sided with Commissioner Valentine
against Harlem’s forceful and outspoken congressman, Adam Clayton
Powell, Jr. When Powell sponsored a rally at the Golden Gate Ballroom
in 1942 to protest the police slaying of Wallace Armstrong, a mentally
ill Harlem resident, La Guardia backed Commissioner Valentine, who
warned that “this type of rabble rousing is dangerous and might result
in serious disorder.”13 Many Harlem residents protested police actions
by writing to the mayor, including one man who likened the murder-
ers to “the Gestapo of Nazi Germany.”14 LaGuardia’s opposition to
the rally and police surveillance diminished the protests’ militancy and
public voice. This episode so permanently severed the La Guardia-
Powell relationship that Powell later concluded, “the mayor is one
of the most pathetic figures on the current American scene.”15 Black
New Yorkers, divided by economic and social class, had mixed views
of La Guardia, but few disputed Powell’s claim that white politicians
remained indifferent to police violence in black communities.
Police surveillance and harassment of black citizens continued dur-
ing wartime New York, despite a burgeoning ideology of patriotism,
unity, and democracy. An incident at the Braddock Hotel in Harlem
on August 1, 1943, ignited a second riot that demonstrated how the
politics of race and gender easily disrupted New York’s fragile wartime
unity. At 7 that evening, an African American woman named Marjorie
Polite registered at the Braddock, which for some time had been
under police surveillance as a “raided premises.” Police immediately
deemed Polite to be suspect because she was a black woman without
male companionship at a site known for prostitution. Polite further
drew police attention when she demanded a refund because of the
hotel’s unsatisfactory accommodations. The hotel clerk claimed that

when she did not receive it in full, she became “boisterous, disorderly,
and profane.”16 White Patrolman James Collins, assigned to raided
premises duty inside the hotel, tried to escort Polite out of the build-
ing. He claimed that she refused to leave and became verbally abu-
sive. Witnessing the altercation, Florine Roberts, a domestic servant
from Middletown, Connecticut, demanded Polite’s release. Roberts
had been staying at the Braddock from the time she visited her son,
Robert Bandy, who was on leave from the army’s 703rd Military Police
Battalion in Jersey City. Bandy intervened on his mother’s behalf and
ended up in a scuffle with Patrolman Collins. During the fight Bandy
got hold of the nightstick and Collins responded by shooting him in
the shoulder. Within minutes of the shooting, word swept through
Harlem that a white policeman had killed a black soldier who had
been protecting his mother. This story circulated throughout the com-
munity in a matter of minutes. In response, angry black Harlemites
congregated at the Braddock Hotel, Harlem’s 28th Precinct, and
Sydenham Hospital, where Bandy was brought after being shot. The
reports of police violence ignited black protest, demonstrations, and
retaliatory violence. The riot lasted for 12 hours. The targets of the
riots were mostly white-owned businesses and buildings. However, all
six people killed were black, as were most of the hundreds of others
who were injured.17
The official police report contradicts this version of the episode,
claiming that Patrolman Collins was the victim. The report contends
that Bandy threatened Collins and ran; when he refused to halt, the
patrolman drew and fired his revolver, wounding Bandy. Bandy, how-
ever, claimed that he had the officer’s nightstick only because it was
thrown at him; when he refused to relinquish the weapon, Collins shot
him. It is unclear whether Collins or Bandy instigated the violence.
There is no question, however, that the ensuing deaths resonated
loudly with black New Yorkers who had endured decades of police
brutality.18 For black citizens, the Collins-Polite-Bandy scuffle was an
all too familiar story of white cops disrespecting black women and
black veterans. Law enforcement officials harassed unescorted black
women like Marjorie Polite simply because their race, sex, and loca-
tion made their characters suspect. Likewise, because Robert Bandy
was black, his military service and uniform afforded him no extra lati-
tude in coming to his mother’s defense. James Collins’s uniform and
white skin, however, gave him the right to harass Marjorie Polite, ver-
bally abuse Florine Roberts, and shoot Robert Bandy. Even the Office
of War Information, which was in no position to excuse the riots,
noted the symbolic importance of such a confrontation: “Showing

disrespect for one’s mother is a grievous insult in any man’s language.
To this must be linked the widely held belief that white men refuse to
‘respect’ Negro women. White police are often brutal and carelessly
abusive in their dealings with Negroes.”19 The African American need
for respect combined with the denial of overt racism led the NYPD in
coming years to step up its recruitment of black men.
Not a Race Riot!

In a curious alliance, the black and white presses insisted that the riot
was devoid of racial animosity. The New York Timess superficially sur-
veyed the demonstrations and concluded, “The disorder was not a
race riot, as virtually the only white persons involved were among the
police who attempted to maintain law and order.”20 C. B. Howell,
publisher and editor of the Amsterdam Newss, reasoned, “the distur-
bances in Harlem were due to hoodlumism, symptomatic of twelve
years of depression, aggravated by economic discrimination.”21 In
his opinion, “there was no element of race rioting.”22 Adam Clayton
Powell, Jr., confirmed: “By no stretch of the imagination nor distor-
tion of the fact could this be called a race riot.”23 Walter White, secre-
tary of the NAACP, added, “It cannot be too clearly emphasized that
this was not a race riot in any sense of the term!” 24 Mayor La Guardia
assured New Yorkers that “this was not a race riot.” The guilty parties
were simply “hoodlums with criminal intent, stealing from their own
group and injuring other people.”25 The universal protestations from
such diverse groups were a curious denial.
Assurances from across the political spectrum that the rioting
lacked racial content made sense only if one put the Harlem episode
in a limited and comparative context. The Harlem riot, unlike those
in Detroit and other cities, was largely free of the direct physical vio-
lence between blacks and whites.26 A more likely explanation for the
collective denial that this was not a race riot was the practical need
to limit the violence in Harlem. By denying the racial motivations of
the riot, community leaders hoped to prevent further disorder, which
most “respectable” New Yorkers agreed was of primary importance.
These black leaders feared that the idea a of a race riot could increase
tensions and turn sympathetic whites away from the burgeoning sup-
port for civil rights.27 Wartime politics made domestic struggle tricky
business. Harlem’s black political leaders understood the racial impli-
cations of the riots and thought they were a useful warning to white
America but had to be cautious of being on the wrong side of law
and order.28 It is also likely that many well-connected, middle-class

black leaders’ allegiances were with property and capital. Likewise,
many recognized that the most tragic victims of the rioting were black
citizens themselves. In any case, the notion that black and white New
Yorkers were not in direct conflict with one another denied real ten-
sions that were very much a part of the rioting. Few public voices, at
least in this historical moment, conceded that New York had an overt
racial problem.
Nevertheless, ordinary New Yorkers interpreted the riots through
the lens of race, and many whites did so in a way that drew upon and
perpetuated pernicious stereotypes about young black men. The press
profiled the typical rioter as a young black male, or a “hoodlum,” who
only sought to loot, burn, and steal. Press accounts did not, how-
ever, indict all black citizens, but contrasted “demonic black men”
with the “peaceful Harlemite.” Such depictions shielded them from
charges of stereotyping while allowing them to perpetuate a racial
myth. Newsweekk was quick to note that whereas “most of the 300,000
inhabitants, despite economic handicaps and overcrowding, are law-
abiding citizens,” Harlem contained “a jungle of cheap, poisonous
liquor, marijuana, and muggings which are the source of the city’s
major sociological problem.”29 Lifee referred to the riot as a “wild ram-
page” that brought “death, destruction, looting and shame.”30 The
New York Timess reported “gangs of young hoodlums formed in the
streets” and identified rioters as being “in their late teens or early twen-
ties, wearing zoot suits.” An article in Collierss magazine emphasized
the neighborhood’s “evil corners, dangerous avenues and hardened
youths who strutted through the streets.”31 Generalizing from the
assumption that the rioters were irresponsible young males, one white
store owner posited that “they [blacks] just want to steal, [they’re]
just waiting to steal, [they] just like to steal. They’re not responsi-
ble. They’re getting too much freedom. They’re like an animal, still
a wild animal no matter how you train them.”32 A white police offi-
cer similarly lambasted the rioters: “Looting is just a natural instinct.
They [blacks] just don’t know better. They’re just like savages. Don’t
belong in a civilized country in my estimation. They belong back in
a tree. The only thing missing is a tail.”33 Another white cop put it
even more bluntly: “They should have brought in a couple of machine
guns and mowed them down. That would [have] disperse[d] them
quick.”34 Such views of the riot as the product of wild, rampaging
young, black men served to deny any view that Harlem’s diverse black
community—even the respectable middle class—harbored resentment
toward white privilege.
In the following months, uneasy white politicians and police offi-

cers undermined civil rights activism by broadening the definition
of the rabble to include anyone critical of law enforcement prac-
tices. Without an empowered police department, police officials con-
tended, New York would fall prey to thugs and delinquents. At the
center of that problem, they argued, were black and Puerto Rican
males.35 US attorney general Francis Biddle was so frightened by
the prospect of dark-skinned New Yorkers that he urged President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to take steps to halt black migration to north-
ern cities.36
The Bureau of Special Services in the Office of War Information
provided an alternative to the press’s interpretation of the riots. It
began a search for the “real story” of the riots by sending one white
and two black military police officers to interview white and black
residents of Harlem, respectively. In contrast to the press accounts,
differences in the narratives of local citizens point to the contrasting
ways in which black and white New Yorkers imagined black Harlem.37
For example, white New Yorkers, many of whom envisioned rioters
as ominous, young black men, attributed the riots to “hoodlums and
gangs of youngsters in their teens.” Black residents, however, gener-
ally included among the rioters people “of all ages, including children,
women, and members of the well-dressed middle class.” Another
important difference among the interviewees was that whites tended
to see the riot as a “rampage against law and order,” while blacks saw
it as an expression of racial conflict. Whites interviewed saw the riots
as an illustration of blacks’ natural lawlessness and “the primitive traits
of Negroes.”38 Conversely, blacks identified the shooting of a black
soldier as an extension of hated southern practices and violence at
the hands of the police. From the point of view of black Harlemites,
the riots were racially motivated political acts.39 As the author James
Baldwin, 19 at the time of the riots, later wrote, “Harlem needed
something to smash.”40
The Harlem riots unleashed widespread destruction of property
and street violence, yet in a bizarre turn they became an opportu-
nity for commendation. The NYPD boasted how it avoided the mas-
sive, bloody confrontations of blacks and whites that had occurred
in Detroit a few months earlier. In marked contrast to Harlemites’
accounts, the NYPD celebrated its exemplary handling of the riots as
yet a demonstration of “New York’s Finest.” Spring 3100 0 released a
series of self-congratulatory articles, disregarding the actions of the
police officer who had incited the riot. The magazine even quoted
Congressman Powell, who noted that, “We the citizens of Harlem,
Negro and white, have noticed with satisfaction the conduct and
action of the officers, detectives, and patrolmen under your direction.
We express our appreciation for law and order.”41
Many white New Yorkers accepted the NYPD’s explanation that,
despite black citizens’ natural proclivity toward violence, the city was
spared a race riot by the good graces of the world’s finest crime-fight-
ing force. Black citizens argued that their rioting was no mere primal
venting of frustrations, but a political act intended to challenge the
structures of power in New York. The world-renowned Swedish soci-
ologist Gunnar Myrdal argued this very point in his 1944 seminal
work on race relations, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem
and American Democracy. Gunnar, looking at the United States with
a discerning outsider’s perspective, noted that blacks did not riot
because they were hopeless, but because they had some sense that
their lives could be different: “It is generally only when Negroes think
that they might have something to gain that they will take the risk
of fighting back.” A modicum of black faith in the political system
and the knowledge that “some portion of the white population is on
their side and that the police will ultimately restore order” invigorated
citizens to protest in ways that were unimaginable in the South.42
African American riots were not cynical acts of random disorder but
concerted efforts to change the political landscape of New York. The
World War II fight for democracy provided the modern civil rights
movement with renewed optimism.
The NYPD and the Military Model

The Armed Services had been an inspirational source for domestic
police officers, many of whom had served in the military. The NYPD
had fashioned itself as a quasi-military institution, going back to the
professionalization of the department in the mid-nineteenth century.
In addition to following the military chain of command model, police
officers viewed law enforcement as the domestic wing of the nation’s
military. The rewards for police service, like those in the military, were
financial, commemorative, and psychological. Government officials
celebrated the men of the armed forces and urban police departments
by furnishing them with medals, awards, honors, pensions, and cer-
emonies. The NYPD fashioned its organization, structure, and per-
sonnel policies on the American military, including a similar racial
hierarchy. Although African American cops were not formally segre-
gated in the NYPD, they endured de facto segregation in ghetto beats
that offered little opportunity for advancement.
Many historians celebrate as heroic President Harry Truman’s

1948 executive order that ended segregation in the armed forces.43
The integration of the military is presented as a transformative
moment in which the army became a model meritocracy and enabled
talented individuals to thrive in a color-blind system. But Truman’s
decision was neither arrived at easily nor enacted in a timely and effec-
tive manner. Executive Order 9981 was the outcome of an intense
and protracted struggle rather than the product of a benevolent and
enlightened institution fulfilling the nation’s democratic creed.44 The
legislation resulted only from pressure brought to bear on the military
from black Americans, best exemplified by A. Philip Randolph’s 1941
March on Washington Movement. Randolph, supported by thou-
sands of civil rights advocates, threatened to march on Washington
DC if the federal government failed to eliminate discrimination in
the defense industry. Franklin Roosevelt had begrudgingly passed
Executive Order 8802, creating the Fair Employment Practices
Committee. Similar pressure led Truman to ban segregation in the
armed forces. For Truman, the end of segregation in the armed forces
was, in part, a matter of expediency. During the rapid mobilization,
demands for quick processing of draftees outweighed such customary
practices as keeping black and white draftees separate, thus accelerat-
ing integration. More significantly, as Mike Sherry illustrates in his
comprehensive history of American military culture, In the Shadow of
War, discrimination and de facto segregation still ruled in the military.
If anything, the situation for black servicemen and women worsened
in postwar period. “Their few wartime gains seemed to slip away,”
notes Sherry, “and most military leaders staunchly defended the old
ways; crude violence against them erupted.”45
Integration moved slowly in the military and yet the American pub-
lic continued to believe that it functioned as a color-blind meritoc-
racy that promoted individuals for their talent, hard work, and track
record rather than their personal connections, birthright, or appear-
ance. Some social commentators in the 1940s and 1950s even specu-
lated that the US Armed Forces’ successful integration of blacks could
be replicated by municipal police forces. Nevertheless, the military,
despite the lifting of formal restrictions, demonstrated a remarkable
resilience in maintaining racial hierarchy. Military service was a mixed
blessing for black recruits. It offered individual servicemen a modi-
cum of opportunity, but subordinated racial justice to the national
security agenda. 46
The NYPD, like the military, opened jobs to African Americans only
after intense pressure from black civil rights advocates. Black police
26 B e co m i n g Ne w Y or k’s F i n e s t
officers raised questions about fighting, infiltrating, and controlling

communities of color. Supervisors in military units and municipal
police departments found black soldiers and officers particularly dif-
ficult to position because of the public relations problems that racism
posed for their institutions. Police Chief,
f the most widely read journal
on law enforcement, noted how white discrimination against black
soldiers complicated military training. Writing in 1943, Lou Smith, a
self-identified expert on public relations in police work, wrote:
Negro troops have been drafted and given preliminary training in the
North where color lines are not sharply drawn. Later they have been
transferred into other areas for advanced or specialized training. In
some cases these new training areas have been in the “border areas” or
southern states where color lines have been maintained for generations.
When platoons or companies of Negro soldiers have entered eating
places catering exclusively to white persons, service has been refused.
Soldiers should just reply that if they were good enough to wear the
uniform of the U.S. Army they were good enough to eat with white
soldiers.47
White northerners, who later would be shocked to see civil rights

activists criticize northern institutions, viewed racial discrimination
in the 1940s as an exclusively southern problem. Smith’s sentiments
reflected a naive northern view of white liberals that the national uni-
form trumped the skin color of the person who wore it.
Police managers themselves drew many parallels between police
work and that of the military, but, at the same time, disowned less
favorable analogies. Even before World War II, for instance, New
York’s Police commissioner John F. O’Ryan noted on WABC radio
that “in many ways the principles of organization which govern an
army have application to the command, discipline and administration
of a large police force.”48 Yet he qualified his comments by noting that
police departments’ officers were more mature, better qualified, and
more rigorously screened than their military counterparts. Echoing
those sentiments, Sergeant Francis of New York’s 94th Precinct
observed:
It’s practically the same, but somehow entirely different—that’s what

almost every member of the New York City Police Department will
say when asked how he’s making the adjustment to life in the Armed
Forces of the United States. As policemen, we’re members of a semi-
military organization, accustomed to discipline and following without
questions of orders given by superiors. Uniforms and nightsticks and
guns were our stock in trade. Our cardinal principles are enforcement
of the law—preservation of peace and protection of life and property—
are basically those employed in the military. The policeman can think
for himself and take prompt action. In the Army, policemen must for-
get all this. The Army builds all its maneuvers, formations and details
around the group, a sort of master plan.49
Police management might, as a recruiting tool, publicly support

Sergeant Francis’s image of the cerebral officer, but they still expected
him to follow orders. When possible, it was best that the policeman
not “think for himself and take prompt action.”50 Arthur Wallander’s
attempt in 1946 to rewrite the patrolman’s exam, for example,
tried to strip patrol work of its intellectual components. Wallander
claimed that, in the “modern business world,” tasks could be “effi-
ciently assigned and memorized,” and thus patrolmen’s success need
not depend on his own critical thinking. He complained that patrol-
men’s exams required too much that “was not factual, not testing the
knowledge of the department.”51 His goal was to reduce the exams to
memory tests and reduce patrol work to “efficient business sensibil-
ity.” The NYPD brass, like military commanders, had a master plan
that was more easily executed when subordinates followed orders. As
a supervisor of police workers, Wallander sought to “take the man-
ager’s brain and put it under the workman’s cap.”52
The NYPD structured its hierarchy on the military model and freely
exchanged personnel with the armed forces. NYPD officials often drew
parallels between its fight against crime at home and the US Army’s
battle against fascism abroad. Spring 3100, the monthly magazine of
the NYPD, for example, suggested the ease with which a young man
could complete the transition from military to police service. Its cover
story in January of 1946 (figure 1.1) depicted Uncle Sam and a revo-
lutionary war soldier nodding approvingly as they helped a soldier
trade in his army fatigues for NYPD blues. Through this iconography,
the department was able to recommend police work as a logical peace-
time extension of men’s patriotism, service, and manliness. During
the war, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia lobbied Congress to release 750
New York City patrolmen who were fighting overseas.53 The postwar
crime-fighting strategy of La Guardia’s successor, William O’Dwyer,
similarly favored army personnel. Mayor O’Dwyer’s plan for “the war
on crime” included an extension of the age limit for veterans and
preferential recruitment of pistol marksmen who served in the army.54
Commissioner Arthur Wallander sharpened the war analogy not only
by targeting army men for police service, but also by contending that
28 B eco m i ng Ne w Y o r k ’s F i n es t
Figure 1.1 “Welcome Home,” Spring 3100, January 1946. New York City Police
Department. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the New York City Police
Department.
the only way to deal with the rise in crime was “to implement warlike
preparations.”55
African American soldiers fighting abroad and black cops defend-
ing the domestic front hoped that their service would lend new mean-
ing to the democratic values of fair employment, equal opportunity,
and professionalism. Military and police officials marketed the soldier
and the domestic police officer as neutral, objective, and color-blind
professionals, but networks of personal and political contacts remained
entrenched. Both institutions operated on coded systems that created
separate and unequal roles for black and white men in military and
paramilitary duty. Both military officials and police heads propounded
an ideology of objectivity and neutrality, but they labeled anything
threatening their power within their organizations as political and,
therefore, unprofessional. In terms of race, this meant that racial advo-

cacy was subjective, biased, and menacing. That ideology was critical
in determining which soldiers could police the globe, as well as which
officers were qualified to police America’s mean domestic streets.56
NYPD leaders recruited black veterans for police service and emu-
lated the military’s ideology, personnel structure, and racial politics
as a means of quelling protest in black communities rather than as
a measure to deliver on the nation’s democratic promise. Wartime
rioting in Harlem, like contemporaneous rioting in multiple black
neighborhoods throughout the nation, compelled police officials to
concede to demands that they hire more black officers. However, the
NYPD opened its doors to blacks on the nonnegotiable condition
that any new recruits relinquish their civil rights ambitions and swear
absolute allegiance to the department. Law enforcement leaders, like
their counterparts in the military, accepted a modicum of integration
while embracing a language of neutrality and objectivity to deflect
questions of racial justice. Black and white officers, although willing
to embrace in principle the professional ideals of objectivity and neu-
trality, did not conform to management’s prerogatives. Neither the
new black recruits nor the mostly white rank-and-file member of the
PBA eschewed their allegiances of race or class. In their struggles with
one another and police management, black and white officers rejected
neutrality and forced the department to deal with political struggles
that it had hoped to avoid.
Working Together in Harmony

Civil rights advocates contended that racial integration of the force
was essential to combat police brutality. Black New Yorkers’ faith in
the efficacy of the political system was evident in their letter writing
campaign to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whom they hoped would
bring the pressure of the White House to bear on the La Guardia
administration and Commissioner Valentine. These activists saw the
police problem as one of personnel; poor police-community relations
and future riots could be prevented by increasing the number of black
policemen and their opportunities for advancement. Roosevelt, known
as a champion of black civil rights, responded by urging the NYPD to
hire more black citizens as police officers and expressing the hope that
“there might be fewer such instances as the past regrettable one.”57
Africans Americans constituted less than 1 percent of the depart-
ment during the time of the riots. The Amsterdam Newss reported in
1943 that of the 16,000 police officers in the department, only 155
were black—including only 6 sergeants, 1 parole commissioner, and 1
surgeon.58 Police brutality prevented black citizens from trusting the
department’s lukewarm overtures. Yet La Guardia instead dismissed
his failure to address the shortage of black policemen on the genuine
constraints of war and the dearth of black applicants. He also ignored
the inordinate pressure on black cops to conform to police violence
and intimidation as a means of proving themselves “blue.” In many
cases this translated into rough tactics when handling black suspects.
La Guardia knew of remarks by some Harlem residents that black
police officers were aggressive, even vicious, but failed to acknowledge
that this was an impediment to recruitment. As historian Dominic
Capeci notes, La Guardia found it easier to attribute the shortage of
black policemen to inadequate funds and wartime manpower short-
ages than to racism.59 La Guardia’s biographer, Thomas Kessner,
faults the mayor for downplaying the race problem and argues that
“like every other mayor before and after him, [he] responded to racial
problems when they became too dangerous to ignore, but offered no
direct programs to solve them.”60 La Guardia could finesse substan-
tive racial questions, like that of police brutality, by granting the most
modest of concessions. Even though La Guardia and Commissioner
Valentine denied responsibility for their poor record of hiring black
citizens as officers, they did seek to prevent future rioting by finding a
greater role for blacks in police work.
Patriotic appeals to Americanism, historically an effective means of
deflecting accusations of racial prejudice, became particularly useful to
Valentine during World War II. He denied any outright discrimination
against black citizens while branding his critics as un-American radicals
who sought to foment division. War hysteria enabled Valentine to
narrow New Yorkers’ political choices to patriotism and unity versus
subversion and division. This maneuver made civil rights advocacy tan-
tamount to treason. It also allowed Valentine to offer a utopian vision
of New York as a city free of racial, ethnic, religious, and class con-
flict. New Yorkers were simply united by their identity as Americans.61
He depicted crime and law enforcement as color-blind. “The Police
Department of the City of New York,” Valentine posited, “is an orga-
nization composed of real Americans. As far as the individual member
is concerned, whether he be Catholic, Protestant or Jew, Republican
or Democrat, Negro or white, matters not at all. We are all working
together in harmony.”62 While privately making excuses to Eleanor
Roosevelt about the difficulty of finding blacks to hire as police offi-
cers, Valentine publicly praised them for their service and encouraged
their further participation: “We need colored men. We welcome them.

I have had to dismiss only one Negro from the department in more
than nine and a half years on disciplinary charges. I say to the col-
ored boys throughout the city, come join us. We need you!”63 Indeed,
Valentine did need “colored” men to help refurbish the image of the
police department and smooth over tensions in black communities.
For Commissioner Valentine and his successors, one of the key means
of preventing future riots was to recruit more black police officers.
“The recruitment of Negroes and members of other minority groups
as police,” posited Spring 3100 0 in 1945, “is more effective than hav-
ing white police in troublesome Negro neighborhoods.”64
Harlemites agreed with Commissioner Valentine that African
Americans ought to police their community. On the Monday follow-
ing the riots, a contingent of black military police appeared on the
scene and were met with wild cheers of support. Later that afternoon,
white military police arrived, only to be jeered and bombarded with
rocks and bottles.65 The US Army and the NYPD agreed to add a
force of 1,500, mostly black, civilian volunteers. Although La Guardia
and Valentine were reluctant to hire black police officers, they could
find a place for black men and women in police work by assigning
them to these temporary positions. City authorities recruited the
black volunteers and equipped them with nightsticks and armbands
to help 16,000 members of the NYPD and the Military Police.66
Among the civilian volunteers who patrolled the Harlem streets were
300 black women, who, like their male cohorts, were armed with
clubs and wore armbands to identify them as upholders of law and
order. The department hired many black citizens but not often as
regular, fully paid members of the NYPD. It included them as “spe-
cial units,” temporary labor specifically designated for riot control in
black neighborhoods.
The NYPD complicated the problem of policing Harlem not only
by reluctantly hiring officers of color, but also by treating with disdain
its residents and the white officers who begrudgingly accepted beats
there. The Office of War Information report identified police bias as
the single biggest obstacle to a healthy relationship between blacks
and city authorities. It noted that the police assigned to Harlem were
often men from outside the community who took no real interest
in the residents. So strained were relations between the community
and the police that Harlemites likened the NYPD to a racist army
of occupation.67 Residents complained of police breaking into their
apartments without warrants, conducting illegal searches of per-
sons and property, and employing gratuitous violence. Most white
32 B eco m i ng Ne w Y o r k ’s F i n es t
Figure 1.2 “Oh Boy, Free!” Spring 3100, June, 1944. New York City Police
Department.
police considered Harlem the “Siberia” of the department—a place

where one was banished for bad behavior. The brass often punished
police officers who were believed to be “drunkards” or “of doubt-
ful character” by an assignment to the 28th Precinct. The Office of
War Information’s report on the riots found that “officers accused
of viciousness, brutality, or graft, are often assigned to the Harlem
precinct.”68 Black recruits had to wonder if their assignment to such
precincts entailed a reward or punishment.
NYPD management’s attitude toward their black police officers
was encapsulated in a cartoon the department published in a 1946
issue of Spring 3100. In that sketch, a large, overweight, white police
officer sits leisurely sipping his coffee while Cliff, a diminutive black
officer, sweeps at his feet (figure 1.2). For his service, Cliff is offered
a cup of free coffee to which he replies, “I’ll thank you Gus! Oh boy,
free!” The cartoon suggests that if black police officers are subservi-
ent, docile, and appreciative, then they too can share in the depart-
ment’s riches. There are limits to the degree to which one can read
the racial worldview of white officers through this lone cartoon, but
it is telling that this is the onlyy representation of a black officer in any
of Spring 3100’s hundreds of cartoons in the 35 years between 1940
and 1975.
Divided Allegiances
Black police officers were profoundly ambivalent about their place
in patrol work. Although the few black police officers in the NYPD
may have shared the goals of community activists, their segregation in
ghetto beats made incomplete any simple call for more black cops. In
1943, Robert Mangum, a black cop who had grown frustrated with
the department’s lack of concern for black officers and ghetto unrest,
organized fellow officers from Harlem’s 28th Precinct into a fraternal
organization known as the Guardians. Some Hispanic, mostly Puerto
Rican, officers immediately joined the Guardians. Recruitment for the
Guardians initially proved difficult, however, because interested can-
didates feared recrimination from supervisors in the NYPD who saw
the group as a challenge to police fraternity. Many criticized Mangum
for creating a divisive wartime issue. Because of these conflicts and
ever-present intimidation, Magnum and his supporters met secretly
at the Harlem YMCA until the late 1940s.69 Following the war, the
Guardians pressured the city through Harlem congressman Adam
Clayton Powell, Jr. to recognize their organization. After a protracted
struggle, Commissioner William O’Brien begrudgingly acknowledged
the charter of the Guardians in 1949.
The NYPD management and rank-and-file officers, who had criti-
cized the Guardians for being political, held black officers to standards
that they did not apply to their white peers. Ethnic fraternal asso-
ciations had been an established part of the department long before
the Guardians began their organizing drive in the early 1940s. Jewish
police officers established the Shomrin Society in 1924, while Italian
officers formed the Columbia Association in 1932. Yet neither orga-
nization was understood to be overtly political or remotely troubling.
“Ethnic” officers could easily be brought in line with the dominant
Irish ideology. In the eyes of white officers, these were merely ethnic
and social organizations, while the Guardians’ explicit racial identi-
fication and political protests somehow violated the golden rule of
officer neutrality. African American policemen, like the one depicted
in figure 1.3, projected neutrality, professionalism, and stoicism while
on the job, but privately organized for civil rights advocacy.
The establishment of the Guardians compelled Irish officers to
think explicitly about their ethnic identity. Previously, Irish identity
had been normalized in the NYPD; so many police officers were Irish
that it made little sense for them to form a fraternal organization. Irish
officers had little difficulty getting white officers of German, Jewish,
or Italian backgrounds to join the “Irish parade.” But the Guardians
34 B eco m i ng Ne w Y o r k ’ s F i n es t
Figure 1.3 “African American Policeman in New York,” Library of Congress Prints
and Photographs Division 1943.
presented a new threat to whiteness in general and Irish identity in

particular. Commissioner O’Brien, himself Irish, complained that the
formation of a black Guardian organization was a political act and
claimed the affiliation interfered with black officers’ ability to enforce
the law objectively. However, he remained quiet when Irish patrol-
men and officers joined the newly formed Emerald Society in 1953.
It was, they claimed, merely a “fraternal” organization. Several “eth-
nic officers” shortly followed suit: Polish cops formed the Pulaski
Society in 1956; Puerto Ricans established the Hispanic Society in
1957; Scandinavians organized the Viking Society in 1958; German
officers created the Steuben Association in 1963. When the Hispanic
Society was formed in 1957, several of its members retained their
affiliation with the Guardians, refusing to pick one racial or ethnic
identity.70
Guardians in the 1950s, encouraged by formal recognition from
the NYPD, imagined following the path of white ethnics, particu-
larly the Irish and Italians, who accrued benefits through civil service
jobs and political patronage. But the racial policies of the NYPD and
the dominant white public to which it was responsible made social
and economic mobility more difficult. Black men who endeavored to
break bastions of white labor could not follow the simple assimilation
path of “ethnic” Americans.71 The hiring of black personnel provided
jobs only to a few individuals, almost all of whom remained occupa-
tionally ghettoized within the lower ranks.
The recruitment of black men for police work did not inherently
address policing practices in ghetto communities.72 Black New Yorkers
had not simply challenged their exclusion from police work, but called
for an end to the NYPD’s institutional corruption, intimidation,
harassment, and violence. Black and Puerto Rican political groups
in Harlem, the Lower East Side, and Bedford-Stuyvesant put similar
pressure on Mayor O’Dwyer.73 NYPD officials, however, found it eas-
ier to ignore voices that called for changes in the way officers policed
the city and instead focused solely on the skin color of cops. While it
is true that black leaders like Representative Powell agitated for the
hiring of more black police officers, they knew that this alone could
not hold the department accountable for its brutality.
The NYPD brass and Mayor O’Dwyer pushed questions of racial
justice to the margins of the city’s agenda. The mayor’s only response
was in 1949 to appoint Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., to head a
commission of respectable citizens to investigate allegations of police
brutality against black citizens.74 Although O’Dwyer intended to
whitewash the matter via the commission, during its formation three
black citizens were killed under circumstances that seemed to involve
white police. While the commission promised to get to the bottom
of the crimes, it came up empty. At the same time, the force worked
diligently to bury any reported cases of brutality. In 1953, the New
York Sun n unveiled a covert deal between the NYPD and the Justice
Department that discouraged the FBI agents from routine questioning
in civil rights brutality cases.75 Despite substantial evidence confirming
the clandestine agreement, the subsequent mayor, Vincent Impellitteri,
and new commissioner, George Monaghan, emphatically denied its
existence.76 In March, Attorney General James P. McGranery issued a
statement that confirmed the existence of the agreement, but claimed
it had been terminated.77 The black cops already in the department
knew that questioning police practices rendered their professionalism
suspect and rendered them targets for managerial discipline. Under
such circumstances it is little wonder that potential black recruits were
ambivalent about joining the NYPD.78
The PBA, Unionization, and Communism

The political aspirations of the predominantly white rank-and-file
members of the PBA may have differed from their black peers, but
they were no strangers to managerial interference. The NYPD swiftly
disciplined officers who contested compensation or work practices.
Such critics were easily dismissed as political since they violated the
department’s ethic of neutrality. In the 1940s and 1950s, rank-and-

file policemen faced critical issues regarding pay, benefits, working
conditions, and status. Cops in New York and throughout the coun-
try grew distraught over their impotence relative to management. As
historian Robert Fogelson points out in his survey of municipal police
departments, police work prior to World War II had provided a secure
financial future. Men who had little education and few skills could
receive a decent police salary that might be supplemented by regular
payoffs. If they put in 20 or 25 years of service, they could receive a
modest pension and greatly improve their lot.79 Yet this avenue of
upward mobility narrowed in the postwar period. Between 1939 and
1950, police salaries declined relative to the cost of living. “It became
clear,” Fogelson convincingly argues, “that only a labor union could
mobilize the political, economic and other resources to make an
impression on city councilmen and state legislature.”80
Urban mayors and their police commissioners, concerned about
their inability to discipline the rank-and-file, followed the lead of their
peers in private industry by overturning the gains made by labor dur-
ing the New Deal. New York City law barred police officers from join-
ing unions on the grounds that the city’s safety required an obedient
force with little latitude to negotiate. Police commissioners further
attacked patrolmen’s efforts to unionize by charging that it threatened
their objectivity, neutrality, and patriotism. They claimed that officers’
political affiliations exposed them to charges of bias or even treachery.
Another managerial strategy was to delegitimize union activity
by casting it as anti-American.81 In the 1940s, the NYPD became
obsessed with potential infiltration of fascists and communists among
its ranks. In 1940, Commissioner Valentine went so far as to compel
his officers to complete information forms that attested to their patri-
otism. The forms asked the men four questions: “Are you a member
of the Christian Front? Have you ever been a member of the above
organization? Are you a member of any subversive, communist, bund,
or Fascist club or organization? Which one?”82 For Mayor La Guardia
and Commissioner Valentine, overt political affiliations made an offi-
cer incapable of “objectively” fulfilling his duties. “There is nothing
to prevent any man from joining any organization,” conceded La
Guardia, “but the police officer has to remain neutral. By joining any
one of these organizations he ceases to be neutral.”83 In particular,
La Guardia worried about police officers who followed groups like
the Christian Front, described by detractors as “an armed and fascist
nucleus of political violence.”84
The intrusion into officers’ private lives instigated a revolt by

the PBA against Commissioner Valentine and Mayor LaGuardia.85
Officers rebelled by refusing to fill out their loyalty cards; only 20 per-
cent returned them.86 The PBA ultimately defeated the “front que-
ries” by convincing Valentine of the futility of coercing officers into
divulging their affiliations. La Guardia also concluded that it was
politically unwise to press the issue. However, this episode is instruc-
tive because it shows the illusory nature of an ideology of a politically
neutral police department. Police officers demonstrated that their
political identities could not be disentangled from their sense of them-
selves as cops. Furthermore, those identities—as was the case with the
Christian Front—could often be founded on a bedrock of prejudice
and exclusion.
The political allegiances of the rank-and-file, despite a brief truce
between officers and the brass, continued to hamper labor manage-
ment relations throughout the 1940s. By the end of the decade, how-
ever, police officials came to view communist infiltration as a greater
threat than either fascism or racism. Americans’ fear of foreign infiltra-
tion and radical ideas provided law enforcement agents with a man-
date to aggressively police its own ranks. Police management may
have had genuine concerns about communist aspirations among their
officers, but redbaiting also provided a convenient means to block
union activity. Mayor William O’Dwyer provided management with
plenty of ammunition in 1948 when he cautioned that a depression
could ensue that might lead to general unrest and provide commu-
nists an opportunity to foment trouble in America’s cities. “Not only
do communist countries aim at the destruction by force of our form of
government,” warned O’Dwyer, “but their police forces are designed
not for the protection of individual rights and freedoms but for the
enforcement of state policy.”87
Management’s intrusion into rank-and-file officers’ political lives
infuriated white cops, but few, if any, were similarly outraged by man-
agement attacks on black cops who put civil rights on the criminal
justice agenda. On the contrary, white cops, despite being victims
of anticommunist propaganda themselves, employed red smears to
deflect claims that they perpetrated atrocities in black communities.
PBA president, John E. Carton, when criticized by activists for police
violence, asserted that New York policemen were “the target of com-
munistic and radical groups as can be easily demonstrated by the
present hue and cry over alleged violations of human rights.”88 Yet
the PBA’s brief rally around management’s call for police solidarity
did little to keep the department from meddling in their efforts to

organize and bargain collectively.
The most ominous organizing drives, at least from the perspective
of police managers and government officials, came from two icons
of the American labor movement. Mike Quill, the fiery leader of the
Transportation Workers Union (TWU), first tried to organize patrol-
men into a union in the summer of 1951. Jimmy Hoffa, the infamous
leader of the Teamsters Union, followed Quill’s organizing effort
with one of his own in 1955. Their organizing drives only succeeded
in enhancing their already sizeable egos, but did provide leverage to
rank-and-file cops in their negotiations with management.
Police Commissioner George Monaghan, aware of the implica-
tions of Quill’s unionization drive, immediately forbade members of
the force from joining and ordered those who had done so to with-
draw their applications or face disciplinary action. Policemen resented
the directive as an infringement of their constitutional rights, while
Monaghan claimed it was necessary. He reasoned that critical thinking
and personal choice ought not to be options available to members of
the force: “In my judgment, the police department is very much like
the armed forces of this nation. No one should be in a position to have
his loyalty divided. It would be just as sensible to unionize the Army,
Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps of our great country.”89 Most cops
were attracted to unionization because it held the promise of uniting
them against management. Monaghan instead cast it as a pernicious
entity that would divide his men and undermine their allegiance to
one another. He believed that a successful police department required
a fraternity of men with unquestioned loyalty to one another and their
superiors. He failed to appreciate, or at least acknowledge, the ways in
which officers intended the union to be a collective organization that
would help foster that very harmony.
Quill countered Monaghan’s claims by arguing that the state
constitution had laid down the general principle that employees
had the right to organize and bargain collectively through an orga-
nization of their own choosing; what was at issue was whether the
State Labor Relations Board was open to use by municipal employ-
ees. Quill pointed out that New York City firefighters, as part of
the Uniformed Fireman’s Association of the American Federation
of Labor (AFL), had set a precedent for unionization of municipal
employees. According to Monaghan, police work was profoundly dif-
ferent from other kinds of labor, and, therefore, he dismissed Quill’s
comparison between the two institutions on the grounds that “the
Police Department deals with and directs human beings, while the
fire department deals with physical fact.”90 Mayor Impellitteri agreed.

He claimed to have had no objection to police department line
organizations like the Policemen’s Benevolent Association, but only
because they addressed grievances without striking. Quill retorted
sharply: “While you pretend to take this action in the interests of
public policy and compare policemen with the Army and Navy, you
actually are no different from any other anti-union employer who
says unions are fine, but not in my industry!”91 Finally, fed up with
debating what he saw as a matter of his prerogative, Monaghan issued
an order that simply forbade officers to unionize: “A policeman, like
a soldier may not strike, cannot give even part of his loyalty to a
union.”92 Monaghan threatened disciplinary action for any officer
who signed with the TWU.93 PBA leadership, fearful of reprisals,
ultimately rejected Quill’s drive for unionization and deferred to the
Condon-Wadlin law, which forbade strikes by public employees.94
Despite Monaghan’s outright rejection of unionization, he was able
to win over some rank-and-file police officers by his opposition to
delaying policemen’s pensions as well as his effort to continue increas-
ing the size of the force. Immediately following TWU’s organizing
drive, NYPD officials amended the Police Department’s Rules and
Regulations specifically to bar police officers from unionization.95
In 1955, the notorious Jimmy Hoffa and his Teamsters Union
became the second group to court the PBA for union affiliation. Best
known for being tossed out of the AFL-CIO for “corruption and
gangsterism,” Hoffa represented a nightmarish threat to police officials
and many New Yorkers. By September of that year organizers claimed
to have signed up 600 patrolmen for City Employees Local 237 of the
Teamsters. Howard Feinstein, president of Local 237, reported that
policemen came to him complaining that they were “intimidated in
their work, afraid of losing their jobs, without recourse for grievance
procedures, and disempowered when it came to disciplinary cases.”96
Another area of contention was the working of their members without
pay, or even compensatory time off, in emergencies.97 Hoffa argued
that strong police unions would allow officers to win better wages and
working conditions, thus boosting police morale and making it pos-
sible for police departments to attract higher caliber applicants.98
Commissioner Stephen Kennedy, like his predecessor, fought
against police unionization by resurrecting the old argument that the
police department was “a quasi-military organization which did not
intend to have any pressure groups—no matter how well intentioned
they claim to be.”99 Hoffa contended that the Teamsters had no
intention of fighting for policemen’s right to strike. When Hoffa and
Feinstein organized a picket line around police headquarters in an

effort to cut off deliveries of oil, gas, and other supplies, Kennedy
acted decisively to derail it.100 Kennedy and the newly elected mayor,
Robert Wagner, issued an ultimatum to Feinstein, threatening him
with expulsion from Local 237 if he did not withdraw his campaign to
organize police.101 Hoffa blinked first. In a rare concession of defeat,
Hoffa quipped he was “sorry [he] ever thought about organizing the
police.”102
Labor giants Mike Quill and Jimmy Hoffa left their respective
fights for police unionization humbled, as did many individual advo-
cates for police worker rights. The Red Scare of the 1950s facilitated
management’s aim to exclude workers whom it believed to be targets
of suspicion. The anticommunist hysteria made suspect any black cops
with civil rights allegiances and those of all backgrounds who spoke
on behalf of labor’s right to organize.
On February 15, 1953—one week before the New York Times
exposed the FBI cover-up of NYPD brutality cases—African American
Jervey C. Hamilton found himself in New York’s Supreme Court
fighting for his right to become a police officer.103 In 1951, Hamilton
had passed a competitive examination for the position of patrolman
in the NYPD, which placed him on the eligibility list with a veteran’s
preference status. In January of 1952, however, the municipal ser-
vice commission withheld his appointment on the grounds that he
was a communist. At issue were two incriminating pieces of evidence:
Hamilton’s signature on a purportedly communist petition regarding
discrimination against black citizens, and a telegram he supposedly
sent to Benjamin Davis, a member of the Communist Party and for-
mer New York City councilman.104
These two pieces of evidence rested on shaky ground and, further-
more, had a dubious relationship to Davis’s ability to perform police
work. At the time of the signing, Hamilton was living in Harlem,
a place where most citizens empathized with Willie McGee, a black
man unfairly condemned to death by the state of Mississippi. Like
many members of the community, Hamilton had signed the peti-
tion to protest racial injustice. Five other signers of the sheet—which
had nine names including Hamilton’s—lived on Hamilton’s street
and made affidavits that they were tricked into signing the petition,
which they believed was to oppose racial discrimination rather than
to support the Communist Party agenda. They suspected that the
petitioner had folded over the name of the Communist Party so that
it was not visible when they signed. Nevertheless, the Municipal
Service Commission deemed Hamilton guilty of demonstrating
M er i t ocr a cy an d C o l o r B l i ndness 41
ominous political proclivities: “We must be mindful of today’s acute

international situation and of the dangers of treachery from within.
Nor may we overlook the vital function of the police as the guardian
of law and order and the need for highly dependable personnel.”105
Hamilton claimed that he had no clear recollection of the petition but
did not deny signing it. He categorically denied sending a telegram
to Davis.106 The anticommunist fervor and anxiety over black activism
translated into suspicion of Hamilton and jeopardized his candidacy
for patrolman, despite there being no city, state, or federal statute bar-
ring membership in the Communist Party.
The court ultimately found no evidence of Hamilton’s associa-
tion with a subversive group and reinstated his eligibility for patrol-
man with veteran’s preferential status.107 Yet the court predicated
Hamilton’s innocence on his willingness to shore up his patriotic cre-
dentials by taking an oath that he was “a loyal American who loved
his country.”108 Also in Hamilton’s favor was the fact that he was
an honorably discharged veteran of World War II; during the war he
had served in the Navy both at home and overseas. Fortunately for
Hamilton, smears against him as a black radical or communist were
outweighed by his patriotism and military service. The episode, how-
ever, illustrates the way in which even minimal empathy regarding a
racial issue or class politics could jeopardize one’s eligibility for police
work.109
The decline of American labor strength in the 1950s led many
white rank-and-file police officers to rethink their apolitical and neu-
tral roles as enforcers of the law.110 Through their union organizing
activities, refusal to sign loyalty cards, embracing of ethnic fraternal
organizations, and increasing disenchantment with and resistance to
police management, the rank-and-file officers made it clear that police
uniform failed to neutralize their allegiances and politics. Indeed,
John Cassese, president of the Policemen’s Benevolent Association,
concluded that Kennedy’s actions further alienated men from the
department and that such “totalitarian tactics” failed to stem the rank-
and-file drive for improved grievance procedures.111 “What they [the
PBA] are after,” warned Kennedy, “is controlling policy. And they’re
not going to control it. Not while I’m the Commissioner.”112
Falling wages and a poor grievance system in the 1950s ren-
dered patrol work, traditionally an avenue of economic advancement
for scores of “white ethnic” immigrant men, a less secure means of
upward mobility. White police officers, like their African American
peers, began to insist that politics had a place in patrol work. Yet each
group had a very different sense of what qualified as appropriately
political. For most white police officers, grievances over pay, hours,
working conditions, and worker representation were legitimate politi-
cal issues. But when black officers threatened to put racial questions
on the NYPD agenda, most white cops identified with management by
rallying around the professional credo of objectivity. Gender similarly
would threaten to fracture the fragile alliance among rank-and-file
officers as the boundaries between policeman and policewoman were
redefined in the postwar period.
2
The Alter Ego o f the Patrolman
We enjoyed the fight for promotion. There’s nothing like David beat-
ing Goliath.
—Retired NYPD Deputy Chief, Gertrude Schimmel
W omen’s integration into police work in the first half of the twen-
tieth century was fraught with conflict but less so than that of African
Americans. The history of police brutality in black communities,
ghetto rioting, and civil rights advocacy pitted black and white cops
against one another and made racial politics more combustible than
gender conflict. Equally important was the fact that women never
directly competed with men for patrol positions. Patrolman remained
a separate category for which women were ineligible until 1972.
Women’s quieter integration, though no less revolutionary, stemmed
from their willingness to accept subordinate and limited roles in the
department.
Whereas black men in the postwar period appealed to equality
of opportunity, women who sought expanded roles in the NYPD
defined themselves as the alter ego of the patrolman. Policewomen
advocates contrasted the physically imposing, combative, and heroic
policeman with the nurturing, motherly, and protective policewoman.
World War II concerns with social hygiene, morality, and female delin-
quency, as well as the postwar concerns with delinquent boys and
girls, enabled policewomen to make the case that they could be the
ultimate complement to police work performed by men. This kind
of advocacy was a doubled-edged sword. There was plenty of police
work for women to perform, but the feminine nature of it left their
superiors, male peers, and an interested public less convinced that they
were real cops.
Race further complicated the realization of women’s equal treat-
ment in the NYPD. African American women did not enjoy the same
protections of domestic ideology. Racial conceptions of gender and
gendered conceptions of race put black and white women in differ-

ent roles.1 Many supervisors operated on the premise that while black
women could handle themselves in violent situations, white women
might find themselves in jeopardy. Police officers frequently encour-
aged black women to pursue dangerous undercover work in neighbor-
hoods where they refused to send white women. 2 Supervisors reasoned
that black women could infiltrate unsafe black neighborhoods with-
out being detected. One African American woman reported that “you
might be asked to do something white women wouldn’t be asked to
do. When a white sergeant was looking at me, he wasn’t looking at his
mother or his sister. He might send me into a hallway or [on a] roof,
but he would never send a white young lady.”3 White supervisors shel-
tered white policewomen from danger, but did not exercise quite the
same caution with black women.
The notion that “true ladies” required protection was at the heart
of NYPD gender politics in the 1950s. Police managers sought to
shore up the gender division of labor at a moment in which it appeared
that women might move into men’s roles. They assigned the physical
component of crime fighting to men while reserving preventative and
protective work for women. Policewomen made incremental inroads
into male patrol work by illustrating the relevance of feminine skills
like prevention, sensitivity, communication, and child rearing. By the
beginning of the 1960s, the increasingly similar nature of policewom-
en’s and patrolmen’s duties, despite their distinctly gendered justifica-
tions, led some women to question the validity of separate job titles of
policewoman and patrolman. The challenge for policewomen advo-
cates was that the femininity campaign, which had been so success-
ful in expanding women’s work in law enforcement, reinforced the
physical and emotional differences between policewomen and patrol-
men. Although women could work in new areas of policing by mak-
ing appeals to motherhood and domesticity, policewomen remained
separate and unequal from patrolmen.
Police Matrons
The recruitment of women for policing after World War II was hardly
a new phenomenon. The advocacy for women in policing had a long
history that relied upon women’s purportedly superior moral char-
acter. In the late nineteenth century, women’s organizations like the
Women’s Prison Association, the National League of Women’s Voters,
the American Female Guardian Society, and the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union encouraged social reform that allowed women to
T he Al t e r E g o o f t h e P at r o l m a n 45
serve as matrons to care for female prisoners detained in police pre-

cincts. Traditionally, male officers, their wives, or the maid of the police
station searched female prisoners.4 In the 1880s, the department had
rejected employment of women as police matrons, professing that the
work was simply too physically demanding for them. Female reform-
ers changed the terms of the debate but did not challenge the premise
that women were weaker than men.5
Of particular concern to women’s groups was the potential for
sexual abuse of female detainees.6 To prevent the policeman’s misuse
of power, reformers asserted that women, as repositories of virtue,
should have a hand in police work to ensure the public good and
welfare.7 Male prison workers, fearing that women workers would
displace them, argued that prison was a place of degeneracy, unfit
for women workers. Agreeing with the premise of women’s clubs
that women were naturally virtuous and moral, but manipulating
that cultural value to contest reform within the police station, the
Men’s Prison Association argued that “a decent sober woman could
not search a female alcoholic because she would be contaminated
and demoralized by her contact with such depraved creatures.”8 In
response, women’s groups promised to ensure that candidates for the
job of matron were of good moral character and would be required
to secure letters of recommendation from 20 “respectable” women
before they were appointed.9 Men and women agreed that women
were models of virtue and morality, but disputed the implications for
women’s employment.
Police matrons performed tasks previously reserved for men but
never claimed to be doing men’s jobs. Rather, matron advocates
claimed that they were redefining the nature of a small aspect of police
work as feminine. From their point of view, it was appropriate for
women to care for female prisoners. They did not try to challenge the
conventional wisdom that men and women were physically, intellectu-
ally, or emotionally different from men. Indeed, for them, it was this
very difference that justified the limited incorporation of women into
the station as matrons.
Women’s official roles in the NYPD remained relatively static until
World War I, but individual women gained access to more challeng-
ing and rewarding tasks by stretching the boundaries of their work.
One exceptional case was Isabella Goodwin, who worked under the
title of matron at the Mercer Street Station from 1895 to 1912. While
serving in this role Goodwin made a number of shrewd observations
about women prisoners, which led to a supervisor’s suggestion that she
informally try her hand at detective work. Goodwin realized that as a
woman she could go undetected while investigating certain criminal

activities. She gathered evidence against fortune tellers, investigated
banking scams and extortion rackets, and exposed fake medical prac-
titioners. When Commissioner George Samuel Dougherty learned of
her work, he appointed her to the position of first-grade detective, for-
malizing her position and more than doubling her salary. Goodwin’s
detective status was atypical, but it was common for police departments
to use matrons in capacities other than guarding female prisoners.10
Police officials simply saw some tasks as more suitable for women. Even
Goodwin remained guarded about her femininity, noting that her suc-
cess in police work was due to her “women’s intuition” and that it was
not at a cost to her work at home, where “a woman’s duty is first and
foremost.”11 This kind of affirmation protected Goodwin from poten-
tial critics of her public work as a police detective.
The Policewomen’s Bureau

The physical and social dislocations of World War I created openings
for women to make new claims about their relevance to police work.
Four significant and interrelated phenomena led to unique opportu-
nities: the number of men fighting overseas, the vacancy left in tra-
ditional men’s jobs, the social stresses on families caused by absentee
parents, and the wave of feminism surrounding suffrage. Of particular
concern was the perceived decline in public morals and the purported
waywardness of America’s youth as women went to work and men
went into the armed forces. Many citizens feared that the concentra-
tion of young men at the new military recruiting centers posed dan-
gers to vulnerable young girls. Since most politicians already viewed
women as the guardians of public virtue, it made sense to solicit their
help in this morality crusade.
In 1918 the city attempted to resolve the police shortage by hir-
ing men as reserves, but there simply were not enough. To fill the
vacancies and combat perceived problems of sexual immorality Mayor
John Hylan and the Committee of Women on National Defense
established a small unit of women as “protective officers.” The NYPD
defended its use of women as auxiliary police reserves by pointing to
their successful substitution for men in other industries and political
and social spheres. The suffrage movement convinced some men that
women were capable of work from which they previously refrained.
Special Deputy Commissioner Rodman Wanamaker, head of the
Police Reserves, constructed a tenuous defense of the newly hired
women by contending that “New York women have the vote” and,
therefore, “they should have an active part in enforcing the laws.”12

Wanamaker justified the department’s inclusion of women by focus-
ing on their responsibility of problems relating to youths and sexual-
ity. Furthermore, he made it clear that their service was to be both
“temporary and voluntary.”13 Wanamaker divided the city into zones
and assigned policewomen to each one to patrol and look after the
welfare of young girls who might be found in the company of men
in secluded places, such as parks and beaches. Although Wanamaker
granted women new crime-fighting responsibilities, he kept them
from direct confrontations with “rough and violent lawbreakers.”14
“Protective officers,” as their title suggested, were to do preven-
tative rather than punitive work. The approximately five thousand
female recruits were technically empowered to prosecute arrests but
never made any. Instead, they reported to their superior officers the
most flagrant cases of disorder. Women protective officers, hired only
as an emergency measure, fulfilled their duties as moral guardians
by scouting the streets, parks, camps, armories, recruiting stations,
dance halls, motion picture theaters, and amusement parks. Likewise,
they conducted investigative work in places where young girls might
be exploited—furnished rooming houses, dubious places of employ-
ment, restaurants, and railroad terminals.15 Wanamaker instructed
female officers to call for a policeman if the need arose for the use of
physical force to curb crime. In so doing, he could tactically employ
women reserves throughout the city while reserving physical crime
fighting for “real” cops. Women police reserves understood that their
work was temporary, supplemental, and protective.16
Commissioner Richard Enright initiated substantive changes
within the department while maintaining rigid job categories by sex
as a means of protecting the privileged position of male workers. In
January 1918, he appointed Ellen O’Grady, a ten-year veteran of
the Brooklyn probation office, to fifth deputy police commissioner.
O’Grady’s primary responsibility was to instruct a new, small elite
group of policewomen who were to curb prostitution by monitor-
ing men who hassled women in the streets, subways, and elevated
lines. Enright rationalized the assignment of a woman deputy, as he
had done with women reserves, by pointing to women’s expertise in
youth and sex crimes. “In this city every year there are hundreds of
girls lured from their homes and their lives are wrecked,” explained
Enright, “and because they are seeking opportunities, they are lured
from the path of virtue, and finally are found leading a life of shame.”17
Only women, Enright seemed to suggest, were capable of keeping
these girls from making wrong choices.
Urban police departments historically had employed women to

handle cases of prostitution, but the role was expanded during the
war. Police executives reasoned that they could protect male police
officers and prostitutes from one another by having policewomen per-
form arrests and inspections. Under such circumstances, policemen
would not be tempted to abuse their power over prostitutes in custody,
while prostitutes would have no grounds to make false accusations of
sexual misconduct against policemen.18 As the NYPD incorporated
women into wartime police work, some officials became convinced
that policewomen could have permanent, albeit specialized, roles in
the department.
Enright’s plan to create new jobs for policewomen raised ques-
tions about the merit and compensation for different female work-
ers in the department. He alienated the incumbent police matrons as
well as applicants on the matron waiting list by paying higher salaries
and extending privileged status to policewomen, the matrons’ sister
colleagues. The Police Matrons Association responded in 1919 by
lobbying for legislation to give matrons the title of policewoman. As
the association explained its demands, Commissioner Enright sought
permanent civil service tenure for the policewomen appointed under
the war emergency measure. The legislature ultimately enacted both
measures. The police matrons claimed victory because they had won
the title of “policewoman,” but at the same time the former police-
women’s title was changed to “patrolwoman.” In some respects, the
NYPD responded to matrons’ call for parity by granting both positions
civil service status and equal pay. Nevertheless, the job requirements
and selection criteria for policewomen and patrolwomen remained
distinct.19 Matrons, now classified as policewomen, worried that if the
public and, more importantly, the NYPD brass, saw patrolwomen as
less “real cops” than patrolmen, then they might not be viewed as
cops at all. Both groups of female police workers worried about their
departmental status in the postwar period and played up their femi-
nine credentials to secure their jobs. The debate became moot at the
end of the war when the department disbanded the Women’s Police
Reserve. Commissioner Enright had never intended to employ these
5,000 women after men returned from overseas. The mass hiring of
policewomen had been a temporary wartime solution.20
Commissioner Enright nevertheless realized the political uses of
female law enforcement and established a much smaller Women’s
Precinct in March of 1921 as a full-time and permanent entity. Enright
named Mary Hamilton as precinct director and furnished her with a
staff of approximately one hundred patrolwomen and policewomen
T he Al t e r E g o o f t h e P at r ol m a n 49
who were to be responsible for “welfare work.” Their most critical

functions were sheltering runaway girls and investigating unscrupu-
lous men who might accost, flirt with, or otherwise take advantage
of young girls. Hamilton, like Goodwin and O’Grady before her,
defended her precinct’s role on the grounds that it provided women
with a forum to fulfill their feminine duty without impinging upon
men’s work. “In doing patrol duty,” Hamilton noted in her memoirs,
“the general policy of policewomen has been one of quiet, dignified,
unobtrusive watchfulness. Except in extreme cases, the policewoman
does not seek to arrest. The purpose of her patrol is to watch and warn
and save as much as she can without antagonizing those she would
help.” Hamilton maintained that women’s contribution to police
detective work came from “their intuition, versatility, and natural femi-
nine guile.”21 Nowhere did she mention women’s capacity to investi-
gate crime in the same manner as men, let alone be their equals.
Leaders like Hamilton secured police jobs for women by accentu-
ating positive female virtues rather than questioning circumscribed
gender roles. In 1924, Commissioner Enright rewarded Hamilton’s
efforts by formalizing the Women’s Precinct under the name of the
Policewomen’s Bureau. Enright envisioned the Bureau as a safe haven
for women and girls who sought maternal advice. Hamilton and
Enright agreed that women, due to their innate female talents, were
best suited for a precinct that focused on youths, prevention, and pro-
tection. Hamilton never intended that women would, or even could,
compete with men. She saw male and female skills as complemen-
tary, explaining that women were assistants who best served by aiding
policemen rather than emulating them. “When policewomen put on
uniforms and carried guns and clubs they became little men,” she pro-
fessed, but her officers “did their work as women, and thus rendered a
great service.”22 There was nothing intrinsically unequal about a divi-
sion of labor, but police personnel understood that women’s police
work was more supplementary than complementary to that of men.
The NYPD brass, policewomen advocates, and the popular press
promoted the image of a feminine patrolwoman in an attempt to
alleviate fears about women working in the ominous male space of
New York’s streets. The New York Times, s for example, boasted about
how its city’s policewomen were “blond and brunette, trim of fig-
ure, with smart hairdos and manicures, and required a minimum of
rouge and lipstick.”23 The Timess also contrasted the bulky station
house matron of the nineteenth century with the sexy policewoman
of the twentieth. “The old matron wore a badge over her heart and
her hair in a knot; her smile never showed,” noted the Times, s “but
the old order changes . . . now the girls run from blonds, who, in the
words of their chief, ‘can look pretty dizzy if they wish’ to silver-
haired grandmothers.”24 Whereas a woman in the nineteenth-century
police station was gruff and perhaps a bit masculine, the article sug-
gested, her twentieth-century counterpart was a true lady. The Times
conceded that most women wanted to join the department because
policing was a steady job, but insisted that their primary interest was
in social welfare and working with children, further proof of their
femininity. Equally reassuring to readers was the fact that 90 percent
of policewomen were married. Nineteenth-century separate spheres
would have dictated that married women not work outside the home,
but in the 1920s, policewomen could claim that their married status
testified to their respectability. Even when women possessed guns, as
seen in figure 2.1, they did so under the supervision of men and con-
tinued to dress like ladies.
Few Americans at the end of the 1920s contested the idea that
women had a secure, albeit limited, role in policing.25 Most urban
police commissioners, like Enright, recruited policewomen as a tacti-
cal and practical maneuver. Few, if any, women articulated a desire for
men’s jobs. While it is possible that women privately coveted the pay,
Figure 2.1 “Women Police Officers Inspecting and Practicing with Handguns,”
National Photo Company Collection [1910–1920].
benefits, and prestige of men’s jobs, public proclamations of those

desires were likely perceived as fraught with political danger. Instead,
policewomen advocates stretched the boundaries of appropriate
policewomen’s work through the creation of new job titles and con-
comitant responsibilities. By 1938, policewomen secured a 1 percent
quota of the total force.26 This tiny foothold may have seemed like a
substantive victory on the eve of war, but came to represent a signifi-
cant barrier in the postwar period.
Military Service at Home and Abroad

Changes in the sex-segregated labor market during World War II
further weakened men’s hold on police work. Just as the boundar-
ies between men’s and women’s work on the domestic and military
fronts shifted during the war, so too did women’s participation in, and
contemplation of, new roles in the NYPD. Likewise, increasing male
anxiety about and hostility toward female competition compelled
women seeking police work to couch their arguments in the more
palatable language of domesticity. Policewomen were shrewd enough
to insulate their advocacy from criticism by hammering home their
primary roles as mothers and guardians of virtue. Policewomen’s work
became a kind of domestic welfare in the streets. This strategy helped
to make certain work tasks available to policewomen while foreclosing
opportunities for absolute equality with patrolmen.
There are a number of explanations for women’s failure to turn
wartime labor and military service into a permanent platform for
women’s rights.27 Most important was the fact that both men and
women understood women’s wartime service as patriotic and tempo-
rary measures. Both during and after the war, popular pundits empha-
sized the importance of women’s supportive roles and the ways in
which they subordinated their own goals to the requirements of fam-
ily and society. Wartime publicity stressed the need for women to take
a war job or otherwise support the war effort as a means of aiding
their husbands, fathers, and brothers overseas.28 Thus, women could
continue to fulfill their maternal and patriotic duties during the war
while working in traditionally male jobs. The war effort turned out to
be less a milestone than a natural response to the call for patriotism.29
Women themselves placed their highest priority on family life. The
war alone did not convince women of their independence and full
equality.30 And yet the experience of war did provide the context for
trying out new gender roles, which had a lasting impact in multiple
areas of work.
Another reason why women’s wartime work did not threaten their
primary roles as mothers and wives was because neither public pro-
pagandists nor women themselves understood their new jobs as mas-
culine. A continuation of the sex segregation of work, coupled with
a reclassification of certain jobs as feminine, enabled women to enter
men’s jobs on a massive scale. When, during the war, employers trans-
ferred jobs previously held by men to women, the duties involved in
that job suddenly took on traditionally feminine characteristics that
resembled housework. The boundaries between women and men’s
work shifted but were not eliminated.31
Public conversations continued to emphasize women’s secondary
status in the labor market, even as they cracked occupational barri-
ers. At first, exclusively male professions, particularly those involved
in defense manufacturing, were assigned an unchallenged priority
over domestic work. However, as women began to fill these positions
during the war, the emphasis shifted. Now the battlefront achieved
absolute priority, while anyy kind of work on the home front was rede-
fined as auxiliary. The industries run by women were secondary.32 In
other words, regardless of what women’s work actually constituted,
war propagandists—mostly male employers, government officials,
and journalists—could construct it as secondary, auxiliary, reserve, or
temporary. This was true for women in policing. The Policewomen’s
Endowment Association hosted a celebratory dinner in New York in
October of 1945 that spoke to the secondary nature of policewom-
en’s work. President Helen Green commended her “gals” for their
work on the home front but dampened that praise by clarifying that
it was the work of men overseas that made a World War II victory
possible.33
Many of the challenges of women in the military foreshadowed
the problems of women’s integration into policing. Sex segregation
was equally critical in both institutions. The military barred its half
a million women from combat, although some nurses and medical
personnel served in battle during emergency situations. Whereas the
ideal male recruit was an 18- or 19-year-old man in peak physical
form, the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) selected women recruits on
the basis of their maturity, education, and work experience.34 Military
officers assigned women to jobs that reflected their traditionally femi-
nine roles in civilian life—clerical work, communications, and health
care.35 Army officials expected women to assist men and the army as
nurses, maids, kitchen staff, secretaries, entertainers, and even prosti-
tutes so that the men were free for the work that mattered—fighting
and handling weapons.
In the eyes of some observers, the woman soldier, even in this

slightly expanded role, subverted the natural gender order through
her sexual and economic independence from men.36 Army officials,
cognizant of the tensions brought out by women in the military,
clarified that women soldiers were nott to have the same status as or
even be treated equally to men. Women in leadership positions in the
WAC, like their home front peers in police work, worked diligently
to reassure Americans that their work was consistent with traditional
gender order. The WAC leadership tried to assuage public fears about
the potential sexual independence and victimization of servicewomen
by depicting female soldiers as feminine and chaste. They portrayed
the corps as the guardian of women’s welfare and morals and pre-
sented female soldiers as ladylike, virtuous, and weaker than their
male counterparts.37 At the heart of such a portrayal was a reassur-
ing picture of a sexually respectable, middle-class, heterosexual, white
woman. Army officials diligently policed the public presentation of
female soldiers. For many Americans, the female soldier epitomized
female deviance. Some citizens feared women’s entrance into the
army resulted in a more aggressive and assertive masculine sexual-
ity. The historical image of female soldiers as cross-dressers was also
articulated during World War II in public allegations that the WAC
either attracted or produced “mannish” women.38 For proponents of
the women in the military, the model recruit exhibited none of these
qualities.
Black women did not fit neatly into the idealized version of the
female recruit, and thus created problems for the ways in which WAC
leaders constructed such images. None of the services was eager to
recruit black women, but a labor shortage and the public relations
perils of a racially discriminatory policy forced them to relent. Even
then, the WAC allowed black women to serve only in segregated units.
Furthermore, the Selective Service Training Act of 1940 limited the
number of African Americans to their percent of the civilian popula-
tion, and thus placed a 10 percent ceiling on the number of black
women who could serve. Despite this quota, the WAC was never less
than 94 percent white during the war.39
Black women in the army, like their counterparts in law enforce-
ment, found their aspirations stymied by supervisors. Many African
American women joined the military hoping to secure greater edu-
cational and occupational opportunities only to find that the WAC
assigned them to the most unpleasant and arduous tasks.40 War offi-
cials rationalized that black women, due to their poor performance on
standardized placement tests, were unqualified for more intellectual
work.41 Black women suffered occupational discrimination in the

army, where commanding officers assigned them overwhelmingly to
kitchen or laundry work.42
There were profound discrepancies between the ways in which
black and white women’s groups understood wartime service. Whereas
white Americans were often uneasy about women’s army work and
distance from the home front, black citizens generally accepted women
as paid workers and soldiers.43 Women’s advocates did not lobby for
women’s right to participate in the military. Rather, they defended it
as a temporary aberration that would end with the war. Conversely,
African American women’s groups understood black women’s military
experience as an important path for African American upward mobil-
ity as well as the general advancement of women. They argued that
women’s service was a fulfillment of the American creed instead of a
gendered violation of it. Racial constructions of gender and gendered
constructions of race influenced the jobs they were allowed to per-
form, their living conditions, and the ways in which female sexuality
were regulated and controlled.44 Military work, like policing, became
available to women from many backgrounds though not necessarily on
equal terms or with similar expectations. Still, any woman who entered
these male domains faced pressure to prove that she was a lady.
Neither Overly Mannish

Nor Overly Feminine
The image of a morally virtuous, chaste, white woman in the service of
her country played a powerful role in shaping women’s place in police
work during and after the war. Police Chief, the most widely circulated
publication by commissioners of police, directly linked the contain-
ment of women’s sexuality with wartime patriotism. Commissioners
expressed particular concern that drafted boys might seek “one last
fling” before entering the Armed Services and that girls would happily
oblige them. “Girls and young women have their part in this problem,”
cautioned Police Chieff in 1943, noting that the moral challenge was
“especially great in taverns and night clubs.”45 The problem was not
merely the commercial and clearly debased prostitute, but the Victory
Girl, who, in a “misguided conception of patriotic duty,” might want
to be generous to the boys. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, asked policemen to “assume an extra bur-
den on behalf of the boys and girls, in an effort to destroy a trend of
immorality which threatens the future of America’s homes.” Hoover
issued a warning that “the actions of a debased character would not
help win the war,” but rather served “to retard our victory.”46 Police
Chieff reported that young girls “gave of themselves freely to men in
uniform,” but only because they were “motivated by a false sense of
patriotism.”47 The responsibility of police departments, the commis-
sioners contended, was to protect such naive and innocent women
from the male soldier, who simply could not help himself.48 Whereas
men’s sexuality was natural, commissioners reasoned, that of women
had to be policed.
Key voices in the policewomen’s movement, including WAC lead-
ers, worked diligently to represent women as chaste, which had the
unintentional effect of depicting all women as potential sexual victims.
Eleanor Hutzel, deputy commissioner and head of policewomen in
Detroit, first drafted a policewomen’s handbook in the 1930s that
became the standard used by police departments across the United
States for the next quarter century. The Policewomen’s Handbook
confirmed women’s passivity in liaisons between women and men in
uniform; even female prostitutes were not completely responsible for
their actions.49 In Hutzel’s view, policewomen were responsible for
prosecuting individuals who exploited women for immoral purposes.
She urged policewomen to acquaint themselves with both civilian and
military rules in order to prosecute soldiers who preyed upon female
victims.
Policewoman expert Irma Buwalda likewise advocated for armed
forces and police departments to share female personnel with one
another, but to do so in a way that preserved their proper gender roles.
Buwalda urged recruitment of returning servicewomen and other war
workers as policewomen because they were in good physical condition,
had learned to work with men, and had received specialized train-
ing that prepared them to fight crime on the American home front.
Buwalda observed the ways in which police officials recruited service-
men for police work and wanted to ensure that women had similar
employment opportunities in the postwar period.50 Nevertheless, she
contended that if women continued to perform quasi-military work
on the domestic front it was only because of increasing juvenile delin-
quency, venereal disease, and crimes committed by girls and women.51
The 1947 qualifying exam for New York policewomen, shown in
figure 2.2, constituted a diverse group of fit and respectably dressed
women working to the approval of an onlooking policeman.
Commentators noted how the ladylike behavior of women cops
ensured that their work would not compromise their femininity. The
Sunday Mirrorr and the Saturday Evening Postt provided especially
buoyant reports on the ways in which New York policewomen retained
Figure 2.2 “Women Take Qualifying Exam for New York City Police Force,” Library
of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, 1947.
their femininity while fighting crime. Both papers featured Detective

Winifred Hayes, who was “one of a group of cops that doesn’t object
to being called the prettiest cops in the world.” Despite the fact that
Hayes had fought with men twice her size and been beaten over the
head by a “crazed addict,” she remained undaunted. The Saturday
Evening Postt reported how Detective Hayes helped to bring down
Eduaordo Balarezo, leader of one of the largest drug rings in the
country. The newspaper quickly reassured readers that Hayes was no
bruiser, but, at 5’10.5’’, “a dish in any league.”52 The Sunday Mirror
alleviated any concerns about Hayes’ femininity by elaborating upon
the only episode that purportedly made her wish that she had cho-
sen another profession. One night when searching through a pile of
refuse behind a Harlem stairway for narcotics, Hayes spotted a huge
rat crawling out of the debris. It ran over her hands and then scam-
pered between her legs. Playing the coquettish lady, Hayes exclaimed,
“I had never been so scared in my life!”53 An officer who worked
with Hayes noted with pride that “You can give a woman a badge,
a gun, and all the professional training in the world, but she remains
a woman at heart.”54 Policewomen’s incessant and public defense of
their femininity, reflective or not of their private experiences, was a
means of bolstering their womanly credentials while they performed

what others might deem to be a man’s job.
Formally sex-segregated jobs allowed policewomen and patrolmen
in the 1950s to act as if the old gender order remained intact. For
example, the sex segregation of work tasks made it uncommon for
women detectives and their male counterparts to compete with one
another. New York’s female detectives investigated crimes and assisted
men in their apprehension of criminals but generally specialized in jobs
that NYPD officials claimed they performed more adroitly. Women
concentrated on pickpockets, investigated potential abortion rackets,
and searched areas where children and teens were to be found. When
they did work with men, they served as their decoys for prospective
muggers and molesters. NYPD officials contended that narcotics ped-
dlers, abortionists, pimps, fortune tellers, and other criminals had their
suspicions less aroused by women than men. Policewomen convinc-
ingly played undercover roles, including telephone operators, models,
entertainers, secretaries, and sales clerks.
Male detectives reacted to their female peers with a mixture of
respect, mild envy, and protectiveness.55 While some men may have
harbored jealousies, women’s deference to them in episodes of physi-
cal valor usually placated any fragile egos. For example, when asked
about her success in detective work, one woman explained, “I know I
always have my partners to back me up,” pointing to two husky men
standing behind her. “Al and Jerry never keep me out of their sight. I
get scared if I lose them for one minute.”56 As long as the rough and
tumble component of detective work was still their domain, most men
were content to allow women to assist them in fighting crime.
The federal government clarified the feminine domain of patrol work
by issuing a report in 1945 entitled Techniques of Law Enforcement in
the Use of Policewomen with Special Reference to Social Protection. The
authors of the report demanded an increase in the number of police-
women primarily because of their special skills in fighting certain kinds
of crime and social problems, but also because of an anticipated “man-
power” shortage in urban police departments. The report identified
five major reasons for the increased demand for policewomen: increas-
ing rates of venereal infection; a shift from the professional prostitute
to the amateur pick-up girl; increasing rates of juvenile delinquency; a
wartime increase in the number of crimes committed by women and
girls; and the prospect of a general postwar crime wave of “unprec-
edented proportions.” Like earlier guidelines for women in police
work, this report shored up the domain of the policewoman: protect-
ing youths; monitoring places serving alcoholic beverages; upholding
laws regulating commercial dance halls, bowling alleys, theaters, and

amusement parks; regulating the legal employment of minors; and
dealing with sex crimes.57
The Techniquess manual presented women with contradictory mes-
sages about their roles in police work. It asserted that the policewoman
was “first and foremost a police officer,” and that “she is a regular
member of the department and has all the same privileges—including
salary, rating, and promotional opportunity—as male officers who are
doing the same kind of work.”58 This was true neither in the NYPD
nor other departments around the country. Furthermore, the manual
set up an impossible balancing act, asking women to perform all of the
tasks of police work like men while at the same time retaining their
femininity. “In manner,” the manual urged, “policewomen should not
be overly mannish nor overly feminine. She should not play on the fact
that she is a woman, but neither should she ever forget her responsibil-
ity as a woman and the dignity she owes to her sex.” Regarding emo-
tions, the manual ordered her to “toe the line between being either
sentimental and soft or callous and indifferent.” In terms of speech,
it suggested that she “should avoid social work jargon not familiar to
those with whom she associates, but not cheapen herself by taking on
the language of some of the hardened offenders with whom she has to
deal.” As far as disposition was concerned, the manual’s ideal police-
woman steered between “grim seriousness” and “flippancy,” acting
neither as a “Pollyanna” nor a “chronic griper.” The manual did not
expect the policewoman to wear a uniform, but it did expect her to
be aware of the fact “that suitable, modish clothes will have no small
effect in helping her to establish the confidence and respect of the
young girls and women with whom she would primarily deal.” Equally
important, the manual counseled, was that the policewoman pay
“meticulous attention to the details—her hair, makeup, fingernails—
in short, to neatness and grooming.” While such mixed messages
undoubtedly muddled the role of women in police work, the manual
did make it clear that the policewoman was nott to expose herself to
hazardous situations. “In such cases,” Techniquess declared, “others in
the department are always able and willing to help.”59 The manual did
not equivocate about the importance of reserving dangerous work for
men, making the tightrope that much narrower for women.
Girls, Not Amazons

Few male officers conceived of women in the heroic role of police
officer, but instead imagined them as the objects, causes, or victims
of danger. The NYPD insisted that it was men’s place to intervene in

potentially dangerous, violent, or otherwise risky episodes. A series
of cartoons from the NYPD magazine, Spring 3100, illustrates that
point. In figure 2.3, members of the NYPD and a firefighter com-
pete for the opportunity to rescue a helpless woman from a burning
building. Notice, however, that their heroism was at a cost to their
duties; as the men fawn over the female prize, the fire blazes out of
control. The hose is left on the ground while the men’s hands are
extended toward the woman instead of handling the fire. The impli-
cation was that a woman’s presence distracted men from their official
heroic duties.
Other cartoons poked fun at the buffoonery of men in the presence
of women. Figure 2.4 depicts a sunbathing woman as the cause of an
accident through her distraction of a male driver; it is herr dangerous
curves that are a threat to traffic safety. Her sexuality is so hazardous
that one needs to label it with a warning sign. Figure 2.5 presents a
similar theme, playing upon anxiety over the entry of women into traffic
Figure 2.3 “Thanks Fellas,” Spring 3100, 0 July 1944. New York City Police Department.
All rights reserved. Used with permission of the New York City Police Department.
Figure 2.4 “Dangerous Curves,” Spring 3100, October, 1947. New York City
Police Department. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the New York City
Police Department.
Figure 2.5 “Traffic Cop,” Spring 3100, October, 1945. New York City Police
Department.
duty during World War II.60 This particular woman seems to have a
double strike against her. On the one hand, she is portrayed as attrac-
tive enough to cause automobile accidents. On the other hand, the job
seems to jeopardize her femininity, as is evidenced by the harsh scowl
on her face. The cartoon warned its viewers about the implicit dangers
of having women work men’s jobs. The irony is that the woman—who
appears to be performing her job adequately—is blamed for the inepti-
tude of the male drivers. One onlooker jokes, “I don’t think women
traffic cops are solving the manpower shortage very well.”
Spring 3100 0 cartoons depicted women as sexual objects just as
often as it showed them as officers, though the two were by no means
mutually exclusive. Figures 2.6 and 2.7 are a case in point and also
serve to represent the normative heterosexuality of male officers.61 In
figure 2.6, the message is fairly straightforward, as is explicitly written
in the background: if you can’t see the legs on this attractive, young
woman, then perhaps you need glasses. Likewise, in figure 2.7, a cop
explains to a woman that if her husband was willing to leave a woman
with sexy curves, as she clearly has, then he ought to be institutional-
ized. The cartoon rhetorically asks its almost exclusively male reader-
ship what a real man might want from a woman other than good
Figure 2.6 “Need Glasses,” Spring 3100, May, 1941. New York City Police
Department.
Figure 2.7 “Plea Insanity,” Spring 3100, August, 1944. New York City Police
Department.
looks and curves. The imposing bulk of this officer—suggests that

he, as a real man, could handle this woman. However, both he and
the officers in figures 2.3, 2.6, and 2.7 appear as overweight and in
poor shape. If this is a clue as to how NYPD officers saw themselves
in the 1940s, then one gets the sense that fitness was not a significant
prerequisite for fighting crime. One wonders about the validity of
physical fitness arguments such officers might make in response to the
proposed integration of women into patrol work or other areas that
they considered to be male domain.
New York’s policewomen in the 1940s may not have been pas-
sive but were often complicit in marketing themselves as feminine,
all-American gals. In the 1940s and 1950s, Spring 3100 0 provided
policewomen with a regular column called Strictly for the Girls, which
addressed concerns of the female officer. Instead of employing that
as a forum to contemplate new or even expanded roles in the NYPD,
Strictly for the Girlss focused almost exclusively on how women could
take care of their homes, dress sexy, maintain their moral virtue, and,
most important, find a man. Strictly for the Girlss usually included
romantic stories, recipes, and tips on grooming, while repeatedly
referring to women as the “sweeter sex” and men as the “rougher
sex.” The female authors of this column, possibly in an effort to com-
bat mannish images of policewomen, instructed their readers of the
natural, but clearly defined, division between the sexes.
Strictly for the Girlss sent mixed messages regarding prescribed gender
roles for men and women in all walks of life. Several articles reminded
police readers that marriage was women’s ultimate goal. One column
went so far as to argue that “there is nothing that quite matches the
ecstasy of that heavenly moment when the preacher folds up the book,
gracefully pockets his fee, and sends you and the boyfriend on your
way rejoicing.”62 Another article noted how the city colleges were
graduating women who were wise in the ways of marriage instead of
the “shy, retiring type of years ago.” The article claimed that these
women would make model wives because of their training in child
development, child psychology, and family economics. “By the time
they get through the courses,” the article concluded, “they would
know enough not to hen-peck.”63 Strictly for the Girlss was particularly
pleased that these women were able to put their training in home
economics to use as a means of “achieving economic independence,”
meaning her commitment to and responsibility for the family. One
editorial indicted the glamour girl by celebrating the old-fashioned girl
who “dislikes radicals and bossy people, and believes that home and
marriage are ‘women’s sphere.’”64 In other words, the ideal woman
was humble and knew her place, both on the job and at work.
Strictly for the Girlss suggested that policewomen’s work, although
consistent with gender conventions, could be distinguished from other
women’s jobs. The editors presumably knew that women’s work did not
pay well, and, therefore, policewomen benefitted from a unique status.
But claiming even a modicum of male privilege was complicated. For
example, Strictly for the Girlss struggled to explain how policewomen’s
roles as public moral guardians made them different from social work-
ers. The editors listed policewomen’s roles like health worker, relief
agent, probation officer, and family case worker, but ultimately could
not provide substantive reasons for a separate job title. Nevertheless,
they concluded that it was in the policewoman’s best interest to remain
distinct and apart from social workers. That recommendation reflected
an awareness that the crime-fighting qualities of adventure and rugged-
ness, which policewomen possessed at least to a small degree, garnered
greater respect and, therefore, better pay. But claiming those quintes-
sentially male traits put women on shaky gender ground.65
Criminologists, including those who advocated on behalf of

women, echoed the assurances from Strictly for the Girlss that police-
women’s work was supplemental and, therefore, secondary to that of
men. Evabel Tenney of the California Department of Justice, writing
for a national audience in the Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology
and Police Sciencee in 1953, provided a template for women’s police
work. She asserted that male and female police officers should work
not as rivals, but as a complementary unit. Instead of challenging
men’s authority in the police station, a policewoman could gain accep-
tance as a “good officer” by earning their approval and respect. To
achieve that goal, Tenney counseled policewomen to be “dignified,
sensible, tactful and sympathetic.”66 Just as the Techniquess manual
asked policewomen to balance multiple identities, Tenney urged her
readers to couple traditional feminine roles with moderate degrees of
male assertiveness. “Her personal appearance should be good, neat
and attractive,” Tenney recommended, “but she should always com-
mand respect.”67 Of great importance, Tenney continued, was that
she “give an appearance of being alert, well-adjusted and more inter-
ested in others than herself.”68 Equally critical in her quest to gain
acceptance in the police station was deference, by giving “no hint of
a vindictive attitude or a ‘holier-than-thou’ complex.”69 Finally, the
ideal policewoman had to “be on guard in her professional and pri-
vate life,” to avoid “behavior which is, or might merely appear to be,
indiscreet.”70 Being a good policewoman meant policing one’s own
image as well as crime in the streets.
Theresa Melchionne, head of the New York Policewomen’s
Bureau in the 1950s, countered the idea that women sought police
work in order to compete with men. In articles and public statements
Melchionne took every opportunity to challenge the idea that police-
women were mannish or tough. Her girls had learned the lesson that
“when women enter so-called men’s fields, they are more successful
when they do not try to compete with men.”71 The police journal
Law and Orderr cheerfully reported that Theresa Melchionne’s “girls”
were a far cry from the “tight lipped, stern, old-time, ‘typical’ police-
women.”72 Melchionne conceded that some of them might be as tall
as six feet, but assured that most of them were in their early twenties
and attractive enough to pose as models. Others were the athletic or
motherly type. For her, the important point was that all of them came
from good homes and were well educated. Melchionne cautiously
emphasized how these girls had learned that their jobs came first. The
seriousness with which these women took their jobs did not preclude
them from attentiveness to their private lives and families.
Policewomen advocates in the 1950s, who were so complicit with

their male counterparts in framing women’s jobs as traditionally femi-
nine, and, therefore, complementary or secondary to those of men,
found it nearly impossible to make the case that women deserved access
to men’s jobs. Thus, when Adelaide Knowles, a detective and president
of the Policewomen’s Endowment Association, formally questioned
the barring of women from promotional exams, she had to reckon with
a circumscribing and ultimately debilitating language of difference. At
the time, the only avenue for promotion open to women was detective.
In 1954, Knowles petitioned the city and demanded that women be
allowed to take civil service exams for promotion to sergeant. Knowles
objected that qualified women could not have careers in police work
because the NYPD barred them from promotional exams. She called
for the removal of this barrier on the grounds of equality, but assured
her fellow male superior officers that she intended for newly promoted
women only to be placed in command of women; it did not affect the
quota of male officers.73 That is, the promotion of women neither
infringed upon the number of male police officers nor placed women
in positions of power over men. Nevertheless, even this mild expansion
of women’s opportunities died in the city council later that year. Few
city politicians, let alone male police officers, could conceive of women
in supervisory roles. Male police officers were adamant about rigidly
defining job titles by gender. The fraternal organizations, exclusively
male, rejected the idea of extending the titles of sergeant, lieutenant, or
captain to women.74 They were willing to endorse promotions within
the Women’s Bureau that yielded titles like director or supervisor, but
vehemently opposed sharing higher ranks with women.75
Policewomen advocates, despite this setback, redoubled their efforts
to prove that real ladies could, and should, fight crime. Shortly after
the rejection of women’s promotional exams, the New York Times
Magazinee published a feature on New York City policewomen. The
Times Magazinee profiled officer Marjorie McCarron, but rather than
focusing on her duties, scrutinized her attempt to juggle traditional
female roles with the demands of performing police work. Keying in
on McCarron’s physical attributes, the Times Magazinee noted that she
was a “trimly built young woman with hazel eyes and a slow pleasing
smile.”76 But despite her ladylike appearance, this woman was asked
to do “strange and often forbidden things for a living.” The Times
Magazinee reported on McCarron’s experiences in ominous male
spaces where she “would walk through lonely, night shadowed streets
in which women have been assaulted.” She loitered in bars, candy
stores, and restaurants in which narcotics were rumored to be sold or
bookmakers were said to be operating. She even answered newspa-

per advertisements for models that were posted by men suspected of
recruiting prostitutes. Nevertheless, the Times Magazinee comforted its
readers with the reassurance that McCarron was never reduced to the
callousness of a male police officer. Rather, her maternal instincts took
over. “I know cops are supposed to acquire a hard shell of cynicism,”
McCarron explained “but seeing all that human misery only makes
you a little more sympathetic and understanding.” And even though
McCarron carried a 32 caliber revolver—a seemingly unladylike accou-
trement—she claimed that she had no intention of using it, and, in
fact, found it to be mostly a hassle. It was, she complained, especially a
nuisance at parties and dances. “How,” she asked, “was a gal supposed
to do the mambo or the lindy with a gun in her pocketbook?”77
Melchionne, whom the Times Magazinee interviewed for this
piece, extolled policewomen’s virtues but stopped short of claiming
that they practiced the same physicality and violence of policemen.
She explained that policewomen, although equipped with guns and
jiujitsu skills, rarely employed their weapons. She conceded that, in
extreme cases, policewomen fired guns and practiced martial arts,
but she debunked arguments that her girls were “amazons.” “I’m
sure that Miss McCarron could handle herself,” Melchionne asserted,
“but for hazardous assignments, male members of the force are usu-
ally nearby.” Relying on men for the physical aspects of the job left
McCarron’s femininity intact and thus kept her eligibility intact for
male suitors. McCarron responded to friends who teased her that it
wasn’t possible to “get a man with a gun” by reminding them that
being a policewoman was “no deterrent to romance or a normal fam-
ily life because two-thirds of the policewomen were married and sixty
percent of those had children.”78
New York policewomen’s assurances of their proper gender roles
reflected a national campaign to depict policewomen as feminine.79
Dr. Lois Higgins, president of the International Association of Women
Police (IAWP), was the leader of this movement. Higgins’s writings
and speeches, like those of Melchionne, embraced a femininity that was
consistent with 1950s gender ideals, as portrayed in popular magazines,
advertisements, television shows, and films.80 This ideal woman was
committed to family life, morally pure while playful, sexually appealing
while respectable, and, most important, content with playing a sup-
portive and deferential role to men. Her strengths included her physi-
cal attractiveness, sociability, sensitivity, communication, and maternal
instincts. Like Melchionne, Higgins worked to debunk the myth that
femininity and crime fighting were incompatible. The masculine tasks
of policewomen—physically fighting crime, handling guns, ventur-

ing into dangerous public areas, and behaving in a gruff manner—
led Higgins to monitor their public image. Higgins’s 1958 address to
the annual convention of the IAWP boasted of policewomen’s public
acceptance. According to Higgins, the policewoman of the 1950s was
not respected solely because of her “efficiency and competence,” but
also because of the fact that she was “well groomed and attractive.”81
She conceded that there might be the occasional spectacular news item
describing a sensational arrest in a murder or sex case, but that on the
whole the policewoman was “concerned with everyday problems of
normal families” and possessed qualities other than “physical prowess,
efficiency at target range, or a black belt in jiu jitsu.” Higgins informed
her audience that, in police work, it was especially important that “men
should be manly and women should be womanly,” which was “a fun-
damental principle of social order.” However, that principle was vio-
lated by the “uneducated and vulgar woman who degraded the service
by her easy, familiar manners.” Higgins reminded these women that
their primary role in police work was combating delinquency since they
were naturally endowed with an intuitive maternal instinct. “In the
home, the man is the head; woman is the heart,” Higgins concluded,
finally asking, “Is there any reason why the police department should
be any different?” Higgins imagined a police station that replicated the
gender order of the ideal nuclear family.
Higgins had willing partners in the NYPD who defended her girls
against the pernicious claim that they were masculinized by the job.
When all but 10 of 132 women passed the city’s first policewoman’s
physical fitness test in 1956, Joseph Schechter, chairman of the Civil
Service Commission, addressed them in front of the press. “I must
confess that you young ladies have put to shame the people who labor
under the illusion that a woman must be husky looking to become
a policewoman,” conceded Schechter. “Some of you look more like
Hollywood studio models than young ladies who might be tangling
with violators of the law.”82 These women were intellectually compe-
tent and physically capable, but they were still ladies.
Higgins blamed “extreme feminists” for complicating the work
of policewomen by claiming that there were no important biological
differences between men and women.83 To counter what she saw as
false claims, Higgins pointed out the disproportionate number of men
arrested by police departments around the country. The low percent-
age of women arrested for crimes, Higgins asserted, illustrated that
women were naturally more law-abiding and civilized.84 She concluded
that women’s morally superior nature justified their involvement in
preventative and protective police work, rather than in physical com-

bat, which was to be left to the already debased men. For Higgins,
women had found a place in police work because “they have not tried
to compete against men in work that always has been and always will
be considered a man’s job.”85 Even as late as 1962, Higgins made it
clear that a policewoman was “definitely not trying to do work that
is best done by men—and she knows that most police work is men’s
work.”86
Brains and Brawn

Women in the 1950s and 1960s may have known their place in police
work, but the very nature of men’s patrol work was itself changing.
As women continued to walk the streets as policewomen, it was less
clear how their jobs differed from those of men. By the 1960s the
boundary between men and women’s police work, despite their rather
distinct justifications, had become further muddled. A new NYPD
vision challenged the conventional wisdom that the ideal policeman
was big, burly, and tough. A featured profile in This Week Magazine
of the typical man on the beat began to hint at these changes: “Forty
years ago the typical candidate was apt to be a man with lots of brawn
who had to be able to lift one hundred twenty pounds of dumb-
bells, raise a thirty-five pound bar bell behind his neck from a prone
position, chin himself indefinitely, and pass a grip test.”87 This Week
described the cop of yesteryear as a Neanderthal whose “requirements
in the brain department were less than exacting.”88 But the trend of
the 1950s was “toward brighter men and better training to enlist the
smartest men and teach them more.” John Carton, president of the
New York City Policemen’s Benevolent Association, concurred with
this change, noting that “To many, the only qualifications a policeman
must have are a strong body and a weak mind. They fail to recognize
that not everybody could be a competent officer.” Other observers
connected spiritual sanctity with traditionally masculine traits as a pre-
requisite for police work. Spring 3100 0 argued that “The big lie of our
day is that religion is for women, weak sisters, and sissies. This, how-
ever, is not true to the facts of the case. God has always called upon
men—real, virile, red-blooded men—when he wanted great things
done.”89 Although the article conjured up timeless ideals of men as
heroic saviors, it disrupted the physical component of this formula,
hinting that there were other, perhaps more desirable, qualifications
for patrol officer. A 1958 NYPD recruitment leaflet stressed the mul-
tiple roles of the policeman, who was “a family figure who used his
mind and kindness to achieve his goals. He was a husband, father,

taxpayer, a neighborhood boy, a psychologist, teacher, clergymen, and
brother.”90 The leaflet continued by explaining that the typical police-
man was no longer drawn exclusively from lower-income groups, and,
therefore, was more educated than his predecessor. The ideal cop was
no longer the “brainless rogue of the 1940s and 1950s, but a social
scientist who fought crimes with mind rather than body.”91
If the man on the beat seemed to require less physical prowess
than criminologists or the general public previously thought nec-
essary, then perhaps the supervisor who sat behind a desk barking
instructions could just as easily be a woman as a man. Policewomen
in New York had been ineligible to take the examination for promo-
tion to the position of sergeant, captain, and lieutenant. Policewoman
Felicia Shpritzer researched the history of policewomen as part of her
Master’s thesis at City College and found that there was no legal jus-
tification for women’s prohibition from promotion. In 1963, she elic-
ited the help of fellow policewoman Gertrude Schimmel and filed a
petition that alleged a violation of constitutional rights based on sex.
They applied for the position of sergeant, only to be informed by the
Civil Service Commission that they were not “permanently employed
in an eligible title” to take the exam.
New York’s Civil Service Commission defended its practice of reserv-
ing eligibility for promotion to men by pointing to a legal technicality:
the notice of open competitive examination for policewomen, unlike
that for patrolmen, listed no promotional opportunities. Therefore,
the commission claimed, the differences between the qualifying physi-
cal examination and subsequent duties for patrolman and police-
woman justified a separate career track based on sex. The department
also defended this practice by referring to a 1937 provision under New
York’s administrative code 434a-13.0, which stated that “promotions
are limited to male members of the Police Department, while a female
member of the force cannot perform all the duties of the position of
sergeant and there is but one rank and grade of women police offi-
cers, namely policewoman.”92 Shpritzer and her lawyers countered
the department’s claim with text from the same code that stated that
“Policewomen and Patrolwomen now in office shall become and have
all the rights and privileges of patrolmen, and shall be called police-
women.”93 They argued that the drafters of the legislation intended to
abolish distinctions between classes of women police officers, and to
confer the rights of patrolmen upon them.
The court agreed with Shpritzer’s interpretation of the city char-
ter and awarded her and other women the opportunity to apply for
supervisory positions. However, it never challenged the idea that men

and women had distinct abilities and subsequent roles in the depart-
ment. While Shpritzer and Schimmel became the department’s first
sergeants, neither the initial ruling nor the court of appeals contested
the notion of profound gender differences between men and women.
They only determined that gender was irrelevant to these particu-
lar positions. Judge Jacob Markowitz argued, for example, that “the
question is not whether treating women as a class is ever rationally jus-
tified, but rather whether it is justified in this particular statute.”94 If
anything, Markowitz promoted the NYPD’s longtime premise that no
women were men’s physical equals. “Of course,” he explained, “it was
beyond dispute that women cannott perform all the functions in the
Police Department.”95 For Markowitz and the judges in the Supreme
Court of New York, the issue was whether any policewoman could
perform the sergeant’s functions of command and administration.
The judges argued that because these duties lacked “physical stress
or exertion,” there was “no basis for saying that no policewoman
could perform any of these assignments.”96 Men and women still had
gender-specific roles to play in the department.97 The point was that
law enforcement was becoming the domain of the savvy, shrewd, and
sensitive, rather than the rough, tough, and merciless.
The increasingly intellectual component of police work raised the
possibility that quintessentially masculine characteristics were not
required to perform the job. As policewomen’s duties in the early 1960s
increasingly overlapped with those of male patrol officers, the NYPD
constructed an alternative image of the man on the beat as intelligent,
thoughtful, and compassionate. These two developments were gradual
and uneven, but in combination they had the potential for a gender
revolution in the police station. As the public perception of police offi-
cers deteriorated with the explosion of civil disorders in the 1960s,
women police officers seized the opportunity to claim that women—as
naturally sensitive, communicative, and peaceful—possessed the ideal
qualities to fight crime. The question remained: what place did this
neatly gendered vision of the police station hold for women with capa-
bilities not thought to be inherent to their sex? Like African American
policemen who pursued new job opportunities but resented ghettoiza-
tion in minority neighborhoods, women police officers seeking work
in areas purportedly unsuited to their gender continued to see their
aspirations stifled by police management and rank-and-file patrolmen.
Part II
Civil Rights and Feminism,

1 964–1 972
3
Harlem and C ivilian Review
People began to wake up in the sixties. They began to learn. The sixties
were the pivotal turn in the lives of minorities. You have to have prog-
ress. You can’t stay in the same place at the same time. We [black police
officers] came in big numbers in the sixties. Civil service became a big
area for blacks. [Even] city colleges started opening up. But it’s revers-
ing now. Because of us things became better. We are a part of everybody,
not just an entity unto ourselves. It’s hard to see the work you’ve done
reversed. The individual officers that are coming up now don’t know
their history. They don’t know how they got in their positions and think
they got there on their own. It wasn’t by chance they went through the
system. Someone was looking out for them along the way. And some-
times it was a white officer! Not all of them are bigots, you know?
—Former president of the Guardians, Roger Abel,
Interview with the Author, January 24, 1997
S ocial protest in the 1960s put race and policing at center stage of
New York politics. African American and Puerto Rican citizens used
every weapon in their arsenal to retaliate against the institutions that
enforced their second-class status. They wrote, lobbied, marched,
demonstrated, and physically battled those who maintained spatial
segregation, employment discrimination, marginal housing, inequi-
table education, and brutal law enforcement. More often than not,
police officers found themselves on the receiving end of their wrath.1
The 1964 riots in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant were the most
ferocious expressions of that disenchantment. The riots pressured
police officials to reconsider how the department patrolled the city
and which citizens they equipped to do it.
The explosion of discontent in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant
shocked white New Yorkers who had basked in the prosperity of 1960s.
Unlike the riots that occurred in the depths of the Depression and
uncertainty of World War II, the 1964 riot unfolded during a time of
relative affluence. New York as a whole had benefitted from postwar
growth, but minority communities continued to struggle with pub-

lic and private employment discrimination, segregated housing, poor
access to quality schools, and a police force that enforced the color
line with a ruthless single-mindedness.2 Another important difference
between the 1964 riot and its predecessors was that it occurred amidst
a national public dialogue on race.3 Black urban northerners and their
white allies, invigorated by the success of civil rights movements in the
South, challenged the discrimination and inequality that had created
the economically impoverished ghettos. Most white northerners, who
largely embraced desegregation in the South, anxiously contemplated
the implications of civil rights ideology for their own institutions. One
small solution, as illustrated in figure 3.1, was to use policewomen to
put down nonviolent protest, particularly that by African American
women. A more compelling response was to feature African American
cops at civil rights protests.
Figure 3.1 “African American Woman Being Carried to Police Patrol Wagon during
Demonstration in Brooklyn, NY,” World Telegram and Sun, 1963.
H a r l e m a n d C i v i l i a n R e v i ew 75
The department’s response to the riots came at a time of great

turnover among its force. The combination of managerial interfer-
ence, public criticism, and more attractive employment opportuni-
ties elsewhere made it more difficult for the department to recruit
qualified men. The department hired 15,000 new patrolmen during
the 1960s, and they were generally less educated, less intelligent, and
from poorer backgrounds than the generation they were replacing.4
The percent of recruits whose fathers had unskilled jobs rose from
10 percent in 1959 to 50 percent in 1963. The percentage with a high
school diploma began to drop after 1966. The average IQ scores of
police dipped below 100 in 1968.5 Rising crime rates and civil rights
protest put these less prepared men on the defensive. Harold Melnick,
president of the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association, noted the unusual
challenges. “The men saw the minorities getting all kinds of benefits
from a liberal administration while cops were treated like fifth class
citizens—protecting people who were vilifying them. Police work had
always been a family job. Now fathers were taking their sons out of
joining the force. And although you can’t force people to move back
to the city, we lost something when so many men started to live in the
suburbs.”6 The new demographics made an already tense situation
even more combustible.
The political momentum created by the riots obliged the NYPD
to respond to public criticism. The department established a civilian
review program in 1965 that provided recourse to citizens who felt
abused by the police. The experiment was short-lived. Two years after
Mayor Lindsay pushed through the Civilian Review Board, New Yorkers
rejected it through referendum vote on the grounds that it had hand-
cuffed the police and posed a threat to law and order. Opposing forces
ultimately fashioned a compromise that centered on the recruitment of
racial minorities, and later women, for patrol work. Putting more African
Americans and Puerto Ricans on the beat proved to be more politically
feasible than civilian review. Minority hiring provided some individuals
with opportunities and represented a symbolic victory for civil rights
advocates but foreclosed other prospects for more meaningful social jus-
tice. Changing the racial composition of the force did little to furnish
New Yorkers with additional recourse against violent or abusive officers,
fundamentally restructure the police station, or prevent management
from reghettoizing minorities into subordinate roles.
Powell versus Gilligan

The 1964 Harlem riot stemmed from the day-to-day police violence
perpetrated in African American communities. The precipitating
incident was a conflict between James Powell, a 15-year-old black

boy, and NYPD Lieutenant Thomas R. Gilligan, a 17-year veteran of
the force. The confrontation began after a July 16 argument between
Powell and his friends and Patrick Lynch, a white building superin-
tendent. Powell and Lynch disputed whether or not the boys had
the right to sit on the steps of Lynch’s building. Lynch initiated the
conflict when he sprayed them with a garden hose after they refused
to move. He claimed that the spraying was unintentional, while the
youths countered that he called them “dirty niggers,” and threatened
to “wash them clean.” After being sprayed, the boys hurled bottles
and garbage can lids in Lynch’s direction. Upon hearing the commo-
tion, off-duty lieutenant Gilligan ascended from a nearby basement
store where he had been shopping.7
The encounter, like the incidents that prompted the riots of 1935
and 1943, was murky and surrounded with innuendo, false accu-
sations, and competing narratives from the NYPD and citizens of
Harlem. Lieutenant Gilligan claimed that Powell confronted him with
a knife and refused to halt after a warning shot. He explained that he
subsequently fired two shots and killed Powell. Witnesses at the crime
scene, however, claimed that there was no knife and that members of
the NYPD planted one after the killing. Powell’s friends later testified
that he had possessed two knives earlier in the morning, but had given
one to each of them before the encounter with Lynch.8
These conflicting versions of the encounter reflected the great
gulf between the predominantly white members of the NYPD and
the minority communities that they policed. Many black New Yorkers
believed the widely circulated story that Powell was unarmed and had
been shot in the back by Gilligan. Months later, black groups distrib-
uted circulars carrying Gilligan’s picture and the words “Wanted for
Murder,” at the very moment a grand jury cleared him of criminal
liability. The department’s review board, whose sole members were
police personnel, examined the case in a way that prevented civilian
scrutiny. In that investigation, “medical and ballistic experts” con-
firmed Gilligan’s version of the story and recounted the following
events:
Powell, with a knife in his hand, had shouted a threat and was charging
up a stoop toward the superintendent while Gilligan, an off duty police
officer in civilian clothing, exited a nearby shop. Gilligan told Powell to
stop and pulled out his shield and revolver while announcing himself
as a police officer. Powell started toward the lieutenant. Gilligan once
again ordered him to stop. When he did not, Gilligan fired a warning
shot. Powell kept coming and slashed Gilligan’s knuckles, drawing

blood. Gilligan shot at the knife arm. Powell charged once again, at
which time Gilligan fatally shot him in the stomach.9
Harlem residents, who experienced day-to-day police harassment,

intimidation, and corruption and witnessed widespread cases of police
officers fabricating evidence, vociferously contested the NYPD’s ver-
sion of events. After years of marginalization by New York’s political
process, frustration with its legal channels, and abuse at the hands of
brutal cops, disempowered Harlemites and middle-class black citizens
registered their indignity on multiple fronts. The Congress for Racial
Equality (CORE) organized peaceful protests of suspect precincts.
Other Harlemites coordinated their own, often more violent, protests.
Within hours of Powell’s death, Harlem residents picketed NYPD
precincts, marched against brutality, destroyed property, attacked
police officers with rocks and bottles, tossed Molotov cocktails, lit
fires, and shattered the glass windows of local business establishments.
Figure 3.2 reveals the high tension as anxious white and black cops
monitor a nonviolent march through the streets of Harlem.
Figure 3.2 “The Fatal Shooting of Powell,” Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division, 1964.
The politics of police brutality resonated so loudly throughout the

city that this neighborhood episode triggered similar riots on July 20
in Brooklyn’s largest black community, Bedford-Stuyvesant. Among
the 4,000 participants, one person died, more than 100 were injured,
and several hundred were arrested. Although the media described the
rioters as unemployed black male teenagers, the 1964 rioters, like their
predecessors, were actually women and men of all ages and socioeco-
nomic backgrounds. Indeed, it was high school girls who initiated
the riot by taunting officers on the scene, “Come on, shoot another
nigger!” and pelting them with rocks and bottles.10 These protests, as
illustrated in figure 3.3, could easily turn violent.
Figure 3.3 “Policeman Confronts a Group at Seventh Avenue and 126th Street
during Renewed Violence in Harlem,” Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Division, 1964.
The truth about the interaction between Powell and Gilligan

remains unclear, but the incident illustrates New Yorkers’ starkly diver-
gent perceptions. The NYPD claimed that Gilligan acted appropriately
by identifying himself as an officer, showing his badge, providing the
suspect with ample warning, and finally shooting only “once his own
life was in danger.” Most black New Yorkers, however, saw the shoot-
ing of an innocent 15-year-old boy as one episode among many in the
history of police brutality in minority communities. The incident pro-
vided a lens with which to view race and policing in New York City.
Still, most citizens could agree that this was a showdown between
the NYPD and black New York. Commissioner Michael Murphy con-
ceded as much when he defended the department’s “making of mis-
takes as something that happens in any war.”11 When black residents
rioted in Harlem on July 18, and in Bedford-Stuyvesant on July 20,
they lashed out against a multitude of historical police abuses rather
than just this particular episode. The Gilligan-Powell encounter was
simply the match that lit the fuse.12
The editors of the New York Amsterdam News, s a key voice in black
Harlem, knew that their publication’s credentials as an objective
source of news were suspect in the eyes of white New Yorkers. The
editors walked a fine line between legitimizing the anger of the pro-
testors and calling for a restoration of civility. The Amsterdam News, s
unlike the mainstream press, defined law and order by including an
indictment of police practices. “We oppose violence, looting rioting,
and chaos which the last seventy-two hours have produced,” the edi-
tors wrote, “but as we call on the people of this community to right
their wrongs, we also call on the larger community of our city to right
its wrongs and restore the confidence of our community in the police
department.”13 At the same time, the Amsterdam Newss suggested,
the city could begin to make amends with the black community and
show good faith by taking three actions: suspend Lieutenant Gilligan
until his name was cleared by a grand jury, establish a Civilian Review
Board to investigate charges of police brutality, and hire more black
police officers in minority communities.14
The demands of the Amsterdam Newss, which the Unity Council
of Harlem Organizations later articulated in their negotiations with
Mayor Robert F. Wagner, were granted in a way that made them
palatable to a majority of white New Yorkers.15 The most politi-
cally feasible request was the suspension of Lieutenant Gilligan while
a grand jury investigated him. The NYPD brass could always claim
that Gilligan was a “bad apple,” a rogue cop who was the exception
that proved the rule of honesty and professionalism. The latter two
propositions required substantial reorganization of police personnel

and procedures, as well as a general recognition of the failure of the
police to protect its citizens. Uneasy New Yorkers of all races, creeds,
nationalities, and class positions debated the merits of civilian review
and minority recruitment. All citizens feared future uprisings and
wondered whether or not the Unity Council’s proposals were the best
means of preventing them. Minority recruitment came to the fore as
the most palatable solution.
New Yorkers agreed to support the recruitment of black and Puerto
Rican citizens for police work but did so with conflicting agendas.
Residents of neighborhoods like Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and the
South Bronx demanded more police officers of any color because of
inadequate law enforcement in their communities.16 Many other black
and Puerto Rican New Yorkers who had been physically assaulted,
harassed, or otherwise mistreated by white cops felt that minority cops
in particular were more sympathetic.17 A more democratically repre-
sentative police force satisfied white liberals’ ideas about fair play and
equal opportunity. From the perspective of NYPD managers, the hir-
ing of minority cops could refurbish the department’s public image
by placating victims’ advocates and eliminating criticisms of the police
department as a lily-white institution.
Police brutality had never been defined as an exclusively black or
Puerto Rican problem before the riot. “In the 1950s,” one civil rights
lawyer recalled, “the theory was we were all color blind, not conscious
of whether the complainants were Negroes. We didn’t’ stop to think
about that.”18 Adam Clayton Powell was adamant that police brutal-
ity was “not a Negro problem.”19 City Councilman Theodore Weiss
originally proposed the Civilian Review Board bill without regard
to race. “Color to a great extent was immaterial,” Weiss explained,
“except that poor people get more attention from police and more
Negroes and Puerto Ricans are poor.”20 In fact, the majority of com-
plaints filed with the Civilian Review Board came from middle-class
white residents.21
NYPD officials themselves had embraced the ideals of color blind-
ness and equal opportunity. At times, officials used color blindness to
drag their feet on minority hiring. Commissioner Stephen Kennedy
refused to appoint more black officers in Harlem in the 1950s on
the grounds that that “this would be turning back the clock and you
would be segregated in the department. An integrationist believes
that a policeman is a policeman, regardless of color.”22 Although
Kennedy paid homage only to democratic ideals without any moves
toward integration, he did identify the conundrum of empowering
black citizens by marking and integrating them based on color.

Kennedy’s successor, Michael Murphy, embraced the color-blind
ideal in a more progressive manner. When white critics questioned
his assignment of a black cop to command the almost exclusively
white Wall Street precinct, Murphy replied the cop was “not a Negro
but a Lieutenant.”23 This kind of color-blind decision making, if
applied consistently across the department, would have come closer
to fulfilling the department’s credo of equal opportunity. Racial poli-
tics, however, made this particular decision the exception rather than
the rule.
By the time of the riots police brutality had become synonymous
with blacks and Puerto Ricans. Civil rights leaders like James Farmer
of CORE made civilian review an explicitly racial issue. Farmer argued
that Negroes and Puerto Ricans were brutally treated because of their
race: “It profoundly affects every Negro and Puerto Rican citizens
in New York. No Negro or Puerto Rican, whether in his own neigh-
borhood or walking down the street is safe from police attack.”24
Gilberto Gerena Valentin, who became an informal spokesperson for
Puerto Rican New York, articulated similar concerns.25 Turning civil-
ian review into an exclusively racial issue made it difficult for blacks
and Puerto Ricans to build coalitions with whites who shared their
concerns about police practices.
Even though the hiring of black and Puerto Rican police officers
fulfilled a longtime civil rights hope, in practice it ran counter to the
ideology of integration. Technically, hiring minority officers inte-
grated the police force as a whole, but these officers continued to
be occupationally segregated, confined to “ghetto beats” and “com-
munity relations.” The department’s cadet training program for black
and Puerto Rican teens, established in response to the 1964 riot, illus-
trated progressive and reactionary impulses. This kind of integration
invited blacks and Puerto Ricans into the department but at the same
time branded them as distinct racial groups. The NYPD intended the
training program to break down barriers among the racial, ethnic,
religious, and social groups of the city. The cadet program was an
affirmative action measure intended to “integrate the force,” but it
ultimately clustered minority youths in the least prestigious positions.
The executors of the program assigned them either to underfunded
and collapsing black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods or to the mun-
dane world of bank guard duty, department store security, or motor
vehicles operations.26 While the program offered new opportunities, it
failed to undo the department’s longstanding pattern of occupational
ghettoization.27
Civilian review raised parallel questions about representation and

equal opportunity. Residents of New York’s black communities, while
overwhelmingly supportive of civilian review, pointed out that it did
not include any representatives from the Bedford-Stuyvesant or Harlem
civil rights groups.28 Furthermore, the panel still had three police offi-
cers, none of whom were guaranteed to be sympathetic to minority
communities. Floyd McKissick and others feared that the board might
end up as little more than a symbolic gesture to black New Yorkers,
rather than a substantive channel for grievances against the police.
White rank-and-file officers resented the cadet program, which they
viewed as preferential treatment. They vilified the program as racial
favoritism, ignoring the fact that the department reserved its most
prestigious positions for them. From their point of view, any active
integration on behalf of a particular racial group violated the NYPD’s
meritocratic ethic. The PBA president John Cassese described the
program as a politically motivated assault on the professionalism and
objectivity of the department. He maligned it as discriminatory against
white youths and “a serious threat to the concept of police profession-
alization . . . a crippling blow to the integrity of the NYPD.”29 Some
white officers became so disenchanted with the riots and subsequent
plan for integration among their ranks that they joined radical right-
wing organizations like the John Birch Society.30 These sentiments
were echoed among the multiple white communities of New York.
Italian youths in East New York, Brooklyn formed a loose-knit orga-
nization known as SPONGE (Society for the Prevention of Niggers
Getting Everything).31 In the summers of 1966 and 1967 this group
served as a violent vigilante group against neighboring blacks and
Puerto Ricans who crossed the color line.32
Commissioner Michael J. Murphy found it easier to hire more
black police than to open democratic channels through civilian review.
His most symbolic gesture on this front was to appoint Lloyd Sealy as
captain of Harlem’s 28th Precinct, making him the first black cop to
head a precinct in New York City.33 Sealy’s appointment was a signifi-
cant step in occupational advancement for blacks in the NYPD, but
continued the pattern of limiting blacks in law enforcement by mak-
ing them responsible “for their own kind.”34 Aware of the compli-
cated forces that propelled him to the post, Sealy walked a fine, often
elusive, line between identifying with critical members of Harlem’s
community and maintaining absolute allegiance to the police depart-
ment. Sealy’s policing philosophy combined strict enforcement of the
law with recognition of the rights of criminals, or, as he put it, “Lock
’em up, don’t beat ’em up!”35
Black civil rights leaders hailed Sealy’s appointment as a positive

move. The Amsterdam Newss had made explicit calls for a black cap-
tain.36 When Sealy first toured through Harlem after his appointment,
many of the same residents who had tossed bricks at the police less than
a month earlier came over to shake his hand. David Cunningham, a
Harlem plumber, summed up community sentiment by saying “He’s
[Sealy’s] needed here. I think the change will make a lot of a differ-
ence. There’s a lot of people waiting for a responsible person to talk
to.”37 Another bystander added, “It was about time. We need more
Negro precinct commanders and some Puerto Ricans too.”38 What
distinguished Harlemites’ sentiments from the NYPD brass, however,
was their view of these appointments as a mere first step toward easing
tensions between blacks and the police department.39 Past experience
had taught them that officers of all backgrounds could assimilate into
a police culture that tolerated brutality and corruption. Some residents
of the ghetto and barrio even saw black and Puerto Rican officers as
tools of the NYPD, all too willing to prove themselves “blue” by rough-
ing up people of color.40 Many citizens wondered what difference the
color of the officers mattered if their behavior was the same. Even white
cops in Harlem’s precincts saw no reason why Sealy’s appointment
indicated a change in policing practices. “There’s no change,” noted
one officer, adding, “a captain is a captain.”41 Though the officer may
have expressed support for progressive color-blind policies, he failed to
acknowledge the structural racism implicit in the force. Sealy was a criti-
cal figure in the literal and symbolic fight against brutality in the NYPD,
as civil rights advocates recognized, but if the problem of excessive force
was systemic, the solution required a change in police station culture.42
The riots, despite all of their horror, bloodshed, and destruction
of property, drew enough white attention to initiate a dialogue about
the ways in which police officers patrolled their citizens. Black New
Yorkers in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, deprived of the political
and economic channels through which to articulate their grievances,
registered their political claims with bottles, rocks, cans, sticks, and
even their bodies.43 No one knew this better than Inspector Casimir
Kruszekski, the veteran white captain of Harlem’s 28th Precinct:
“This is their version of City Hall. If they’re going to demonstrate
against the government, they have to do it here [out in the streets].”44
Politics-out-of-doors in the 1960s, following a long New York tradi-
tion, touched off age-old controversies over law and order, individual
freedom, equality, and justice.45 This tactic bore political fruit. Black
rioting led anxious whites to consider restructuring the police station
as well as other public and private bastions of conservatism.
“A Little on the Temperamental,

Hot-Blooded Side”
The mainstream press, which controlled dominant representations of
the rioters, warned of the city being overrun by crime. It described
Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots as the culmination of several
years of unpunished criminal behavior. Beginning in the 1950s, politi-
cians, journalists, and pundits portended an ominous future for New
York if the city could not win the “war against crime.” Even left-wing
publications like the Nation, normally more critical of overzealous-
ness on the part of the police, grew increasingly troubled over the
NYPD’s inability to handle the “rising tide of crime.” In an exposé on
the department in the late 1950s, the Nation n had reported alarming
statistics from Commissioner Francis W. H. Adams that “by the end
of the day one person would be murdered, twenty-seven feloniously
assaulted, three raped, one hundred and forty homes burglarized, and
forty cars stolen.”46 At the heart of the problem, Adams argued, was
the fact that the department had neither the financial resources nor
the positive public image to recruit new candidates.
Liberal journals like the Nationn identified police personnel as the
problem, thus putting the onus of change upon the department,
but many New Yorkers blamed the “new kinds” of people who had
migrated to postwar New York. Specifically, they associated the rise
in crime with the influx of black and Puerto Rican people to New
York since the end of World War II.47 Social commentators in the
1950s tempered that view by explaining crime rates as a temporary
phenomenon. If, in fact these groups committed more crimes, it was
only “a familiar pattern, in which new waves of immigration coincided
with crime waves involving predominately the ethnic groups latest to
arrive.”48 Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants had long records of
day-to-day and organized crime in New York.
This was not the first time older residents of New York castigated
immigrant groups for causing disorder, malfeasance, and crime, but
there were important differences between the ways in which native
white New Yorkers had cast turn-of-the-century immigrants as crimi-
nals and the ways in which they demonized blacks and Puerto Ricans
in the 1950s and 1960s. Irish immigrants had been the victims of
such characterizations in the mid-nineteenth century, while Jews
and Italians faced similar discrimination at the turn of the century,
but black citizens were hardly newcomers in the 1960s. With a lin-
eage that went back well beyond the American Revolution, they held
important historical claims to New York that previous immigrant
groups did not. Race also made the postwar case different. The asso-
ciation of black and Puerto Rican men with crime relied on genetic
arguments about the pathology of dark-skinned races. Although early
twentieth-century eugenicists made similar claims about Southern and
Eastern Europeans, the white skin of these groups facilitated second-
generation assimilation. White New Yorkers in the 1960s too often
drew upon historical tropes about the shifty, dishonest, and unscru-
pulous nature of American blacks to describe the dark-skinned people
who migrated to the city from Puerto Rico and the American South.
Even the nation’s top law enforcement executive, J. Edgar Hoover,
expressed such sentiments when he explained his philosophy of deal-
ing with Puerto Ricans abroad: “you never have to bother about a
president being shot by a Puerto Rican [because of their poor aim]
but if they come at you with a knife, beware!”49 Poking fun at Puerto
Rican ferocity and ineptitude was common, but it was especially mali-
cious coming from the head of the FBI.
African Americans and Puerto Ricans brought profoundly distinct
histories when they migrated to New York, but because of white
New Yorkers’ conceptions of race, the NYPD often treated them
as one and the same.50 By the late 1950s, Puerto Ricans appeared
to other New Yorkers as dangerous additions who expanded slums,
exacerbated crime, overburdened schools, flocked to the welfare
office, and spewed anti-Americanism.51 In 1959 Brooklyn’s Kings
County Judge Sam Leibowitz pandered to fearful white New Yorkers
by initiating a campaign against black and Puerto Rican crime. He
called upon Mayor Robert Wagner to stop the flow of migrants from
“the Carribean” and “other parts of the country,” who inevitably
came to “crime breeding slums.”52 Leibowitz relayed crime sta-
tistics that suggested that Puerto Ricans, who made up 7 percent
of the population, committed 22 percent of juvenile crimes, while
blacks, who constituted 11 percent of the population, accounted for
46 percent. Joseph Monserrat, chairman of the Puerto Rican self-
help program, countered his claims by pointing out that Leibowitz’s
statistics were skewed by the large numbers of young people among
New York’s Puerto Rican population. He challenged myths about
the high degree of juvenile delinquency among the new immigrants
by calling attention to the fact that Puerto Ricans, while making up
33 percent of all school children, were responsible for only 30 of
juvenile crimes. Some white New Yorkers likewise challenged such
pernicious attacks against Puerto Ricans. At least one popular New
York politician, the liberal Republican senator Jacob Javits defended
new immigrants who “were looking for better life but have been
crowded into rat infested places where they can’t have a chance in
the world.”53
The NYPD acknowledged Puerto Ricans as permanent citizens
of the city and made gestures to community outreach but was more
focused on stringent law enforcement. In 1953 the department insti-
tuted a Spanish training course at the Police Academy as a means
of communicating with the Puerto Rican population.54 The NYPD
marketed the course as a means of training their officers in “human
relations,” but conceded that it was something they expected “to be
extremely valuable in detective work.” The department taught its new
recruits Spanish to facilitate law enforcement in Puerto Rican com-
munities. Likewise, Commissioner Murphy reported that he recruited
Puerto Ricans because “they would have no barriers of language or
cultural understanding,” which would lead them to “contribute to
community welfare.”55 Murphy hoped that these measures appeased
civil rights critics. But white patrolmen already on the force circu-
lated narratives of Puerto Rican crime that were incongruent with
the softer tone of the department’s public relations office. One offi-
cer noted that “Puerto Ricans were just too sensitive, a little on the
temperamental, hot-blooded side,” while another argued that “the
Spanish people don’t have a full conception of what they’re supposed
to do as citizens.”56 From their perspective, Spanish language train-
ing was more about controlling Puerto Ricans than communicating
with them. The instructor depicted in figure 3.4 demonstrated great
enthusiasm during his language lesson, though this program would
do little to bridge the great divide between the NYPD and the city’s
Spanish-speaking residents.
To many Puerto Ricans on the West Side, East Harlem, the Lower
East Side, the South Bronx, and Williamsburg, the policeman had
become more a symbol of fear than law and order. In November of
1963 the police killed Victor Rodriguez and Maximo Solero, Puerto
Rican men who had been arrested for disorderly conduct.57 The
shooting took the lid off a kettle of resentment against the police that
had been brewing on the West Side for some time. The department
termed the killings as “necessary under the circumstances,” but set
off organized protests by Puerto Ricans who questioned the official
version of the deaths. “We are not citizens to the cops—We are spics,”
a West Side resident commented. “We pay their salaries for them to
insult us and push us away from our own stoops.”58 “The murders
were bound to happen,” a friend interjected. “Negroes are lynched in
the South; Puerto Ricans are shot here. It would not happen to two
white boys.”59 Gilberto Gerena Valentin, president of the Congress of
Figure 3.4 “Office Practices Basic Spanish Phrases,” Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division, 1958.
Puerto Rican Home Towns, explained that “The police do not try to
protect us. They try to keep us in line. They run the West Side like a
plantation.”60 Samuel Kaplan, a New York Timess reporter, interviewed
West Side Puerto Ricans and found that almost all of them described
feeling fearful when they saw a policeman coming down the street. A
patrolman interviewed for the same article scoffed at the complaints:
“We treat them the same as everyone else. I don’t know why they’re
complaining, except maybe they’re a little sensitive.”61 Officers dis-
missed complaints of police brutality by describing their accusers as
thin-skinned, rabble-rousing, or irrational.
Puerto Ricans and African Americans were largely in sync with
one another regarding police brutality and civilian review, though
their agendas were not always one and the same. “We’re guilty until
we’re proved innocent,” explained one East Harlem resident. “The
black man and the Puerto Rican is guilty on sight.”62 In February
of 1965, 200 members of the National Association for Puerto Rican
Affairs demonstrated in front of City Hall on behalf of civilian review.
The specific purpose of picketing was to protest the September 1964
shooting of 22-year-old Gregario Cruz by detective John C. Devlin
on the Lower East Side. The demonstrators carried signs that read
“We demand a civilian review board,” and “Ask Mayor Wagner to

give us justice,” and “We are against police brutality.”63 There were
some concerns, however, that African Americans dominated the polit-
ical attention of the city at the expense of Puerto Ricans. Roberto
Lebron, the president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association of New
York, complained in 1966 that the police did more to “please Negroes
than Puerto Ricans because the wheel that squeaks the loudest gets
the most grease.”64 Of particular concern was the police department’s
refusal to allow Lebron see reports on suicides by Puerto Rican pris-
oners. There were also tensions due to the perception that the depart-
ment promoted white women ahead of Puerto Ricans, specifically
referring to the appointment of Theresa Melchionne to deputy for
Community Relations. At the time, less than 30 of the more than
20,000 officers on the force were Puerto Rican.65 Lebron indicated
that Leary had promised this post to a Hispanic cop.66 His com-
ments were not meant to challenge the legitimacy of the black advo-
cacy groups or those for white women, but rather to demand that
the police department be equally responsive to Puerto Ricans. Both
Lebron and Monserrat warned City Hall that its lack of sensitivity to
Puerto Rican concerns would lead to demonstrations similar to those
of black civil rights groups.67
“Gangs of Negroes”
New York’s multiple racial and ethnic communities interpreted the
violence in the summer of 1964 from the perspective of their previ-
ous police encounters. Some New Yorkers saw the explosion of ten-
sions in Harlem as the action of a desperate population marginalized
by the political process and abused by the police. Others saw it as either
the product of radical instigation or a reckless and mindless rampage
against law and order. Most Puerto Rican residents, though not uncrit-
ical of black rioting, agreed with black New Yorkers that the rioters
had simply defended themselves against an oppressive and brutal police
force. The National Association for Puerto Rican Civil Rights joined
CORE and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) in supporting civilian review. In contrast, most white
New Yorkers interpreted those clashes to be representative of a gen-
eral lack of respect for law and order.68 Similarly, whereas black New
Yorkers suggested that the confrontations with police officers indicated
an extension of the civil rights movement from the rural South to the
urban North, many white New Yorkers dismissed the riots as the prod-
uct of rabble-rousing leadership and a criminal population.
The media, through its reporting of these events, helped make the
white view of black lawlessness universal. U.S. News and World Report
informed its readers that assaults against police were national in scope,
but that it was particularly serious in New York, where criminals ran
rampant. The magazine claimed “Police trying to make arrests in New
York inevitably encountered showers of bricks, water loaded bottles,
garbage and filth coming down on them from the tenement tops.”69
U.S. Newss reported a “black month” for law and order, during which
292 officers were assaulted. Even before the riots, U.S. Newss had
warned its readers that hatred of whites was spreading because “the
mood of violence was being inflamed by Negro extremists.” Fearful
readers learned that “gangs of Negroes are preying upon white peo-
ple—killing, beating, maiming and robbing,” and that “recruitment
was being made for black commando forces to fight the police.” For
the editors, the battle between police officers and members of the
black community was tantamount to international warfare. One police
officer commented, “I hope this doesn’t happen, but more Americans
may get killed in Harlem this summer than in Vietnam.”70
As public attention to black resistance and activism moved from the
distant South in the 1950s to their own backyards in the 1960s, white
New Yorkers contemplated the implications of the riots for their own
political, economic, social, and cultural institutions. New Yorkers,
who were generally sympathetic to the civil rights movement against
southern segregation and Jim Crow racism, debated about the degree
to which northern riots were the work of criminals, agitators, and self-
serving leaders. To some white New Yorkers who initially supported
the black protests, freedom marches, boycotts, and other nonviolent
activities in the South, the riots in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant
were the beginning of a radical and ominous turn away from pru-
dent and peaceful tactics.71 Some civil rights advocates countered by
questioning the applicability of nonviolent tactics to northern racial
problems.72 Black rioters themselves articulated regret about being
passed over during momentous changes in the South, and they were
bitter about the double standard of Northern white liberals who gave
willingly to freedom fighters south of the Mason-Dixon line but failed
to address urban black slums in the North.73
Civil rights activists may have understood the rioting as a change
in tactics to combat different patterns of racism in the North, but
most whites interpreted it as an irresponsible turn from the virtuous
doctrine of nonviolence. Some blacks played into white conceptions
of black radicalism. Claude Brown, author of the bestselling Manchild
in the Promised Land, inflamed white fears and alienated mainstream
civil rights activists when he questioned the appropriateness of being

passive when faced with white violence:
What does Mayor Wagner do after the riots? He acted like an idiot.
He calls down South for Martin Luther King. Who the hell is Martin
Luther King in Harlem? You mean that old Southern preacher who
is always going around talking about peace? Non-violence. Let Ku
Klux Klansmen hit you over the head with sticks, hang you, shoot you?
Nobody wants to hear that nonsense in Harlem. Harlem is not a peace-
ful community. People are violent.74
Although most mainstream civil rights activists like James Farmer and
Bayard Rustin called for peace in the streets, the voices of those like
Brown who called for physical confrontation resonated loudly with
fearful New Yorkers.75 The white media looked past Brown’s calls for
community empowerment and self-defense, and instead focused on
its own fantasies of black bellicosity. Harlemites, on the other hand,
understood the great restraint that people of color showed in the
face of police brutality, and undoubtedly concurred with downtown
CORE chairman Chris Sprowal when he explained that “I belong to a
nonviolent organization, but I’m not nonviolent. When a cop shoots
me, I will shoot him back.”76
A Newsweekk summary of New Yorkers’ reactions suggested the
multiple perspectives from which one could understand the riots. On
the one hand, the article seemed to defend the rioters by pointing out
that Harlem’s hostility derived from “anger at the only white men
they ever see: the shopkeepers, the rent collectors, the salesmen, the
racketeers, and most of all, the cops—who seem to be less a protective
force than an occupying army.”77 On the other hand, Newsweekk under-
mined that explanation by suggesting that the violence was ultimately
the product of “black nationalist leaders and communist agitators
who hampered the work of responsible Negro leaders.”78 Newsweek
reported that even well-intentioned civil rights leaders from CORE
and NAACP contributed to the problem in their pleas for order by
adding “new fuel to the fire in the streets.”79 The media depicted radi-
cal calls for armed resistance as representative of the movement but
ignored the majority who simply pleaded for self-defense.
Most civil rights leaders engaged in a difficult balancing act by try-
ing to legitimize black anger while calling for law and order. Some,
like union leader A. Philip Randolph, worried that the violence could
lead to a backlash that might “elect Senator [Barry] Goldwater [for
president], which would be the greatest disaster to befall Negroes
since slavery.”80 Roy Wilkins of the NAACP warned blacks that the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 could be overturned if “we do not play our
hand coolly and intelligently.”81
Lindsay, Leary, and Liberalism

Left- and right-wing critics attacked Mayor Robert F. Wagner and
Commissioner Micahel Murphy for their failure to control crime.
Some New Yorkers believed that the riots underscored the need for
law and order. Others understood them as an opportunity to address
the grievances of blacks and Puerto Ricans. Civil rights advocates of
all backgrounds grew increasingly disenchanted with the mayor for
his indecisiveness, reticence to appoint more minorities to high-level
city jobs, failure to advocate for a Civilian Review Board, and the
behavior of police during civil rights demonstrations.82 Critics likewise
grew weary of Commissioner Murphy’s waffling on the issue of police
brutality. He only begrudgingly acknowledged the problem and was
quick to defend his officers for acting in self-defense.83 Mayor Wagner
sensed that his commissioner’s unpopularity was affecting him in the
polls and replaced him with Vincent Broderick in May of 1965.84 The
removal of Murphy did little to aid Wagner in the election, as John
Lindsay won in a landslide.85
The election of Lindsay provided the city with an unorthodox chief
executive who was ready to challenge the values of a large part of the
city electorate. Lindsay, unlike Wagner, legitimized black grievances,
visited black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, promised more jobs for
minorities, and came out in favor of an independent Civilian Complaint
Review Board.86 He announced shortly after his inauguration that he
did not intend to reappoint Commissioner Broderick when his term
expired in February 1966.87 Broderick preemptively resigned and sent
a letter to Mayor Lindsay urging him one last time to reject the Civilian
Review Board. He worried that the board was a political expedient that
would only repress the morale of the police department and impair its
capacity to fight crime. Broderick acknowledged “thousands of fellow
citizens, who are Negro and Spanish speaking, have been deprived of
their full rights as citizens,” but warned that civilian review would be “an
impetus to some policemen not taking action where they should.”88 In
a parting shot, he cautioned that any violation of the NYPD’s cardinal
rule of “keeping the police department out of politics and politics out
of the police department would prove fatal.”89 His March 1966 speech
at Farleigh Dickinson University was undoubtedly meant for Lindsay:
When Mayor Robert F. Wagner took office in 1954, he returned to

the provision of the Charter. He established the principle which, until
two week ago, prevailed: that politics was to be kept out of the Police
Department and the Police Department was to be kept out of politics.
He appointed a series of Police Commissioners who enforced those
principles. And under those Commissioners, the NYCPD became
the preeminent law enforcement agency in the world. Merit, rather
than political connections, became the sole criterion for advancement.
The men of the Department developed consciousness of the nature
of their law enforcement obligations, which made it possible for them
fairly, effectively, and impartially to provide an atmosphere of law and
social order. In a dictatorship the police power is seized by each suc-
ceeded strongman and used for his own purposes against the people.
In a democracy the authority of the police stems from the people and
must remain outside the political power struggle. Should the police
ever become subject to the whims of politics our right to equal treat-
ment under the law will vanish!90
For Broderick and his many followers in the department, all critics
were subjective, political, and menacing, while the rank-and-file offi-
cer was objective, apolitical, and fair.
Mayor Lindsay shared Broderick’s ideal of police neutrality but
recognized it as utopian given the structures of racial domination
that existed in the city. His attempt to institute a Civilian Review
Board was part of a more comprehensive plan to “professionalize”
the police department. For Broderick, professionalization implied sci-
entific planning, rational administration, and efficient performance.
Lindsay agreed with this definition but also believed that profession-
alism meant a department that was responsive to its diverse citizenry
rather than the demands of the force.91 He contended that the review
board as it existed in 1964 lacked impartiality since all of its members
were themselves police personnel.92 Lindsay had a nuanced view of
racial conflict, later noting in his autobiography that “The police and
ghetto residents were often making the same mistake—attributing to
everyone with dark skin, or everyone who wore a uniform, traits they
had witnessed only occasionally in one or two individuals. The prob-
lem was that the suspicions and hostilities of both groups matched and
reinforced the suspicion of the other.”93 For Lindsay, a diverse review
board that included civilians could help to reduce those suspicions.
Lindsay dismissed Broderick’s criticisms of his police agenda, as well
as those of PBA president John Cassese who threatened legal action
if the review board was established. On February 16, 1966, Lindsay
appointed Howard R. Leary as commissioner. Leary was the former
police chief of Philadelphia, best known for his creation of the country’s
first Civilian Review Board and for his general sympathy for civil rights.
Cecil Moore, president of the Philadelphia NAACP, called Leary “the

most enlightened police commissioner in the United States.”94 James
Farmer echoed those sentiments, noting that “our CORE people in
Philadelphia describe Mr. Leary as a good cop. In fact, we hope that Mr.
Leary will convince the Mayor that an entirely Civilian Review Board
is superior, as in Philadelphia.”95 Leary had impeccable civil rights cre-
dentials but went to great lengths to reassure his new rank-and-file that
he shared their vision. Upon accepting the post as commissioner, Leary
said that he wanted to “prove to the men my concern for fairness and
objectivity. I want them to be professional in every sense of the word.
My pledge to them is the same. I will be professional.”96
Leary, like Lindsay, brought an atypical personality to his office that
portended a shake-up in the city’s policing practices. The New York
Times Magazinee noted that he did not “walk, talk, or even act like a
cop. At five feet, seven inches tall with a receding hair line and wire
rim glasses, Leary looks more like a law professor or businessman.”97
Leary’s unconventional physical features exemplified his unorthodox
agenda. He shocked patrolmen on February 26 when he broke up the
NYPD’s Irish network by appointing a Jewish lawyer, Sanford Garelik,
to chief inspector, and a black captain, Lloyd Sealy, as Garelik’s high-
est ranking assistant.98 These were the highest positions bestowed
upon any Jewish or black officer in the history of the NYPD. Leary
defended the promotions by arguing that the NYPD had a troubling
history of promotion that favored personal networks over merit.99
“The NYPD had a nucleus that perpetuated itself,” Leary contended.
“They said, ‘we’re doing this our way and it’s the only way to do it.’
Their whole responsibility was maintaining the status quo—and they
were just as hard on the Irish who fought the status quo as they were
on Jews and Italians.”100 On May 2, Mayor Lindsay further broke up
that nucleus when he announced the creation of a civilian-controlled
review board that was composed of four outside civilians and three
police officers.101 Leary coupled a remarkable acknowledgment of the
NYPD’s past abuses with a contemporary platform for social change:
There was a time in our history when police operated behind an impas-
sible and impervious curtain of blue; where the police maintained self-
imposed isolation, and were indifferent to the needs of the individual.
But that day is gone—a closed chapter in the history of law enforce-
ment which an intelligent public will no longer tolerate. The police are
not separate and apart from the community. They are part of the com-
munity. They are representatives of the people they serve. The police
breathe the spirit of the community because they are subject to and
controlled by the people.102
The board represented a range of interests and included minor-

ity group members and civil rights supporters.103 Senators Jacob
Javits and Robert Kennedy and Governor Nelson Rockefeller lent
their support.104 Victims of police brutality and advocates for civil
rights were optimistic.105 Their protests had helped to elect a sympa-
thetic mayor and spur a new dialogue about how the city was to be
policed.106
The new board went into effect on May 17, 1966, and consti-
tuted four civilians and three policemen as opposed to the all-police
board of the previous 11 years. Lindsay hoped to accomplish three
goals through civilian review: reinforce the idea that police were ser-
vants of the people and, therefore, subject to civilian control, restore
New Yorkers’ confidence in law enforcement, and reduce mistrust and
resentment of police officers as symbols of authority.107 He antici-
pated that the review board would bridge the gap between the police
department and minority communities by broadening the definition
of police brutality to include “unnecessary or excessive use of force,
abuse of authority, discourtesy, abusive or insulting language, and lan-
guage or behavior derogatory to a person’s race, religion, creed or
national origin.”108
The new standards of police behavior helped to redefine the ide-
als about neutral and apolitical officers. The concept of professional-
ism in law enforcement was no longer limited to the idea that formal
politics and police work were separate. Professionalism now meant
that law enforcers were to shed their biases and prejudices when per-
forming their jobs. Commissioner Leary boasted that when it came to
the review board members, “there will be no question of objectivity,
impartiality, sincerity, and desire to serve both the department and
the population of the city.”109 Lost in all the frenzy over the review
board was the fact that it provided no control over the decision mak-
ing or judicial process of the police department. The review board had
the authority to investigate and make recommendations, but could
not compels police authorities to follow them. The police remained
the ultimate arbiters of their own conduct. Nevertheless, the Civilian
Review Board gave individuals a way to air their complaints without
having to report directly to police officers or engage in cumbersome
court maneuvers.110
PBA versus Guardians

The majority of rank-and-file officers found civilian review repugnant
and depicted it as a pawn of radical civil rights groups. Many feared
that it would provide criminals with the upper hand. Like Broderick,
they saw civilian review as violation of officers’ own creed of “keeping
the police department out of politics and politics out of the depart-
ment.” In June of 1966 the PBA introduced a bill into the state leg-
islature aimed at killing the board. When that effort failed, the PBA
made an unsuccessful court plea to forestall the setting up of the
board. The PBA finally settled by negotiating to have civilian review
placed as a referendum issue on the November ballot. Rank-and-file
officers collected 250,000 signatures to defeat civilian review, while
the PBA set aside $500,000 of its own treasury for the campaign.111
The city challenged the legality of the PBA’s move, but the courts
upheld the petition campaign’s legality and ruled in favor of civil-
ian review’s inclusion on the ballot. The PBA’s alternative to civilian
review was an amendment to the city charter that would have barred
civilians from boards reviewing the police station while prohibiting
city agencies from investigating the police for any reason.112 This
option particularly disturbed civil rights advocates who doubted the
department’s capacity to police its own corruption.
When civilian review seemed inevitable, PBA president John
Cassese, public relations director Norman Frank, and a willing coali-
tion of rank-and-file launched a campaign for its demise, sending home
the message that civilian review would undermine police morale. They
promised to spend $1.5 million, put up hundreds of billboards, and
ring thousands of doorbells in a “mammoth” campaign to defeat the
civilian-controlled police review board.113 PBA leadership fired up
the rank-and-file by warning in the PBA journal Spring 3100 0 that fair
and effective administration of justice would not be possible with the
“biased, unwise, and divisive proposal.”114 The campaign insisted that
the review board was tantamount to tying the hands of police offi-
cers in bureaucracy, therefore allowing the city to be overrun by what
Cassese later dubbed the “the black and Puerto Rican peril.”115 The
blizzard of billboard, newspaper, radio and television commercials
created a tense racial climate. The PBA circulated a flyer that depicted
a young, attractive, somewhat apprehensive white girl in a white coat
coming out of a subway entrance onto a dark street on a dark night.
Across the bottom of the picture, in white type, was the caption: “The
Civilian Review Board Must Be Stopped! Her life . . . your life . . . may
depend on it. Send your contribution today!”116 The artist contrasted
the darkness of the background with the white skin of the innocent
woman. “A police officer,” the flyer warned, “must not hesitate. If he
does, because he fears the possibility of unjust censure, or, if he feels
his job, pension, or reputation is threatened, the security and review
board will make a policeman think twice before he acts—and that

moment of hesitation will cost lives.”117 The Amsterdam Newss, in an
expose written by Whitney M. Young, Jr., pointed out the absurdity of
the flyer. If the girl in the picture was to be mugged, Young explained,
it was because the street in the photo was not properly lit and there
was no policeman in sight: “A well lit street and a cop on the corner
help prevent crime and few people know this better than Negro citi-
zens who live in high-crime areas noted for badly lit streets and indif-
ferent police protection.”118
Opponents of civilian review depicted police officers as under-
dogs.119 Community relations director Frank compared the struggle
between the police department and the supporters of a citizen’s review
board to a meager David fighting the giant Goliath. “The Goliaths are
gathering,” warned Frank, “but David will reign supreme because he
represents the people and a just cause.”120 For PBA president Cassese,
the Civilian Review Board was simply “an emotional artifact” that
Lindsay designed to “sooth the unrealistic fears of a small minority
of New York voters who worry without objective justification that
the police are regularly guilty of the abuse of their powers.” Cassese
accused civil rights leaders of partaking in a calculated effort to dam-
age the police force, the result of which would be to undermine the
morale of the department and nullify police function. “If the facts
show he [Lieutenant Gilligan] should be acquitted, then I mean why
penalize a man?” asked Cassese. “Where are his rights, the white
man’s rights if you want to put it that way?”121 The attack on civilian
review by Cassese and his supporters had as much to do with race as
it did with defending police practices. Cassese publicly griped that he
was “sick and tired of giving in to minority groups.”122
Individual patrol officers took a cue from their superiors and took
to the streets in order to protest what they saw as an unfair cam-
paign against them. In May of 1965, more than 1,500 officers had
marched in civilian clothes for two hours in the Puerto Rican sec-
tion of the Lower East Side to protest demonstrations by civil rights
groups against Lieutenant Gilligan. They paraded up and down the
streets with their guns strapped under their arms and carried placards
reading, “You Can’t Intimidate a Good Cop,” and “Police are Not
Second Class Citizens.”123 Police officers tapped into white anger by
emulating and mocking the methods, vernacular, and ideals of the
civil rights movement.
PBA attacks on the Civilian Review Board presented charges of
police brutality as fabrications of antipolice activists who wanted to
subvert law and order. The PBA journal Spring 3100 0 disparaged the
1964 riot as the “Big Lie” of police brutality. “In most cases, as time
wore on, the original ‘cause; is lost in a mob-ruled holocaust that
is beyond imagination,” noted Spring 3100. “The horror, pain, and
wreckage is beyond word. But one thing has been attested to by the
law abiding citizens of the city, and that is the Police Department
did its job impartially, objectively, and conscientiously amidst one
of the most vicious barrages of abuse ever heaped upon it.”124 The
journal attributed the outbreak of violence in Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant to a criminal element that “simply wants to loot and com-
mit acts of violence.” It warned its readers to be cautious of claims
that such actions were protests against racism and to be wary of “that
big lie of brutality,” propagated far and wide by “the conniving pro-
pagandists.”125 Law and Order, despite overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, vehemently attacked police brutality as a “phony issue.”126
Although law enforcement publications might acknowledge that the
civil rights movement included “responsible members,” they were
quick to indict movements for social justice because they purportedly
were infiltrated by “communists and other militant organizations who
incited black Americans to break the law.”127
Law enforcement officials opposed to civilian review shifted atten-
tion from organizational and procedural change to fictional enemies.128
They coupled these complaints with an attack on the patriotic creden-
tials of police victims’ advocates. For J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous
head of the FBI, the rebels of Harlem in 1964 could only be com-
munist dupes. “It is a known tactic of international Communism,”
Hoover warned, “to take advantage of both real and contrived oppor-
tunities to undermine constituted law enforcement authorities with
charges of brutality.”129 PBA president Cassese echoed that analysis
by pitting patriotism against civilian review: “If that [civilian review
passing into law] should happen, then Russia should send a medal to
the city of New York and say ‘Thank you very much for accomplish-
ing what I haven’t been able to do these many years—immobilize
the police department!’”130 White rank-and-file officers similarly posi-
tioned themselves as patriotic anticommunists by taking to the streets
carrying American flags and holding signs that read, “Support the
Police Department” and “Don’t let the Reds Flame Gilligan.”131
Politicians, civic leaders, and the press also smeared civil rights
advocates with the taint of communism. Former acting mayor Paul
R. Screvane’s first response to the riot was to label the protestors
“fringe groups, including the Communist party.”132 U.S. News and
World Reportt inverted the conventional wisdom of civil rights leaders
when they dismissed reports of police brutality and claimed that it was
police officers themselves who were the victims of unruly mobs and
shifty, opportunistic civil rights leaders. “What our research reveals,”
noted U.S. News, s “is that civilian ‘brutality’ against the police is being
practiced rather widely.”133 Readers Digestt reported that “an over-
zealous concern for the rights of criminals is preventing law-enforce-
ment officials from doing their job effectively.”134 In another article,
it warned of a “militant, unreasoning campaign promoted by sub-
versives, criminals and professional protestors who were out to dis-
credit all police with the stamp of a few offenders.” In a final caveat to
readers, Readers Digestt turned police from perpetrators to victims of
brutality by arguing that “protecting the police from unjust brutality
is actually protecting yourself. The stakes could be your home—or
your life!”135
Police journals, mainstream publications, and PBA spokespersons
presented officers as a unified front, but civilian review drove a deep
racial wedge among the rank-and-file.136 Most black and Puerto Rican
cops understood the PBA as a lily-white organization that did a poor
job of expressing their interests.137 The president of the Guardians
Association, William Johnson, led a group of roughly 1,300 black
police officers in support of civilian review. Johnson and his fellow
officers were incensed that Cassese took unilateral action without poll-
ing its members as to how they preferred to handle the issue.138 For
Johnson, PBA opposition to civilian review was tantamount to a war
with the black community, in which the PBA “[has] taken the money
of Negro and Puerto Rican policemen and engaged in a racist and
divisive campaign.”139 Most important, Johnson claimed, was that the
PBA was intended to be a financial bargaining agent for patrolmen
and had no place in this kind of partisan political activism.140 The
1,500 members of the Guardians voted unanimously to endorse the
board.141 Johnson explained the universal support as recognition that
“the police department is part of the community, not an entity unto
itself.”142
The NYPD claimed it had recruited black citizens for patrol work
to make amends for past abuses against black citizens. This strategy
proved to be an effective public outreach tool, but it was less clear
how the policy addressed the systemic harassment that had been part
of policing. Fellow officers and complacent supervisors ensured that
policing was business as usual in New York. Roger Abel, a black vet-
eran who later became the president of the Guardians, enjoyed the
physical and mental challenges of police work, but the rogue tactics of
his peers, both black and white, profoundly troubled him. He quickly
learned that his fellow officers shunned anyone who questioned
brutality as a means of policing. Abel refused to uphold the NYPD

code of silence when fellow officers overstepped their bounds. In
response, many stopped speaking with him. A few actively harassed
him. Fellow officers threatened him with physical violence, tossed his
locker out the window, shattered his car window, and slashed his tires.
Most whites cops registered their disapproval by shutting him out
with the silent treatment. “It was a problem because I wasn’t one
of the boys,” Abel recalls. “I said I am myself. I am an individual. If
that was my parent or child on the street [being abused] I would kill
you. I made it explicit that you wouldn’t misuse your powers on indi-
viduals in the street. On the basis of that people [white cops] stayed
away from me. I liked that.” Abel heroically challenged brutality in
the department, making him the kind of officer that NYPD officials
claimed they had recruited to change police culture. Yet Abel often
acted alone and without institutional support. Abel and a few fellow
Guardians were exceptional in their willingness to expose themselves
to physical danger by intervening in cases of police brutality.143
The Guardians publicly opposed the PBA by throwing its weight
in favor of the review board. Both the Guardians and the PBA laid
claims to objectivity and professionalism to gain legitimacy in the eyes
of New Yorkers. Johnson explained to reporters, “As Negroes, we and
our families are inextricably bound up in the civil rights movement.
As police officers we must uphold the law. We must insist that it be
upheld for everyone and without either favoritism or prejudice.”144
The PBA, which failed to report on the substantial racial biases of its
white rank-and-file officers, charged the members of the Guardians
with placing “color ahead of their duty as police officers.”145 The
Guardians, however, explained that they were simply fulfilling their
duty as public servants—the very justification for their recruitment.
Most black cops had to grapple with a history of being understood as
“Uncle Toms” who did the white man’s work by policing the black
community. The Guardians’ break from PBA leadership to publicly
support civilian review was a profound ideological recognition that
they were “black and blue.” As one police officer who served in the
Plain Clothes Division of the Chief’s Investigative Unit noted, “I will
always be one of them [abused black citizens]. When you take the gun
and badge back I will always be one of them.”146
Guardian members discovered an inverse relationship between
their support for civil rights and the fellowship of white officers. The
PBA’s decision to set aside more than one million dollars to defeat
civilian review broke the formal unity of the police and brought
underlying differences into the legal arena. The Guardians initiated a
lawsuit designed to obtain an accounting of PBA finances and to get

the Guardians to call a new election of officers and delegates. While
that lawsuit was settled out of court, it alienated the Guardians from
other members of the department. The other ethnic, religious, and
racial organizations refused to invite the Guardians to their functions
and refused to attend Guardian functions in subsequent years.147 The
Guardians did compel the PBA to modify its organizational structure
so that delegates could be elected more democratically.148 Yet despite
their effectiveness in challenging a degree of institutional authority in
the PBA, the Guardians’ campaign for civilian review could not over-
come the wave of PBA television and radio advertisements calling for
its end. Another board was in fact put in place, but the city restricted
membership to police personnel.149
“Thank God We Saved this City”

In a referendum contested along the lines of race, ethnicity, occupa-
tion, and neighborhood, New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly for the
abolition of civilian review. A New York Timess opinion poll found that
most black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers favored civilian review, while
Irish and Italian New Yorkers opposed it.150 Jewish New Yorkers, who
made up roughly one-quarter of the city’s population and had been
the most significant white supporters of civil rights, were divided.151 In
addition to the support of public figures like Mayor Lindsay, Senators
Javits and Kennedy, and Governor Rockefeller, civilian review won
favor with the Congress of Racial Equality, the Anti-Defamation
League of B’nai Brith, the Workmen’s Circle, the United Federation
of Teachers, and the American Jewish Congress.152 A clear majority
of the citizenry, however, voted against it. Along with the PBA, the
John Birch Society—a patriotic, anticommunist organization known
for its xenophobia and racism—was its most vocal opponent.153 Of the
five boroughs, Manhattan, a traditional center of liberal sentiment,
was the only one that favored civilian review. Queens, a longtime bas-
tion of white middle- and working-class families, voted most heavily
for its abolition.154 Queens councilman Joseph Modugno probably
spoke on behalf of fearful whites who opposed civilian review when
he explained to Mayor Lindsay that “to the civil rights leaders who
have demanded an independent Civilian Review Board, the proposed
changes will prove unsatisfactory and they will keep on shouting till a
complete[ly] demoralized police department becomes subservient to
their wishes, desires and demands.”155 Civil rights leaders agreed that
they would continue to protest until the department was responsive
to the communities that they represented but had no wish to demor-

alize the department or make it subservient to them.
When the threat of a democratically representative review board
dissipated, many New Yorkers breathed a collective sigh of relief. No
doubt, John Cassese expressed the sentiments of many white New
Yorkers who voted against the board when he proclaimed, “In every
campaign there is a winner and a loser. I say tonight there are eight
million winners. Thank God we saved this city.”156 For New Yorkers
who concurred with Cassese, the defeat of civilian review was a victory
for their version of law and order. More important, they understood
its elimination as a triumph of objectivity and fairness over preferen-
tial treatment.157 In their view, civilian review would have empow-
ered racial minorities and radicals with special powers to monitor and
attack the police.
For victims of police brutality and harassment, the defeat of civil-
ian review was a lost opportunity. A Civilian Review Board would
have given citizens, regardless of color, recourse against brutality and
harassment from the police department. To supporters of civilian
review, New Yorkers’ rejection of the board portended a white back-
lash against the civil rights movement. “Judging from the election
results around the country, I know which way the wind is blowing,”
noted one Harlem resident, “the backlash is in full swing.”158 If civil-
ian review failed in what many considered to be the North’s most
enlightened city, some progressives wondered, then what chance was
there for justice from urban police departments elsewhere?159
Americans in the late 1960s increasingly equated justice in urban
police departments with the incorporation of minority men—and
later women—into patrol work. Proposals to open up the department
to civilians were replaced by calls for more democratic representation
in the police station itself. Like other institutions across the country,
urban police departments agreed to fill entry-level positions with peo-
ple whom they previously excluded. The terms on which these new
groups became incorporated and the roles to the department assigned
were less clear. Over the next few years, psychologists, sociologists,
and criminologists testifying on national crime commissions mobi-
lized their social science credentials to determine the fate of recruits.
In so doing, they sent powerful messages about the place of race and
gender in America and offered a compromise for a city and nation
polarized by competing visions of social justice.
4
Ladies on Patr o l
That’s the feminine side to the job—not being afraid to say I can’t do
it. Smiling the right way can get you in places men can’t. Use feminine
traits to make the job work. Don’t say “you can’t ask me to do that
because I’m equal.” That’s bullshit! We all come with different tools.
And I think we should be willing to use them. Create an illusion. Use
the femininity.
—Kathy Burke, Retired NYPD Detective, Interview
with the Author, August 12, 1997
T he Harlem riots, social protests, and fight over civilian review left
New Yorkers divided about how best to create a new social order.
One of the few points of consensus in this otherwise fractured politi-
cal culture was the benefit of hiring more African American and
Puerto Rican men for patrol work. Advocates on the left and right
agreed that minority men could be useful arbiters between an increas-
ingly besieged department and an anxious public. Civil rights groups
believed that cops who came from the ghetto and the barrio would be
more responsive to the needs of minority communities. The recruits
themselves viewed police work as an avenue of upward mobility,
but worried that assignments to black and Puerto Rican neighbor-
hoods restricted occupational opportunities. Minority recruits sup-
ported civil rights, but preferred assignments based on ability rather
than color. African American recruits felt especially caught between
two worlds, mistrusted by ghetto residents for joining the police, and
spurned by their white peers for raising issues of police brutality. Both
sides wanted to know, were they black, or were they blue?
Many of the same political pressures that led the NYPD to recruit
minority men compelled it to create new opportunities for women
in policing. Femininity, like blackness, became a wedge for entry
into patrol work, but at the same time pigeonholed women into cir-
cumscribed roles. Take, for example, the case of Mary Cirile, a white
policewoman the editors of the Amsterdam Newss featured as a model

for the kind of police officer they wanted in black communities. The
Harlem paper commended Cirile for her handling of a narcotics sus-
pect in a tough midtown area. She had shot the suspect only after
sidestepping his knife attack. “When the suspect fell to the ground,
she calmly made the arrest rather than killing [him] on the ground as
some policemen may have done. This was great police work,” reported
the Amsterdam News. “It takes great courage to remain calm and not
panic when facing an attacking mob or a desperate man with a knife.”1
The editors went so far as to recommend that men in the department
emulate Cirile’s policing style. “If a 5’ 2” woman can disarm and
arrest an enraged man who lunges at her with a knife we see no rea-
son whatsoever for a husky 6 foot male member of the force gunning
down a 16 year-old or shooting him as he lies on the ground.”2 Yet
not every woman interested in police work was as dainty or diplomatic
as Cirile. Even Cirile was a bit more brusque than her supporters were
willing to admit. She claimed to not remember shouting at the culprit,
“If you move, I’ll blow your head off,” as reported by a witness.3 As
women from all backgrounds entered patrol, they encountered a simi-
lar gulf between gender ideals and the day-to-day realities of the job.
Police experts equated femininity with emotional sensitivity and
communication. They argued that women possessed the diplomacy,
tact, and compassion required for good police work. Police manag-
ers in the late 1960s and early 1970s became convinced that women
could defuse potentially combustible encounters with criminals, riot-
ers, and social protestors. Some women embraced this role, claim-
ing that femininity afforded them essential policing skills that men
lacked. Other women downplayed feminine characteristics and sim-
ply demanded that they be treated as absolute equals. Most women
tried to make the case that they could perform patrol work for both
of these reasons. Specifically, this meant explaining the critical need
for feminine skills while arguing that women, as human beings, were
capable of performing anyy type of job, however physically demand-
ing. Women tried to convince police management and an interested
public that they could infuse patrol work with beneficial feminine
qualities, but, if required, be every bit as tough as men. Those two
ideas were not necessarily mutually exclusive, but police executives,
the media, and rank-and-file male patrol officers often defined them
as such. In different moments, critics condemned women on patrol as
masculinized by the job and d not “man enough” to do it. Still, social
changes mitigated those criticisms and propelled women further into
the domain of male police work.
L ad i e s on P at r o l 105
The momentum for women’s equality crested as a series of cri-

ses hit urban police departments: a shortage of police personnel, a
local mandate to reduce crime, public demand to radically alter the
role of police officers, a renegotiation between departments and local
communities, and a call for police sensitivity.4 There was a prevailing
view by the late 1960s that police were antagonists of social change.
Rising crime rates, urban riots, and antiwar violence led many politi-
cal leaders—and a few police executives—to question the primary
role of police as crime fighters.5 Police officers faced heavy criticism
for their aggressive patrol tactics, particularly in minority communi-
ties. As the first of several municipal police departments in the 1960s
to endure ghetto rioting, the NYPD found itself the target of nega-
tive national attention. The Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots
in 1964 were followed by violent protests in Los Angeles, Detroit,
Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Newark, Plainfield, Toledo, Grand Rapids,
and Rochester.6 This inspired similar rioting in New York. As late as
July of 1967 Puerto Ricans and African Americans in East Harlem and
the South Bronx were up in arms against the police. In many instances,
the actions of municipal police departments were the direct cause of
the riots. The subsequent occupation of major cities by the National
Guard, combined with the clash between police officers and antiwar
protestors, led many citizens to question the efficacy of the cop on the
beat as a protective presence. Two national commissions on crime and
urban disorder hammered home this theme, and prescribed women as
an antidote to the rogue behavior of male cops.
Civil Unrest and Women

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1967 Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice began as a comprehensive
study of the crime problem and the related dilemma over civil disorder
and community conflict. Also known as the Crime Commission, it
concluded that archaic patrol methods profoundly limited the ability
of police to prevent, deter, or solve crime. The commission’s report,
The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, spurred a number of task
analysis studies that questioned whether or not uniformed patrol as it
has been practiced actually diminished crime. The Crime Commission
called for “new kinds of people” in police work as a means of dis-
engaging potentially violent situations. Recommendations included
the increased hiring of college graduates, minority group members,
skilled civilians, and women. The Crime Commission argued that
women ought not be restricted to staff functions or police work with
juveniles, but additionally serve in patrol, vice, and investigative func-

tions. Until this report, no major municipal police department in the
United States had given serious consideration to putting policewomen
on street patrol.
In the wake of urban unrest, rioting, and public fear over rising crime
rates, the Crime Commission recommended that police departments
“downplay aggressiveness and strength and hire more highly educated
recruits that more accurately reflected their communities’ racial and
gender composition.”7 To validate their study through social science
expertise, the Commission hired scores of psychologists and sociolo-
gists, who found that little of a police officer’s time involved physically
fighting crime.8 The most time-consuming function of police work,
the studies claimed, was in “maintaining order” and “assisting the
public.” Many of the studies concluded that the average patrol offi-
cer devoted only 10–30 percent of his time to law enforcement duties,
and 70–90 percent to community service.9 These reports contested
the notion that supposedly masculine traits such as aggressive behav-
ior and physical strength were critical in patrol duty. The commission’s
“experts” told a familiar story about women’s “special” capabilities
in law enforcement but offered a novel recommendation that police
departments allow women positions historically held by men.10 The
report validated women as “invaluable assets to modern law enforce-
ment” and determined that “their present role should be broadened.”11
The Challenge of Crime in a Free Societyy based these findings upon the
notion that aggressive patrol—a longtime staple of policemen’s work—
was unproductive because it created tension and hostility.12
The Kerner Commission’s 1968 Report of the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorderss affirmed the Crime Commission’s con-
clusion that aggressive patrol had been counterproductive. It found
that police were largely responsible for the very disorders that citi-
zens called upon them to control.13 The report’s authors urged police
managers to “take vigorous action to improve law enforcement and
to decrease the potential for disorder.”14 The Kerner Commission did
not focus on policewomen, but indicted the behavior of their male
peers, which had the tangential effect of convincing police leaders
to broaden women’s roles. Policewomen’s historian Dorothy Moses
Schulz points out that the Kerner Commission used the term police-
man n throughout its report, thus totally disregarding the police work
of women.15 The Kerner and Crime Commissions did, however, ques-
tion the ideal officer as rough, tough, and aggressive. Later studies
borrowed from these arguments to make demands for women on
patrol, suggesting that if patrol officers were not fighting crime, but
rather helping people and providing social intervention, there was no

reason women could not provide equivalent, if not superior, service
to that of men.16
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) responded
to these reports by calling for a complete reorganization of the NYPD.
Commissioner Howard Leary headed a $100,000 study to identify
areas of weakness. The study found that the department continued
to promote itself as a national leader and innovator in criminal justice
despite the fact that it clung to concepts, techniques, and organiza-
tional activities that had been discarded or revised by other police agen-
cies.17 Leary warned that units responsible for inspection and internal
control of the department were so decentralized and fragmented that
“dangerous omissions may develop in their coverages.”18 The report
determined that one of the most significant impediments to improve-
ments in the NYPD was its self-perception as “New York’s Finest,”
and, therefore, infallible with no need for change.19 New Yorkers’ dis-
covery of two unscrupulous NYPD practices confirmed suspicions that
the department was not the efficient machine it claimed to be. Chief
Inspector Sanford Garelik had exposed precinct officials who down-
graded reported crimes or excluded them from the record as a means
of boosting police performance.20 In 1968, the New York Timess broke
a story about the police practice known as “cooping,” in which doz-
ens of patrolmen spent part of the night shift sleeping in parking lots,
school yards, and other quiet spots.21 Leary found it unacceptable that
the department spent more time touting its virtues and padding its
statistics than exhibiting the character of New York’s Finest.
The department’s poor public reputation, low salaries, and deplor-
able working conditions undermined efforts to recruit qualified appli-
cants.22 New York was not alone in its inability to fill vacancies. The
Task Force Report of the Crime Commission found that, on average,
departments around the country were 5 percent below authorized
capacity. The NYPD recognized this problem as early as 1961 when
it pleaded with officers to assist the department in recruiting qualified
men for patrol work.23 Police executives feared that not only was there
a shortage of men willing to become patrol officers, but those who
were interested in policing no longer saw it as a fulfillment of their
duty; potential officers only wanted its material benefits and security.
Moreover, the rookie who pursued patrol work as a stable economic
opportunity discovered that the benefits were less attractive than pri-
vate sector wages in other areas of employment.24
Qualified men may have disdained policing for its relatively low
wages, but women—even those better educated than their male
counterparts—found the salaries attractive when compared with

other positions open to them.25 Women who pursued policing in the
late 1960s and early 1970s consistently cited how the pay exceeded
that in clerical and service jobs.26 Women aspired to patrol work
for various reasons, yet most coveted the same privileges as men—
job security, benefits, and even prestige. The mystique of the police
officer, although tarnished, still held appeal for New Yorkers who the
department had previously excluded. A police job held the additional
promise of varied and challenging tasks relative to women’s traditional
employment opportunities in pink collar, clerical, and service sector
jobs.27 Although most police managers rarely considered hiring more
women or putting them in roles from which they were excluded, the
personnel shortage of the late 1960s ultimately led them to consider
new means of filling open positions.
Evidence that police officers were less intelligent than those in the
past was another impetus for the recruitment of women. A report
financed by the Justice Department and released in July of 1970, for
example, revealed that NYPD recruits from the previous year had an
average IQ of 93, the lowest in a decade and substantially below the
107.7 the city’s freshman cops averaged in the vintage year of 1962.28
Adam Walinsky, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, went
so far as to charge that some recruits joining the NYPD “had IQ
scores bordering on or below the level legally defined as that of the
mentally retarded.”29 Police officials turned to “expert” psychologists
and criminologists who explained away the low scores as a product
of the rapid expansion of the force relative to the population as a
whole.30 Nevertheless, the low credentials of male recruits created
an opportunity for women to demonstrate how their intellect might
rejuvenate the department.
Women as Model Recruits

The NYPD hoped that by giving itself a mild feminine makeover, it
could bolster the overall credentials of its officers, rebuff characteriza-
tion of law enforcement as a sexist institution, and smooth over its
public image as insensitive to the needs of its community. As police-
women advocates saw patrol work on the horizon, they followed the
same strategy as their turn-of-the-century predecessors: play down the
physical component of police work while emphasizing women’s ver-
bal, social, and diplomatic acumen. They pointed out that the superior
civil service scores of women could bolster the department’s intelli-
gence credentials and infuse policing with critical skills. Academically,
women recruits generally fared better than men, as illustrated by their

higher scores on civil service exams.31 The NYPD historically kept
separate eligibility lists based on sex so that they could hire a majority
of men, even when their scores were lower than those of women.32
Another common practice among urban police departments was to
require a college degree for women and a high school diploma for
men. Departmental managers rationalized these practices by arguing
that the restricted openings for policewomen allowed them to select
a more elite group. Proponents of women in policing challenged this
logic and made the case that the high percentages of women with
advanced educational credentials and superior scores on academic
exams made them especially qualified for patrol.
Criminal justice experts increasingly asserted that patrol work was
more intellectual and social than physical. Arthur Niederhoffer, the
most influential police sociologist of the time, noted in 1967 that “the
old police code symbolized by the tough cop is waning,” replaced
by “the new ideology glorifying the social scientist police officer.”33
The NYPD responded to this fact by expanding its recruiting beyond
the big, burly, and tough. “A police officer serves the community,”
read a recruitment flyer, also pointing out that a good cop performed
a mixture of social roles, such as “doctor, teacher, big brother or
sister, family counselor, and social worker.”34 The New York Times
Magazinee profiled Joseph Fink, deputy inspector of the East Village’s
9th Precinct, who went so far as to compare his role to that of a Jewish
mother. “I always felt that I never became a policeman to become a
fighter,” noted Fink. “What I like to do is work with people, deal with
people.”35 The Times Magazinee touted Fink as a “psychologist” and
“social worker,” implying that such social skills were not innate or tied
to gender. Was Fink atypical? If so, did the police department need
women to provide social services? The police department’s answers
were contradictory and ambiguous.
Theresa Melchionne, deputy commissioner of community relations
for the NYPD, led the charge for more women on patrol in a manner
that would have been quite familiar to her predecessors. In a 1967
article in the Journal of Criminal Law, Melchionne justified women
on patrol by pointing to the unique social services they could provide.
What may have seemed to be a challenge to department authority could
also be construed as an affirmation of its traditional gender order. She
began the piece by contrasting the International Association of the
Chiefs of Police support for policewomen with the women’s day-to-
day second-class treatment in most police stations.36 She pointed out
that women continued to be underutilized in certain aspects of police
work, including patrol duty where women were virtually nonexistent,

and overrepresented in the relatively low-paying jobs of meter maid
and crossing guard.37 Melchionne predicted that when the police-
woman “was a full-fledged member of the force on an equal basis
with the male colleagues, she would be permitted to use her unique
resources along the entire spectrum of police work without diminish-
ing the importance of her primary mission with respect to women and
children.”38 Her advocacy carefully coupled the traditional ideals of
femininity with more progressive notions of women’s equality.
Melchionne disputed management’s longtime claim that women’s
moral purity precluded them from the debased side of police work;
women should be out on patrol, she suggested, because they were the
perfect complement to men. While she made a case for women in new
roles, she never explicitly challenged policemen’s fundamental premise
that women were not men’s equals. Melchionne also hoped to con-
vince police executives of women’s distinctive undercover uses. She
argued that women’s invisibility was a powerful tool that allowed them
to infiltrate “illegal gambling, extortion, blackmail, criminal abortion,
grand larceny and racketeering.”39 Spring 3100 0 ran an almost identical
article describing policewomen’s roles. “Attributes and talents unique
to females,” noted the NYPD bulletin, “make policewomen especially
adept for certain enforcement activities such as vice and gambling.”40
It was unclear why women, who were known to be guardians of moral
virtue, raised fewer suspicions than men in places of vice.41
In becoming patrol officers, women took on new tasks that had
been reserved for patrol work, but did so by accentuating their feminin-
ity. They did not exactly move “from social worker to crime fighter,”
as policewomen’s historian Dorothy Moses Schulz suggests in her
groundbreaking book by that title.42 Policewomen leaders described
them as social workers in the garb of crime fighters because this was
more acceptable. The degree to which policewomen became crime
fighters was less clear. At the same time, police managers, criminolo-
gists, psychologists, sociologists, and journalists feminized aspects of
the patrol work by treating it more like social work. Thus women did
not merely infiltrate this bastion of male work but, in part, redefined
it as feminine. A minority of women in police work called for absolute
equality but a greater number continued to define themselves in tradi-
tional terms, both as a means of opening new avenues and reassuring
an anxious public.
Sergeant Margaret Powers, New York’s first woman to serve as
station supervisor, carefully balanced claims for equal treatment with
pronouncements of domesticity. While eager to speak out against male
resistance to her authority, Powers distanced herself from the wom-

en’s liberation movement to shore up her feminine credentials and
illustrate that her “girls” were not masculinized by the job. “I’m not
about to wear combat boots,” Powers joked. “Just because my father
worked on the docks, does that mean I want to look like him?”43 She
was also quick to note that her husband, also a police officer, still
“gave the orders at home” and that she did most of the cooking for
the family while her husband handled the household repairs. Likewise,
Leona Lewis, New York’s first black policewoman sergeant, assured
New Yorkers that she would still rush home after a hard day’s work to
clean house and cook dinner for her husband.44 Detective Kathy Burke
similarly noted that “at the end of the day I came home and changed
my clothes and combed my hair and put on make-up and tried to stay
in touch with who I was. I didn’t have to give up my femininity when
I was off-duty.”45 Burke coupled an acknowledgment of gender-based
capabilities with a demand for equal treatment of men and women in
the NYPD. In her idealized world of absolute equality, women would
“occupy exactly 50 percent of each of the jobs in the police station”
and “stand side by side with the men in the urinal.”46 The idea of men
and women sharing bathrooms had been a radical one and a fear that
antifeminists used to persuade citizens of the ominous nature of Equal
Rights. Burke, like most women on patrol, tried to square her equal
rights vision of complete equality with an iron-clad conviction that
men and women were inherently different. They could not, however,
always control the ways in which men used those differences as an
anvil to beat back their equality.
As women moved into supervisory positions, they found themselves
in charge of policemen in addition to policewomen, which presented
challenges to their authority. Male supervisors commanded respect,
fear, and at times mockery from their subordinates, as evidenced
in figure 4.1. Women who donned sergeant’s stripes were loathed,
resented, or made the object of sexual attention. Consider, for exam-
ple, a series of cartoons published in the NYPD magazine Spring 3100
that mocked women in positions of authority. In figure 4.2 the woman
sergeant believes that she has the respect of the patrol officer, but as
soon as her back is turned she becomes fair game as a sexual object.
Likewise, in figure 4.3, the female sergeant garners respect while in
uniform, but the moment it is removed, the boundaries between ser-
geant and officer are dissolved, as she too becomes a sexual object for
a subordinate officer. In figure 4.4 the converse is true: in order to
prevent this officer from leering at her, the sergeant must go inside
and put on her uniform. On the one hand, the uniform and sergeant’s
Figure 4.1 “Sergeant’s Chariot,” Spring 3100, September, 1966. New York City
Police Department. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the New York City
Police Department.
stripes bring her immediate authority and emasculate the ogling cop.
On the other hand, the sergeant is noticeably “desexed” by the uni-
form, which reduces her curves and makes her appear heavier than in
the first frame. On one level, of course, these cartoons are meant to
be humorous. But when one investigates whyy they are humorous and
contextualizes them in an environment in which women were super-
vising men for the first time, it makes sense to view them as comic
relief from the anxiety of female authority. When uniformed women
were reduced to sexual objects, any authority their uniform might
have granted them was removed.
Policewomen were cognizant of the insecurities that they conjured
in male officers and tried to mitigate this by stressing their comple-
mentary differences. Sergeant Powers, whose husband immediately
began preparing for the sergeant’s exam after her promotion, con-
ceded that “no doubt men are stronger,” but women were “very bright
and could be used more effectively than they [already] are.”47 Since
they were already making the same salary as men, Powers proposed,
why not allow them on the streets where crimes were committed? In
Figure 4.2 “Look Behind,” Spring 3100, May, 1966. New York City Police
Department.
Figure 4.3 “Sergeant Change to Civilian,” Spring 3100, December 1968. New York
City Police Department. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the New York
City Police Department.
Figure 4.4 “Sergeant Change from Bathing Suit,” Spring 3100, September 1967.
New York City Police Department. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the
New York City Police Department.
other words, women deserved patrol posts for their intellectual prow-
ess rather than their physical capabilities.
The notion that women were brighter than men, while men were
more physically imposing, did not necessarily translate into patrol
jobs. For some men, women’s superior schooling could justify placing
them on clerical duty while reserving the physical, more desirable, and
better compensated components of police work for men. “If [women]
work the switchboard and type summonses,” explained one patrol-
man, “I don’t have to. They free patrolmen to go out in the streets.”48
Other patrolmen cast doubts upon women’s ability to perform even
menial clerical tasks. Patrolman Frank Compitello complained about
women operating the switchboard because “it was a two man opera-
tion being run by one woman.” Compitello could have praised the
efficiency of the woman or the labor-saving benefits of the maneuver.
Instead, he disparaged the change. Either he believed a woman had
been incapable of handling the job alone, or she took a job away from
a male officer. Compitello did admit, however, “at least the women
did brighten up the place.”49 Indeed, some patrolmen valued police-
women for their physical attractiveness and sensuality rather than their
supposedly superior mental capabilities. As New York policewoman
Marie Cirile noted in her popular Memoirs of a Police Officerr (1975),
“a beautiful face, a good set of legs, an oversized bust line, or really
sexy eyes might be just the equipment to work a particular case.”50
Women’s sensual attributes might open doors for women on patrol,
but could erode the respect for the more serious skills they brought to
the job. Policewomen had to be sexy, but not overly so. Many police-
men accepted women as coworkers, but viewed them as separate and
unequal. The NYPD ensured that gender differences were codified in
work tasks. They rationalized that inequality, however, by claiming it
was in women’s self-interest to be assigned to tasks that suited their
abilities.
Male officers created distinctions that preserved differences
between them and their female counterparts. This held true for
senior level administrators who were purportedly more educated and
progressive than the rank-and-file. For example, when Mayor John
Lindsay proposed a bill to permit women on the force to take exams
for promotion, the Superior Officers Association came out against
it with the murky reasoning that “there were differences between
men and women.”51 The association president, Harold Melnick,
could not elaborate on the specifics of those differences, or what
relevance they held for the administration, but was convinced that
they ought to preclude women from supervisory positions. Rather
than challenging Melnick’s claim, Charlotte Shirutis, representative

of the Policewomen’s Endowment Association, implicitly agreed with
it and instead reassured him that women “had no desire to super-
vise over male areas.”52 To make substantive inroads into positions
from which the department previously excluded women, Shirutis cur-
tailed her demands as a means of pacifying men’s egos. In turn, she
sent mixed messages about women’s capabilities and intentions. Even
Sergeant Gertrude Schimmel, who had successfully sued the NYPD
for discriminatory practices and complained about the department’s
consignment of women to clerical duties, conceded that “one of the
‘naturals’ for women is working with young criminals or in preventing
youth crime.”53 In making a case for women out on patrol and echo-
ing the themes of the Crime Commission and Kerner Commission
reports, Schimmel argued that “most of a policeman’s duties do not
involve violent activity anyway. About 85% percent are on call for pre-
ventative work.”54 In other words, if patrol work had a very small
physical component, then women were every bit as qualified as men.
Women on Patrol
Economic, political, and social changes in the 1960s and early 1970s
created a more favorable climate for women on patrol. Unprecedented
numbers of married women joined the labor market in the 1960s—al-
beit on unequal terms—as the service sector of the economy expanded
and consumerism fueled the desire for a second income. In 1963,
Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, which outlawed unequal pay
between the sexes for comparable work.55 The following year, Title
VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act established the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission and prohibited discrimination in employ-
ment on the basis of sex as well as race, color, religion, or national ori-
gin. Title VII did not apply to state and local government agencies such
as law enforcement organizations, so in 1972 the law was expanded
with specific language to keep police departments from discriminating
against female candidates.56 Closer to the station house, the Omnibus
Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 threatened to withdraw
federal grants from departments that did not offer equal opportunities
to women.57 In 1969, President Richard Nixon, under pressure from
Democrats, begrudgingly issued Executive Order #11478, which
declared that the federal government could not use sex as a qualifica-
tion for hiring.58 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
enforced these rules and by 1972, extended them to state and local
agencies.59
Policewomen, soon to fall under the unisex title of police officer,

benefited from the rising tide of feminism but often kept their distance
from the women’s movement. A 1973 conference in Long Island on
women in policing titled New Horizons brought together many of
the pioneers and experts on women in policing. Felicia Shpritzer, now
an NYPD lieutenant, clarified that policewomen had shared gender
concerns but were not feminists. “This [conference] isn’t a conscious-
ness-raising session like the women’s liberation movement,” noted
Shpritzer. “Our consciousness as police officers is how best to serve
the public.”60 Policewomen were open to mutual support, but wor-
ried that any overt connection to the feminist movement dampened
their chances of fraternity with male cops. Their leaders’ advocacy
efforts demonstrated that they shared many of the goals of feminism,
however much they strategically distanced themselves from the wom-
en’s liberation movement.
This approach had been evident in the 1972 landmark study on
women in patrol work conducted by the Police Foundation, based in
Washington, DC, and funded by the Ford Foundation.61 The project
investigated women’s limited roles in policing and suggested oppor-
tunities for expansion.62 Catherine Milton, psychologist and director
of the foundation, monitored a ten-month research project entitled
Women in Policing.63 For Milton, patrol work was the key essential
for women in policing because departments had historically used
the absence of women in patrol work as a means of denying them
promotion to supervisory positions. Milton encouraged women to
pursue patrol positions and shed the protection of “preferential treat-
ment.” Yet Milton was clear that this did not mean women ought to
shed their femininity, which she understood to be a critical compo-
nent of their policing style.64 Women in Policingg drew on the Crime
Commission’s premise that police departments critically needed
to attract “new kinds of people.” The project asserted that depart-
ments ceased hiring women long before they met their total person-
nel needs. Consequently, qualified and talented people were kept out
of law enforcement for no other reason than their sex. Putting the
onus on men police officers, the study noted that “the greatest single
obstacle that women [as prospective police officers] face is the belief
that a woman is neither emotionally nor physically equipped to handle
a man’s jobs. The [men’s] conclusion is that women cannot be effec-
tive police officers.”65
Women in Policingg claimed the authority of psychologists and
sociologists who could empirically quantify and assess feminine and
masculine characteristics.66 Part of the difficulty, Milton conceded,
was that patrolmen were not alone in their negative view of wom-
en’s capabilities. Male police officers tended to reflect the social atti-
tudes of a significant part of their communities, and, to some extent,
of the women themselves. “Both men and women share a belief in
feminine weakness,” reported Milton, “which sometimes puts offi-
cers into the role of the protector and the protected.” Milton did
not view this as sufficient reason to exclude women from patrol work
because women had “many psychological advantages to offer.”67
Women could perform specifically “feminine” tasks that were sup-
posedly uncomfortable for men, such as physically examining female
suspects. Second, women could serve as decoys by acting as prosti-
tutes or elderly women victims. Third, women’s presence made police
departments more representative of their communities and, therefore,
more democratic. Finally, women could perform “a unique social ser-
vice role, reducing the incidence of violence” through their “superior
communication and sensitivity skills.”68 Milton’s studies at the Police
Foundation indicated that women tended to “put more stock in dia-
logue than force, and therefore were able to accomplish their mission
with a minimum of violence.”69
Neither Women in Policingg nor the press reporting on this land-
mark study distinguished between biology and cultural conditioning
in describing women’s behavior and capabilities. Summarizing the
results of the Police Foundation study, the New York Timess concluded
that “women tend to be less threatening than men, and thus prompt
a less hostile reaction from the public. In particular, women could
defuse hostile situations and provoke less hostility than men.”70 The
Timess made the assumption that all women naturally possessed these
qualities and could translate them into diplomatic police work. A
similar piece in Time Magazinee deferred to the authority of psycholo-
gist Lewis J. Sherman of the University of Missouri in St. Louis, who
claimed that “women have a built-in calming effect. Enraged men
simply cannot respond as angrily or violently to the women as men.”71
Although Sherman castigated male aggression, he never explored
why men were incapable of responding violently against women. The
Timee piece then treated male behavior as constant, generalizing from
one particular sample. Moreover, the article’s claim of male restraint
toward women did little to explain the epidemic of domestic abuse.72
Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, following the lead of the Crime
Commission, the Kerner Commission, and Women in Policing, g initi-
ated a pilot patrol program for 17 women in May of 1972. He asserted
that there were “attributes and talents unique to females” that made
policewomen “adept for certain enforcement activities.”73 Murphy’s
enumeration of the specific duties that qualified women for patrol

work seemed more like a summary of old roles than a call for new
ones: “monitor vice and gambling, search and guard female prisoners,
interrogate female suspects and witnesses, and serve as decoys for pick-
pockets, shoplifters, criminal abortionists, degenerates, mashers, and
molesters.”74 If women becoming patrol officers was nothing more
than a case of putting old wine in new bottles, then how were women
patrol officers any different from policewomen of the past? According
to Murphy, redefining the boundaries of police work between men
and women was very different from eliminating those boundaries
entirely. Although he conceded that “no one had ever proved polic-
ing was a male only job,” he maintained that men and women had to
be “used for the special capabilities they possessed.”75 By no means
did this mean “a fifty-fifty rationing of men and women,” which “no
one in the department supported.”76 He never imagined that women,
who still constituted less than 2 percent of the total force, would come
to occupy half of all the positions in the department.
Murphy sought to reassure patrolmen who worried about women
impinging upon their domain, but failed to keep them from focusing
on female ineptitude. Patrolmen Paul Distefano of Old Slip Station in
Manhattan complained that “the idea of a woman radio car is enough
to make you want to quit the job and join the fire department. I
also shudder at the thought of what would happen when we went on
our first burglary run on some tenement roof together. She’d prob-
ably get her heel caught or worry about getting her dress dirty.”77
Sergeant William Ambrose, who was responsible for the pilot group
of women assigned to patrol duty, attempted to ease patrolmen’s fears
by explaining women’s strengths and illustrating that they served only
as complements to patrolmen. “A lot of calls come in for family dis-
putes,” Ambrose reported, “and the husband is ready to go to work
on [fight with] a policeman. With a woman it’s a different story.” He
boasted about how five patrol women working for him achieved a bet-
ter arrest percentage as a group over a six-month period than the men
on his neighborhood police team. “But they’re not here to step into
a policeman’s shoes,” Ambrose reassured his fellow officers. “Instead
we want them more to do the things men can’t do.”78
Women first went out on patrol duty in June of 1973, after several
months of training in traditionally male and female areas. In the morn-
ings they learned judo, jiu jitsjui, aikido, firearms training, and baton
work. Their afternoons were filled with learning theory—laws and
police patrol techniques. They attended classes with visiting police and
college teacher consultants for courses in human relations, community
relations, and awareness, the role of women as colleagues, citizens,

victims, law-violators, and crisis intervention.79 Gertrude Schimmel,
head of the Women’s Bureau, praised Commissioner Murphy for the
new program, but her concerns about sexual impropriety prevented
any request that male and female partners be coupled in radio cars.80
Officers Kathleen Salzano and Lucille Burrascano were the first
women in the city’s history to work as partners in a radio car. Salazano
and Burrascano represented the diverse backgrounds of new female
recruits. Other than the fact that she was a woman, Salzano could
have been picked straight out of the old boys’ club. A resident of
Staten Island, Salzano came from a long line of police officers, includ-
ing her father, grandfather, and two uncles. She was self-described as
lukewarm on the women’s movement, whereas her partner was fully
in favor of it. Officer Burrascano, an Upper East Side resident, was
the daughter of a Park Avenue physician. She attended college and
worked in insurance before joining the department. Before they had
volunteered for the pilot program, the partners had worked in sepa-
rate precinct stations in Manhattan doing mainly matron work such
as searching women prisoners, guarding hospital prisoners, operat-
ing the switchboard and typing. At the time of the pilot program for
women on patrol, there were 350 policewomen in the department,
many of whom worked in administrative positions. “I always wanted
to be out on the streets,” Burrascano said. “It’s the only way you can
feel the nitty gritty of life.”81 Burrascano and Salzano were drawn to
patrol work for the same reasons as men, but found ways to couch
them in specifically feminine terms.
Women patrol officers and their supervisors believed that these
women possessed certain advantages over their male counterparts.
William Ambrose, the supervising sergeant at the 77th Precinct,
admitted that he was not pleased when informed of the program to
send women on patrol, but shortly thereafter changed his mind. He
began to realize that women could be advantageous in potentially
combustible situations. “There is a natural resentment when a police-
man shows up. But if the police officer is a woman, she is viewed as
a mother or a sister, and it takes away that brute force at the scene
of an emergency.”82 Sometimes criminals assumed that female patrol
officers, due to their smaller stature, were quicker to pull their trig-
ger than patrolmen. Salzano and Burrascano apprehended a mas-
sive 6’6’’ suspect who later explained his failure to resist because “I
knew that being women, they’d just take out their guns and shoot
me dead.”83 Burrascano had predominately positive experiences with
her male peers, noting their honesty, sincerity, and work ethic. The
relationship did take some getting used to. Burrascano and Salzano
had been called to back up two male officers who were investigating
a report of four men with shotguns in Bedford-Stuyvesant. There was
no shooting, but after it was over, the two male officers turned around
and asked, “Where are the other men who are backing us?” When the
Burrascano informed them that they were the backup, “I thought they
were going to faint.”84 Another officer explained, “I still believe you
belong in the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect you.”85
Playful sentiments like this used humor to gloss over the conflict and
impart a confusing mixture of acceptance and rejection.
Both women on patrol and the public grappled with the fact that
women were supposed to perform the job like men but also to infuse
it with their feminine traits. At different times, observers described
gender as either irrelevant or central to the job. The New York Times
reported on how New Yorkers initially were startled by the sight of
a woman officer with a revolver and nightstick, but quickly came to
realize that women officers “meant business.” Patrol officer Patricia
Thorton of the 6th Precinct explained that “it does not really occur
to me that I’m a woman when I’m on duty. You react first as a cop,
only later as a woman.”86 Nevertheless, Thorton made it clear that
there were times when being a woman was advantageous: “Men
are docile like babies when they see us. We have a calming effect.”
Policewoman Arlene Becker echoed those sentiments when inter-
viewed by Newsweek. “Talk is still a woman’s most effective weapon,”
noted Becker.87 Nevertheless, she offered no reason why men could
not learn to employ such verbal tactics. Furthermore, women like
Becker now donned the gear of physical combat—guns, night sticks,
and tear gas. Officers may not have employed such weapons often but
it was clear that the department counted on women and men to use
them in violent situations. Perhaps the ideal officer could be trained
to combine the best of men and women’s talents.
The Androgynous Cop

Some criminologists in the early 1970s called for men and women
to adopt the same physical and diplomatic styles of policing. They
proposed a model officer who embodied both male and female traits,
in theory rendering gender irrelevant. In an interview with U.S. News
and World Report, t Jerry Wilson, Washington, DC, police commis-
sioner, noted, “We’re no longer hiring men or women, just police
officers.”88 In a similar vein, criminologist Peter Horne proposed in
Women in Law Enforcementt “that perhaps what we will see in the
future is the androgynous police officer who will have the best char-
acteristics of both sexes.”89 These statements suggested the degree to
which some police experts believed that masculinity and femininity
were more learned than biological. They were in the minority.
Most police personnel were skeptical about the prospects for a gen-
derless department. Felicia Shpritzer, mindful of how emphatic decla-
rations were overstated in the past, qualified the optimism by noting
that “the new approach in police work is for complete equality of the
sexes, but we won’t call it unisex.”90 Anthony Vastola, chief of opera-
tions of the NYPD, acknowledged with regret that the “notion of
male or female in relation to police behavior could become meaning-
less.” Yet, for Vastola, the department was better off with a “pluralistic
representation of the sexes in the department, which preserved and
nourished their identities.”91 This view was not inherently sexist, but
rather argued the department should acknowledge, affirm, and make
use of gender-specific capabilities. In his view, this did not necessarily
make one better than the other.
Male police officers expressed unease about the blurring and poten-
tial elimination of gender roles within the station. Despite their pleas
for women cops to remain ladies, supervisors demanded a professional
demeanor, which meant looking masculine. They instructed women
to wear their hair short, subdue their makeup, limit their jewelry, and
forego loop earrings.92 Even women’s and men’s patrol uniforms
were identical: open-necked light blue shirt with badge, name tag
over pockets, dark blue slacks, sturdy black shoes, and a Sam Browne
belt that held a service revolver, a container of mace, a baton, hand-
cuffs, and an assortment of keys.
The new gender order had benefited policemen as much as it did
women, but with far less fanfare. Around the same time that women
moved out on patrol, Hunter College-Bellevue School of Nursing
initiated a new program to train recently retired police officers and
firefighters in careers as professional nurses. The program was the first
of its kind in the nation and had officers attend classes three nights
a week after finishing their regular tours of duty; 33 policemen, 51
firemen, and 3 policewomen were the beneficiaries of 900 hours of
coursework and 700 hours of practical clinical experience in a two-
and-a-half-year-long training program.93 The city funded the tuition-
free program because many police and firefighter retirees found it
difficult to enter new careers. Dr. Marguerite C. Holmes, dean of
the nursing school, commended the students for being “an extraordi-
narily mature, dedicated group with well-integrated personalities.”94
It is interesting to contrast the benign, even favorable, public response
Figure 4.5 “Cop Caption 52,” Spring 3100, September 1967. New York City Police
Department.
to this program with the anxiety about and opposition to women’s

entry into male professions. The male nurses may have endured their
share of public jest, but no one questioned public funding to train
them in a traditionally feminine field.
Police station humor about female officers went beyond play-
fulness to question the validity of their employment. The police
uniform embodied a sense of authority associated with a fraternity
among men. When women put on the uniform, it could impart simi-
lar authority but also sexualized them in ways that were not always
complimentary. Figure 4.5 is one of many examples in which officers
were asked to write in captions for photos placed in previous issues.
The snapshot for the week was an academy instructor lecturing to
the first class of women patrol officers. The two patrolmen with the
“winning” captions each poke fun at women’s place in police work.
For the first officer, these were not women but men performing
undercover work as decoys. For the second, this was simply a case
of poorly groomed men officers. The patrolman who provided the
caption refused to recognize women as legitimate patrol officers.
Of course, the reader is aware that these are reallyy women, but the
humor lies in mistaking them as men. For these patrolmen, there was
something carnivalesque about women in men’s uniforms that called

for mocking the female sex.95
All cops found it difficult to separate the professional and private
parts of their lives, but this had been particularly challenging for
women. It was acceptable for men to wear the police persona 24 hours
a day, but women had to shift seamlessly between the roles of wife,
mother, and housekeeper on the one hand and crime fighter on the
other. As undercover detective Mary Glatzle observed, “We’re not
like actors—the persona doesn’t come off with the costume. Hang
around the precinct house at the end of a tour and see what happens
when the blues get away in the lockers and the cops change into their
civies [civilian clothing]. Almost nothing.”96 Police work for men was
not a conscious role performance, but a natural extension of their
masculinity. Women had to train to be something other than their
biological destiny. When women walked into the station, the pressure
was on to act like the stereotypical cop on the beat. That peer pres-
sure was reinforced by their own, perhaps unconscious beliefs that
male characteristics were superior for the job—tough behavior, brute
strength, and rough language. The pressure to conform was so strong
that female police officers were sometimes overheard making sexist
remarks, refusing to acknowledge other women at the job, and acting
more macho than some of the guys.97 “The only way to achieve suc-
cess,” one woman noted, “was to relinquish traditional female attri-
butes and adopt traditional male attitudes.”98 Another woman officer
thought combating male pressure was futile because “there were
always a few men who give women a hard time. They’re probably
always will be. You just have to get used to it.”99 If women wanted
to be accepted in the department, they had to play by its rules. These
survival strategies made sense in the short term for women pioneers
who were so outnumbered by their male peers.
Women who took on atypical roles in patrol and supervision
received mixed messages about how they should act. The pejorative
uses of the term “lesbian,” as criminologist Peter Horne noted, also
reflected men’s fears of women in policing. “Policemen employed the
term lesbian as an expletive to keep women in their place,” explained
Horne. “Women who do not choose to play a traditional or male-cen-
tered secondary role have often found themselves labeled ‘too strong,’
‘too aggressive,’ ‘too masculine,’ and finally lesbian.”100 Interestingly,
Horne coupled an admonishment of the pejorative uses of “lesbian”
with a denial of lesbianism in police departments. Like many feminists
of his era, Horne predicated advocacy for female liberation on a nor-
mative heterosexuality: “The classic stereotype is that all policewomen
are dykes, but this is absurd. The vast majority of policewomen are
heterosexual, or normal if you will, in their sexual preference.”101
Male peers penalized women for not “being one of the guys” but
also for acting like “bitchy, defeminized, castrating lesbians.”102 At the
heart of such portrayals were fears about women not needing men, or
worse, women overpowering men.
For criminologists, psychologists, and sociologists in the early
1970s, the key to opening doors for women in policing was to identify
masculine and feminine traits as a means of reassuring police managers
and an anxious public that the “fixed” nature of gender would not be
disrupted by women on patrol. At the same time, these social scien-
tists worked to illustrate that women’s traits were equally valuable, if
not superior, to those of men. One example is the Police Foundation’s
1974 follow-up study to Women in Policingg entitled Policewomen on
l which compared the patrol style of 86 male and female rookies.
Patrol,
The study’s authors, sociologists Peter Bloch and Deborah Anderson,
found that although women made fewer arrests, men were more likely
to engage in “unbecoming conduct.” Women’s sensitivity, communi-
cation, and tact served them well out on patrol. This policing style, the
study concluded, was at no cost to women’s ability to deal with vio-
lent or potentially violent situations; they simply had distinct policing
styles from men. For Bloch and Anderson, hiring women for patrol
was an unqualified good because “it enlarged the supply of personnel
resources, reduced the cost of recruiting, assured the work force was
more representative of racial and sexual composition of the city, and
allowed the police department to meet its legal obligations and avoid
lawsuits.”103 In a similar study of aggression among patrol officers in
the NYPD, sociologist Judith Greenwald came to the conclusion that
women were more likely to maintain control of situations by display-
ing humor and sympathy, and that this policing style was just as effec-
tive as traditional practices. Greenwald chose to ignore the possibility
that, for better or worse, women could behave like the stereotypical
man on the beat. Instead, she concluded that it was simply a “myth
that men need to be tough, strong, and fearless.”104
Psychology, sociology, and criminology experts built the case for
women on patrol with the assurance that they were not masculinized
by the job. This meant patrolling the streets of New York with a dis-
tinctly feminine style that complemented the rough and tumble tac-
tics of their male partners with sensitivity and communication. It also
meant assuring their peers, supervisors, and the public that they still
valued their domestic duties and sought patrol work only as an exten-
sion of such roles. Although police departments previously employed
L ad i es o n P at ro l 125
the category of “woman” as a means of protecting feminine traits and

thus excluding them from the station, this definition had liberating
potential.105 Whereas psychologists and sociologists employed social
science expertise in the 1950s to maintain sexual inequality in the sta-
tion, women’s activists in the 1970s claimed that expertise to open
up new roles for women in policing. In so doing, they intertwined
new, quantitative evidence about masculinity and femininity with old
stories about women’s nature and capabilities. The intrinsic worth
of feminine characteristics built a more convincing case than elusive
notion of equality.
Donald F. Cawley succeeded Murphy as police commissioner in
May of 1973, proclaimed the women’s pilot patrol program a success,
and made women on patrol a permanent entity in New York. Later
that year, the department officially struck the categories of “police-
woman” and “patrolman” from the department’s vocabulary. All cops
thereafter were to be known formally by the genderless term “police
officer.”106 The 1 percent cap on women was ended. The quota system
and women’s exclusion from patrol had been the greatest obstacle to
women interested in police work.107 Cawley worked to assuage men’s
egos, even holding a series of “rap sessions” with angry patrolmen.
His defense of the women came straight out of the recent pilot studies
and research on patrol. When asked if women were physically capable
of serving on patrol, Cawley said, “I’m not saying they can compete
on a physical scale in all situations. But let me give you another stan-
dard. Our statistics show that 90 per cent of the normal function of
a police officer involves providing service; 2 per cent involves some
physical activity.”108
For the first time men and women took the same Civil Service
test when applying for police officer. The department described this
test as “unisex” and screened it to remove questions that might con-
tain cultural bias. These were critical steps in recognizing women as
full members of the patrol force. An enthusiastic deputy inspector,
Gertrude Schimmel—who was the department’s highest-ranking
woman—said that the growing presence of women represented a
revolutionary change in the department. “50 years from now,” por-
tended Schimmel, “we will have completely forgotten that police
work was strictly a man’s job.”109 Management’s leadership provided
good reason for optimism, but that still needed to be translated into
reality for rank-and-file patrolmen.
Male cops still perpetuated the notion that patrol work required
physical prowess and reminded New Yorkers that policing was still
a man’s job. In late 1973 the PBA issued a formal complaint against
the use of women for patrol. Ken McFeeley, the leader of an opposi-
tion movement within the PBA, put it this way: “Think about this.
If 10,000 people take the test and the first 5,000 are midgets and
women, they will be sworn in.”110 Many patrolmen expressed con-
cern that women were unable to handle violent criminals.111 One
officer, disgusted by decision to put women on patrol, warned that
“most women panic easily and have neither the courage nor physical
strength to make an arrest unless backed up by a man.”112 His senti-
ments stemmed from an incident earlier in the year in which a female
probationary police sergeant in Greenwich supposedly became so flus-
tered during a violent confrontation that she was unable to radio for
assistance. Her driver, a male officer, was roughed up. The woman
was returned to the rank of police officer. Another officer got straight
to the crux of the matter, explaining that when it came to patrol work,
“Women just don’t have the balls for it.”113
This incident was neither enough to stem the tide of women com-
ing into patrol work nor could it convince every male officer that
women were incapable of serving on patrol. Although a groundswell
of resentment toward women was brewing among the male rank-and-
file, Commissioner Cawley sent a clear message from the top of the
chain of command that women on patrol were a permanent fixture
in the NYPD. He was not alone in these efforts to defend women
and challenge double standards. Several high-ranking officers pointed
out that in some instances male police sergeants had become frozen
with fear, but this did not prove that males were incapable of being
policemen. A few individual officers who had paired with women on
patrol provided equally sympathetic views. Anthony Michalek com-
mended his partner Kathleen Mooney, but received enormous grief
from his fellow peers. “You know I’m in trouble with the guys in the
precinct,” Michalek explained. “Some men refuse to accept it. Wives
too. But I think you have to give it a chance.”114 Lieutenant Lucy
Acerra, a police headquarters spokesperson, reported that women on
patrol in New York are meeting “resistance at every level and at every
rank. There is a great deal of resentment and a constant attempt to
keep them out of radio cars and out of certain precincts. Women are
constantly being told ‘I don’t think you can make it. It will take a lot
of time to change this.’”115
Women’s fate on patrol, like that of black and Puerto Rican recruits,
was tied to a contest between management and the rank-and-file. And
like African Americans, women were caught in an identity bind. They
could take some assurance that the department valued their femininity,
but needed to guard against criticisms that they could not perform the
L ad i es o n P at ro l 127
manly duties required of patrol. Likewise, the women’s rights move-

ment demanded equal treatment in the workplace, but patrolwomen
had to prove that they were still ladies. Similar to African Americans
who demonstrated that they could be both “black and blue,” patrol-
women took every opportunity to prove the compatibility of “pink
and blue.” As the 1960s came to a close, and the country took a swing
to the right, those arguments came increasingly under attack.
5
S oul Brother or Policeman?
A strange thing happened to me at orientation [for the NYPD]. They

started lining us up for fraternal organizations. For the first time in my
life I’m lining up with all black people. That struck me. It was weird.
I thought there should be only one fraternal organization [instead of
those broken down by race, religion, and ethnicity]. It made me feel
strange. I’ve never been on line with all black people. Don’t get me
wrong. The Guardians did a lot of good things. Without the Guardians
a lot of benefits blacks obtained [would] not be possible. But it also
serve[d] to keep you separated. So it’s a catch twenty-two.
—Retired NY Policewoman and Detective, Olga Ford,
Interview with the author, March 19, 1998
P olice management hired women as riot insurance and hoped that

featuring African Americans and Puerto Ricans on the front lines
would pay dividends. Police supervisors assigned black and Puerto
Rican recruits to minority neighborhoods to appease civil rights pro-
testors and take the pressure off white cops. They encouraged these
recruits to pursue specialized detective units, assuming that their
skin color, social outlook, and “tough” backgrounds facilitated their
infiltration of black criminal organizations and neighborhoods.1 This
strategy proved effective in some cases, but, as Robbie Williams, a
black female detective, explained, it rested on a faulty supposition.
“It is assumed that because a person had black skin, he or she can be
assimilated instantly into a black community,” noted Williams. “Not
so. If there is some[one who is] a stranger to a community, it takes
time to become a part of the scenery.”2 Simply being black or Puerto
Rican did not necessarily equip the recruits with the awareness, sensi-
tivity, knowledge, or tact to be effective police officers. Even longtime
ghetto and barrio residents who possessed those skills found policing
a remarkable balancing act of multiple identities.
The polarizing politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well
as the NYPD’s narrow conception of racial roles, put officers of color
in contradictory positions. Police officials invited increasing numbers

of racial minorities to join them in law enforcement, but primarily as
arbiters between besieged precincts and ghetto communities, rather
than as equal members of the force. Officials demanded unequivocal
acceptance of policing practices and an adherence to the blue code of
silence. This meant doing business as usual. The department ques-
tioned the objectivity and fitness for duty of any officer who raised
issues of race and policing. For police management and the white
rank-and-file, black, or Puerto Rican cops who advocated on behalf
of civil rights jeopardized their equanimity, impartiality, and compe-
tence. It was quite a bind.
No strategy completely insulated an officer from attacks against his
or her identity. Officers who embraced their subordinate place in police
work found a modicum of institutional support but remained vulner-
able to criticism from black and Puerto Rican citizens who questioned
their allegiances. Officers who thought they could reject ghetto beats
in favor of more prestigious assignments found their prospects for
transfer and promotion stymied by supervisors who envisioned them
as little more than beat cops in minority communities. Officers who
accepted such assignments but tried to empower black and Puerto
Rican citizens by legitimizing their grievances within the station risked
harassment from their peers and punishment by their supervisors.3
African American cops were used to being pulled in multiple direc-
tions, but the heightened expectations of the civil rights movement,
the explosion or urban rioting, the rise of black nationalism, and the
backlash of white officers put them at the center of a toxic racial cli-
mate. The events of the late 1960s and early 1970s drove a deep
wedge between white officers and minority cops.
The Crime and Kerner Commissions

The NYPD’s size and historical reputation as America’s finest police
force placed it under the special scrutiny of President Lyndon Johnson’s
Crime Commission, and thus became a test case for minority recruit-
ment. The commission, which carried great weight in shaping the
structure of municipal police departments, identified hiring minority
candidates as the key to improving law enforcement. With that end
in mind, its authors urged departments like the NYPD to reorganize
their personnel through the creation of three classes of officers: police
agents, police or patrol officers, and Community Service Officers, also
known as CSOs. The commission’s staff envisioned police agents as an
elite crime-fighting unit made up of the most seasoned members of the
S ou l B r o t h e r o r P ol i ce m an?? 131
force who would handle the most complicated, sensitive, and demand-
ing police tasks. In New York, this became the prestigious but contro-
versial Tactical Patrol Force.4 To support the work of this elite force,
“regular” police officers performed everyday police duties involved
in routine patrol. Finally, the commission recommended that police
departments improve service to high crime areas by hiring black and
Puerto Rican youths as CSOs. The commission staff argued that the
creation of CSOs provided the department with greater understand-
ing of minority group problems, increased law enforcement oppor-
tunities for minorities, and allowed younger candidates to complete
their education in order to qualify for police work.5 They claimed that
these divisions were the best means of creating a space for minority
men and women in police work. CSOs provided the NYPD brass with
a politically viable means of responding to urban riots. Hiring minori-
ties as CSOs was good press and had the potential to “keep the lid on
minority communities.”6
Some cynics viewed the recruitment of African American and
Puerto Rican youths as a mere public relations ruse. However, these
hires acknowledged past abuses and offered a substantive concession
to civil rights advocates. Many members of the Crime Commission
genuinely sought to reform the hiring and policing practices of urban
departments. They were hopeful that men and women on the beat
who understood the problems particular to these communities could
serve to resolve them. Furthermore, the Crime Commission gener-
ally avoided the overt demonization of blacks and Puerto Ricans as
criminals. Rather, the commission identified crime as stemming from
poverty, racial discrimination, poor housing, commercial exploita-
tion, and the enormous gap between the reality and ideals of racial
equality.7
Though these concessions and the extraordinary acknowledgments
of the misdeeds of white and d black police officers in minority commu-
nities were significant, they translated into a relatively unimaginative
prescription. The commission’s main recommendation was to hire
officers with the same skin color as the communities that they were to
police. However, given the commission’s findings, putting minority
cops in the ghetto and barrio was an incomplete solution. The report
detailed a history of police officials assigning the department’s worst
employees to beats in black and Puerto Rican communities. This pun-
ishment exiled the officers to minority communities where supervisors
tolerated lax enforcement of the law and poor police behavior. Even
worse, officers who testified on behalf of the commission reported that
black cops were often just as brutal as their white peers when policing
minority communities.8 Nevertheless, the authors held the idea that

“more democratic representation within the station” through the
increased hiring of women, racial minorities, and skilled civilians was
the best means of overcoming antagonism between minority com-
munities and the police.9 Modifying the skin color of the force was an
easier solution than a wholesale restructuring of police practices.10
The commission’s conservative wing defended the reticence of
police departments to radically alter the ways in which they policed
minority communities. These members tended to view the riots as
an expression of a sick culture. From their point of view, the prob-
lems of the ghetto and the barrio were all internal, having little to
do with policing or any other outside force. Although it is not always
clear who wrote particular passages in the report, in some sections
conservative voices indicted the “pathological values” of ghetto com-
munities. “Parental authority is becoming weaker,” noted one pas-
sage, “while the community’s social institutions have not found ways
to give young people the motivation to live moral lives.”11 The focus
in research on the negative side of ghetto life led a few of them to
conclude that blacks themselves were primarily responsible for the
problems of crime, disorder, and police brutality.12 Similar to Senator
Patrick Moynihan’s report on the black family that depicted black cul-
ture as pathological, the Crime Commission highlighted the depravity
of ghetto life and the black matriarchal household:
The slums of virtually every American city harbor not only physical
deprivation and spiritual despair but also doubt and downright cynicism
about the relevance of the outside world’s institutions and the sincer-
ity of efforts to close the gap. The discipline associated with the loose
organization and female focus that characterize many inner-city families
has also been related by social scientists to what has been termed pre-
mature autonomy and to consequent resentment of authority figures
such as policemen and teachers.13
For some of the commission’s authors, “normal” households had

fathers as the authoritative figure that resulted in healthy children,
whereas the “pathological” maternal culture of black people failed
to teach children to respect authority and thus produced criminals.14
This obsession with the pathology of black life deflected attention
away from policing practices.
Other conservatives wholeheartedly indicted the rioters as “unruly
and irresponsible” rabble-rousers whose affinity for violence merited
punishment. For the Los Angeles Police Commissioner, the find-
ings proved that the rioters “were nothing more than criminals and
monkeys.”15 Sociologist Joseph O’Meara warned that “the riots must

be put down and put down fast. To accomplish that requires stern
measures and our governments have been too timid to do what the
situation requires. Milder measures have been tried for four years,
but the riots spread and the violence increases. It is time and past
time for tough tactics. Strong medicine is what is needed.”16 Despite
such tough talk, O’Meara hinted at compromise with the more liberal
members of the commission. Conservatives like O’Meara considered
the rioters criminals and refused to sanction their behavior. Yet they
likely knew that the weight of public sentiment made punishing the
rioters politically infeasible and instead recommended black police
service. O’Meara believed that criminal justice work could channel
black violence into discipline and patriotism as “proven by the record
of young Negroes in Vietnam.”17 He seemed to suggest that if blacks
could violently riot at home while others fought abroad, then perhaps
the best solution was to channel their naturally combative energy into
police service.18 NYPD officials agreed and together with the Ford
Foundation created a recruiting campaign for black and Puerto Rican
servicemen newly returning from Vietnam to work in Harlem, the
East Bronx, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.19
As President Johnson’s team drafted the Crime Commission
Report, ghettos throughout the country continued to erupt in pro-
test against municipal police forces. In New York, hundreds of East
Harlem residents rioted in July of 1967 after an off-duty white police-
man killed a Puerto Rican man who had been in a knife fight.20 It
took another year for the Kerner Commission to catalog the episodes
of civil disorder and make sense of their causes. The 1968 Kerner
Commission Report on Civilian Disorders was even more definitive
than the Crime Commission in identifying police as responsible for
the very disorders they were called upon to control. The report cited
43 instances of urban turmoil in the summer of 1966 alone that had
been “fueled by the deep-seated antipathies between African American
communities and the predominantly white police departments.”21 The
report described the rift between the white police and black commu-
nities as symptomatic of larger racial divisions. At a moment in which
most Americans hoped the civil rights movement would close the gap
between black and white citizens, the Kerner Commission came out
with its disheartening conclusion that “our nation was moving toward
two societies, one black, one white—separated and unequal.”22 The
report helped to contextualize the violent behavior of the rioters and
identify the police as the consummate symbol, if not source, of black
oppression.
The Kerner Commission legitimized the riots as serious political

acts but offered little in terms of fundamentally restructuring police
institutions or society at large. The authors straddled a fine line
between acknowledging the grievances of rioters and making pleas
for “law and order.” Their prescription for crime in minority com-
munities was politically safe and familiar: a mild plea for changing
police practices and holding officers accountable for their treatment
of ghetto residents, but a greater focus on the skin color of recruits.23
To counter the charge that predominantly white police forces con-
stituted a racist army of occupation, the Kerner Commission recom-
mended that American law enforcement agencies hire more black and
Hispanic officers. The attempt to cosmetically change the racial poli-
cies of American police departments only engendered new problems,
including the creation of a hierarchy that promoted white officers to
positions of power over black cops.24
The recommendations of the Kerner Commission never devi-
ated from the mainstream, liberal perspective. The commission cited
New Yorkers’ overwhelming rejection of the Civilian Review Board
in 1966 as evidence of Americans’ fear of veering too far to the left.
They were guided by what they understood to be the vital center of
American politics.25 And yet the middle ground between polarized
factions resulted in a prescription for society’s racial ills that were no
different from the lukewarm solutions of the past. Kenneth B. Clark,
the internationally renowned sociologist, speculated that the Kerner
Commission’s recommendations might temporarily placate Americans
who were anxious for social change but make little concrete difference
in people’s lives:
I read that report . . . of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were

reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot
of 1935, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot
of 1943, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot. I
must again in candor say to you members of this commission—it is a
kind of Alice in Wonderland—with the same moving picture shown
over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same
inaction.26
Clark worried that the commission provided a forum for concerns

about racial inequality with no genuine plan for addressing its evils.
Perhaps the prescient Clark knew that any efforts to address racial
inequality would be attacked with vigor by those who believed they
had the most to lose by leveling the playing field.
New Initiatives, Old Standards

The Kerner Commission had a particularly New York imprint.
Although Illinois governor Otto Kerner was the titular head, most
participants viewed vice chairman and New York mayor John Lindsay
as its primary architect. Lindsay and his commissioner Howard Leary
knew they faced a good deal of work to get their own house in order.
Black New Yorkers were familiar with the empty promises of past
commissions in general and the NYPD’s tactical deployment of blacks
in particular. They knew of the commissioners’ pattern of employ-
ing blacks for political purposes. In addition to assigning black offi-
cers to ghetto beats and specialized detective duties, the city funneled
minorities from the NYPD pool into the Housing and Transit Police,
which welcomed them in far greater numbers. In 1966, black New
Yorkers had constituted 15.8 percent of the general population and
30 percent of the much smaller Housing and Transit forces, but only
5–6 percent of patrol officers in the NYPD.27 Policing the subways
and housing projects was dangerous work that presented few options
for upward mobility, which is why white police officers spurned it.
NYPD executives never explained the discrepancy of opportunities
between the Housing and Transit and the NYPD. The most presti-
gious jobs remained segregated, reserved for white men.
The NYPD, in addition to reserving the majority of its patrol posi-
tions for white men, carved out specialized and malleable positions
for blacks and Puerto Ricans. Supervisors largely deemed black and
Puerto Rican recruits as unqualified for patrol duty but made excep-
tions when it seemed as if an all-white force was incapable of handling
ghetto unrest. The NYPD brass hired racial minorities for administra-
tive positions but shifted them to patrol duty in ghetto communities
during moments of “potential racial conflict.” In 1968, for instance,
during the July Fourth weekend, which was infamous for high inci-
dences of crime in minority communities, NYPD management reap-
pointed to uniform patrol several thousand d blacks and Puerto Ricans
who normally worked in desk jobs, clerical work, administrative duty,
and the police academy.28 The department also rearranged the tours
of the 500 Spanish speaking and 1,600 black police officers to “slum
areas.” The NYPD’s success in tactically and selectively appointing
minority police in this manner convinced the brass of the practical and
political uses of selective affirmative action.
Commissioner Leary intended to integrate the force in the spirit
of making it more democratic but NYPD affirmative action pro-
grams had the unintended effect of reinforcing racial difference. The
department’s training program for black and Puerto Rican teens

continued the department’s longstanding pattern of occupational
ghettoization of minority police.29 Leary hoped that the training pro-
gram would “dissolve the barriers that separated the racial, religious,
and ethnic populations of the city,” but he still funneled cadets into
separate and subordinate roles.30 In 1966, for example, it reinvigo-
rated the police cadet program through federal, state, and city funds
to train black youths in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the subordinate role
of CSO. These positions were limited to ghetto beats and did not
provide much room for advancement. In addition to patrolling black
and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, these recruits found themselves in
such lackluster tasks as bank guard duty, department store security,
and motor vehicles operations.31 Moving beyond these posts proved
difficult and did little to win the support of their white peers. Even
those cadets who were fortunate enough to achieve patrolman sta-
tus faced tremendous pressure to illustrate allegiance to the NYPD.
White officers urged them to adopt tough tactics in minority neigh-
borhoods as a means of proving themselves “blue.” Muslim Minister
Louis Farrakhan, while joining civil rights activists’ pleas for more
black cops, noted the history of nasty black cops and warned that
black officers could be “more brutal against their own in order to stay
in favor of the white establishment.”32
The well-publicized CSO program partially fulfilled the hopes of
mainstream civil rights activists who called for greater community
control and representation within the department but did little to
challenge the notion that men and women of different races were best
equipped to “police their own kind.”33 Even some African Americans
ascribed to this view. Winston Ewbanks, a 21-year-old cadet and vet-
eran of the Vietnam War, commented that he thought he would “be
better than some white policemen because he [the white cop] is lead-
ing the good life out there on Long Island and he comes here and tells
people what to do.”34 Other officers of color argued that they were
the onlyy ones who could be trusted. Oswald Thompson, a black officer
in the Housing Authority Patrolman’s Union, encouraged people to
call on the black and Puerto Rican fraternal organizations when they
needed help or information because “they ain’t gonna jive you—you
are us and we are you.”35 In defending their roles on the force, offi-
cers like Ewbanks and Thompson validated police executives’ premise
that blacks and Puerto Ricans should take primary responsibility for
overseeing police work in ghetto communities.
The department’s white rank-and-file officers perceived affirma-
tive action programs like these as politically influenced administrative
favoritism. They revered policing as a sacred profession that hired,

evaluated, and promoted people based on their competence rather
than their social background. Few of these men acknowledged the
social networks, nepotism, and discrimination that created their own
jobs. Instead, they castigated the cadet program for its preferential
treatment of minorities. PBA president, John Cassese, made numer-
ous public statements lambasting the cadet program as an assault on
departmental professionalism and objectivity. He vilified affirmative
action as discriminatory against white youths and “a serious threat
to the concept of police professionalization . . . a crippling blow to the
integrity of the NYPD.”36 White opposition and a reduction of federal
funds shrunk the cadet program to one-fifth of its original size by the
end of 1968.37
President Cassese and his mostly white rank-and-file constituency
feared an erosion of what they believed were longstanding objective
departmental criterion for evaluating candidates’ fitness for patrol.
Ever since Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had initiated a set of
standards for New York City cops in the late nineteenth century, police
management employed extensive qualifying exams to judge who was
employable.38 Certain portions of the physical and written exams fairly
appraised candidates’ potential for police work, but the relevance of
others was dubious. In the case of women, the department had relied
on a questionable interpretation of the city charter and an antiquated
physical exam to exclude them from patrol work and promotion.39
Likewise, they reduced the numbers of eligible blacks and Puerto
Ricans through written and psychological exams that had a doubtful
connection to officers’ duties. When police management took mea-
sures to eradicate these impediments, the PBA unleashed a campaign
against what they dubbed “unlawful integration.”40
NYPD officials nevertheless reevaluated their standards and
begrudgingly pushed through important reforms in the late 1960s,
including the lowering, and ultimate elimination, of a 5’9’’ height
requirement for a patrolman. For years, the NYPD operated on the
premise that taller men made better officers. With remarkably little
opposition, the department justified an exclusively tall workforce on
several shaky propositions. Police officials believed that taller men
were more physically capable of fighting crime, better able to control
public disorders because they could see over crowds, in possession of
a presence that commanded the respect of citizens, and, finally, unlike
shorter men, did not suffer from a Napoleon complex or insecurities
that resulted in abrasive interactions with the public.41 Police execu-
tives around the country failed to question such logic until well into
the 1970s. The NYPD, through Commissioner Leary’s initiative, was

among the first to challenge it.
The height requirement had been a longtime impediment to patrol
employment for most women and a disproportionate number of men
from particular ethnic groups.42 In New York, the standard had served
as a means of excluding, however unintentionally, large numbers of
Puerto Rican, and to a lesser extent Italian and Jewish, men from
patrol work.43 In the late 1960s, the Hispanic Society and New York’s
largest Spanish newspaper, El Diario La Prensa, pushed the depart-
ment to eliminate its height requirement as a means of recruiting more
Hispanic officers.44 Commissioner Howard Leary welcomed the pro-
posal because he anticipated that it would allow him to fill the depart-
mental quota of 28,228 officers, recruit bilingual men to assign to
Spanish-speaking communities, and refurbish the police department’s
image in the eyes of minorities. Leary ignored the protests of rank-
and-file officers and lowered the height requirement to 67’’ with the
intention of bringing in significant numbers of Puerto Ricans without
“lowering standards of intelligence and character.”45 The department
solicited the assistance of community leaders and called upon the East
Harlem Youth Council to help recruit Puerto Rican candidates for
trainee positions.46
The Emerald Society, the fraternal organization for Irish policemen,
complained that the city had concentrated its recruitment efforts on
black and Puerto Ricans at the expense of Irish cops. They interpreted
the effort of the city to level the playing field between groups as politi-
cal favoritism. The Emeralds deemed that overturning the rule change
was unviable and instead tried to turn it to their advantage. They
insisted on being given publicity material to distribute in Irish neigh-
borhoods. “We’re looking for Irish midgets,” one Emerald member
joked, “No leprechauns.”47 As in many instances related to affirmative
action, police leaders were more open to change than their rank-and-
file. The society’s president, Sergeant Thomas Fox, recognized the
tactical and political uses of minority cops. He said that although his
organization wanted to make sure that Irish youngsters did not feel
neglected, “we realize—there’s no doubt about it—that the depart-
ment needs blacks and Puerto Ricans.”48 What it meant to “need”
blacks and Puerto Ricans was unclear. The department certainly ben-
efitted from the visibility of having them on the front lines. It was an
open question as to whether or not this translated in improved police
services for minority communities.
One initiative that addressed the core problems of policing in
Harlem was the Preventive Enforcement Patrol (PEP), started in the
fall of 1969. For years Harlem residents had complained that they
were victims of both the majority of the city’s crimes and the seeming
apathy on the part of the police to track down criminals. The PEP
was an experimental unit to answer complaints from city residents and
respond more effectively to crime. It was a special squad of black and
Puerto Rican policemen that teamed with the residents of Harlem
to eradicate narcotics activity. Its domain was all territory north of
59th Street, but its focus was on the African American and Spanish-
speaking neighborhoods of Harlem. The commanding officers were
all African American, including Chief Inspector Eldridge Waithe,
Lieutenant Hamilton Robinson, and Sergeants Howard Sheffey and
Charles Gillam. They led 20 patrolmen, all of whom were high school
dropouts who had graduated from cadet school and worked at least
two years on the force. Many of the PEP cops entered policing with a
focused mission. They came from tough neighborhoods and resented
street thugs who were selling drugs and committing crimes there.49
“I thought if we could get young black and Puerto Rican policeman
who came from areas like Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and South
Jamaica, who know narcotics addiction first-hand as kids, who were
concerned with their community and would want to come back on
a volunteer basis to work, we would have a striking force of police-
men,” observed Waithe.50 White officers did not share his enthusiasm.
They maligned the program because it targeted blacks and Puerto
Ricans, they believed, at their expense.51 For a while, the program had
enough successes to stave off white critics.
The PEP squad appeared to be highly disciplined. It secured a num-
ber of key arrests and won the trust of Harlem residents. Community
leaders were so pleased with the program that within a month they
saw that the force was doubled. Sergeant Sheffey boasted with pride
how the unit was both effective and sensitive to the needs of the com-
munity. “This is the best thing that has ever happened,” he beamed.
“I’m crazy about it. You have to see what people feel about the
police. I try to make the men more aware of what to look for. They
are already sensitive to the problems in the area and to the people
here.”52 Lieutenant Robinson, who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant
in Brooklyn, made the case that black cops had better access to the
community. “We get less hostile reactions from the community. The
people see that we care and they accept what we have to do.”53
The program boasted many accomplishments, but the cops’ inti-
macy with the community was its ultimate undoing. The 1972 Knapp
Commission brought to light the implicated members of the PEP in
charges of bribery and corruption. A black policeman named Waverly
Logan had testified that he took $1,500 a month in bribes and that
policemen in Harlem routinely paid off informants with heroin in
return for stolen goods such as cigarettes and whiskey54 The PEP
squad had a diminished role following the charges of corruption, but
this did little to stem the tidal wave of calls for minority police.55
However, while management and the black community sounded the
call for minority hiring, white rank-and-file patrolmen came to view all
such initiatives as being enacted at their own expense.
Conflicting Cultures
Some impediments to minority police recruitment were difficult to
remove because police managers held biases of their own that rein-
forced discriminatory practices. Police management and many rank-
and-file subordinates were blind to the ways in which seemingly
objective criterion for evaluating candidates favored certain groups
while discriminating against others. For instance, the written exam for
patrolmen—as members of the Guardians Association and Hispanic
Society contended in a legal suit against the city—contained questions
that penalized black and Hispanic candidates. The department claimed
that such questions measured the intelligence required to perform the
job of patrolman, but an independent study by the Rand Institute
in 1970 found that the exam had little job-relatedness and weeded
out disproportionate numbers of blacks and Hispanics.56 Another
independent study by the Educational Testing Service raised similar
doubts about the content validity of promotional tests for sergeant,
lieutenant, and captain.57
The NYPD claimed that it wanted more minority candidates and
yet denied the candidacy of many blacks and Puerto Ricans due to
purportedly “poor character.” In addition to unnecessarily punitive
exams, the Civil Service Commission subjected prospective patrol-
men to background investigations that significantly reduced the
candidacy of minorities. The almost exclusively white Civil Service
employees who worked on behalf of the department exercised con-
siderable latitude in approving or rejecting candidates. They screened
out minorities by eliminating those candidates who came from fami-
lies with histories that they deemed to be in conflict with those of the
department—children out of wedlock, venereal disease, and minor
criminal records.58 Thus a candidate with a totally clean background
could lose his or her eligibility due to a relative as remote as a cousin
or uncle who had been arrested for a misdemeanor. Interviewers
defended their screening process as objective because it held each
candidate to the same standard. But the standard itself penalized

minority candidates who were more likely to come from families with
histories in conflict than those of potential white recruits. Ironically,
if candidates were interested in undercover work, such as infiltrat-
ing black radical organizations, their roguish backgrounds made them
especially desirable.59
The department’s reliance on a sketchy definition of “character”
as a means of screening out minorities was illustrated by the case of
Sofia Cirino, a Puerto Rican woman who applied to become a cross-
ing guard in 1970. The once prestigious crossing guard position had
lost its status throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as the department
increasingly filled the position with women. Although the NYPD no
longer classified crossing guards as police officers, it did furnish them
with NYPD uniforms and subjected them to its rules and regulations
during the terms of their employment. Among those guidelines was
a stipulation that the guard had to represent good character in the
eyes of the community. Cirino had met every objective criterion for
the position, but the NYPD rejected her application because her eight
children had five different fathers.60 For civil service officials acting
on behalf of the NYPD, Cirino’s relationships with multiple partners
tainted her character, and thus disqualified her from the position.
Cirino sued the city and regained eligibility for the position, but
failed to challenge the right of Civil Service to use “character” as a
criterion in selecting its personnel. Rather, Cirino’s lawyers argued
that her character was representative of the Puerto Rican community
at large, in which 25 percent of the births in 1970 were “illegitimate.”
Justice Tyler of the New York Supreme Court concurred. He ruled
that Cirino’s “lifestyle” was “too relevant in her community to reflect
against her character.”61 For Tyler, Cirino’s disqualification “ille-
gally discriminated against her race and sex.” Like the architects of
the Crime and Kerner Commission reports, Justice Tyler compelled
the NYPD to eliminate impediments to minority candidates. But in
attacking the historical roots of racism and sexism, each described
minority communities in alien terms that had the inadvertent effect of
labeling them as abnormal.
Black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers welcomed access to law
enforcement but brought unique perspectives to crime, policing,
and race. Civil rights organizations were pleased that the depart-
ment responded to their call for more black and Puerto Rican cops
but recognized this was not sufficient to undo the hostile relation-
ship between the NYPD and ghetto residents. Regardless of the
skin color of the person who wore it, the police uniform served as
an ominous symbol of the authority, power, and legal status of the

police to exercise violence in their communities.62 In black and Puerto
Rican neighborhoods, officers of color were not always seen as “one
of their own,” but as “a tool of the repressive racial machinery of
white society.”63 The friends of African American cops attacked them
as “Uncle Toms” or “white men’s flunkies.”64 At the same time, white
patrolmen warned black and Puerto Rican cops against “putting their
color ahead of their duty.”65 Such characterizations hampered minor-
ity recruitment efforts. Don R. Derning, former president of the
International Association of Chief of Police, conceded as much when
he reported that “A lot of blacks who are qualified to become good
officers are not interested because it would create an intolerable situ-
ation for them in their own community.”66 Minority youths targeted
by recruiters were wary of a department that they understood to be
racist, both inside and outside of the station.
Black police officers experienced occupational discrimination and
open violence while on the job.67 Especially aggressive white officers
posted racial epithets on the walls of station house latrines, stuffed
the lockers of black cops with racist literature, and freely used the
word “nigger” on their squad car radios. “Listen any nights, any
frequency,” explained Sergeant Sheffey, “and you’ll hear all sorts of
garbage.”68 Physical violence against officers of color was not uncom-
mon. Patrolman Walter D. Smith reported that his intervention in
the beating of a black prisoner by two white policemen in the Wilson
Avenue Station of Brooklyn resulted in threats on his life. “They sit
in cars and don’t help us,” noted Smith, “flatten the tires on our car,
rip our phones out of the wall, kick down our locker room doors,
refuse to aid us in transporting prisoners, laughing at us, intercepting
our legitimate radio transmissions. [It is] silly to say racism doesn’t
exist.”69 No matter how benevolent officers like Smith acted, both
sides questioned their allegiances. He received anonymous calls into
the station asking him “do you want to be a soul brother or a police-
man?”70 The answer, of course, was both, but the two were proving
to be incompatible.
Tragic Mistakes
Nothing was more polarizing than the chilling incidents of “mistaken
identity,” in which uniformed white officers “accidentally” killed off-
duty and undercover black cops. Several black officers in the NYPD
had been shot in such cases, but no black cop ever killed a white
peer.71 According to police department figures, eight policemen had
been shot and killed by other policemen since 1940. Four of them
were black policemen, three of whom were shot by white officers,
and four were white policemen shot by other white officers.72 The
Guardians reported that eight black officers were shot, though not all
killed, by white cops in the late 1960s and early 1970s.73 Although it
is difficult to determine the degree to which white patrolmen held rac-
ist attitudes that led to extreme violence against their black coworkers,
the threat of such hostility often served as a means of keeping black
cops in line and discouraging black citizens from joining the depart-
ment.74 One Harlem resident who attended the funeral of a black
officer slain by a white cop said, “I know one thing for sure. I don’t
want my son to be a cop. He can be a truck driver or a ditch digger,
but not a policeman.”75
Nine months after the funeral, white Detective Harold Maxwell
shot a black officer named John White. The initial police report
failed to note that White had been shot in the back and not given
an opportunity to identify himself.76 After White’s death, there were
grumblings among black police officers that they might not come
to the aid of white cops when they were in plainclothes or off duty.
Sergeant Hargrove thought that this talk reflected African American
cops’ raw emotions but that when the time arose, black cops would
still defend their white peers. “Black officers say they are not going
to take action—that they are going to step on the accelerator and let
whitey get his butt kicked,” predicted Hargove. “But riding down the
street they are out there and they will get involved. For other people it
would be easy to pass on by but to a dedicated police officer it is very
hard.”77 The NYPD remained a brotherhood, though a fractured one
that seemed ever more fragile.
Equally troubling for black and Puerto Rican cops were the dis-
proportionate numbers of minorities killed by the NYPD. One par-
ticularly gut-wrenching episode took place in Jamaica, Queens, when
a Thomas J. Shea pulled out his service revolver and blew away a
10-year-old black boy named Clifford Glover. The incident was fol-
lowed by several nights of rioting in which South Jamaica residents
confronted local police officers. Shea, who became the first New York
City police officer ever indicted for murder committed in the course
of duty, testified that he fired in self-defense when the boy made a
reaching motion for what the cop believed to be a revolver.78 The offi-
cer claimed that he did not know Glover was so young. The defense
used the testimony of the deputy chief medical examiner to make the
case that the boy appeared older because he had heel lifts that gave
him a height of 5’ 2 ¾’’ and his hat made him even taller.79 The
PBA provided legal funds, attorneys, and moral support for Shea.80
The officer would go on to be acquitted of murder in State Supreme
Court on the grounds that there were holes in witness testimony.
Jamaica residents were livid.81
New Yorkers debated the details of the Glover killing, but it was
clear to many black New Yorkers that this episode was emblematic of
aggressive policing by white cops in minority communities. A report
by the respected sociologist Kenneth Clark found that among the 248
alleged “perpetrators” killed by the NYPD killed between 1950 and
1973, 52 percent were black and 21 percent were Hispanic. The black
and Hispanic cops whom the department overwhelmingly assigned
to minority communities naturally were responsible for some of the
deaths. No doubt, the violent nature of policing and the split-second
decision making required of tense situations led to shooting deaths.
Still, the racial inequity of the deaths was striking. White officers
in this time period killed a total of 96 black and Hispanic citizens
whereas black and Hispanic officers had killed one white citizen.82
Black and Hispanic policemen had shown far greater restraint than
their white counterparts in firing upon suspects. From 1969 to 1973,
1 of every 258 white policemen were involved in fatal incidents as
compared to 1 of 58 for Hispanic policemen and 1 of 38 for black
policemen.83 Alvin Pouissant, a Harvard psychiatrist, reflected on the
problem when later interviewed by the New Amsterdam News. “They
see blacks as subhuman, and it doesn’t take much for them to kill,”
explained Pouissant. “As far as they are concerned, they are not killing
human beings. Most white cops are angry at blacks and paranoid and
full of hate.”84 Documenting the motivations of white cops was tricky
business, but the evidence made it hard to deny that they had quick
trigger fingers.
These incidents, coupled with their own mistreatment, led black
police officers to contest the department’s double standard of law
enforcement in the ghetto and their ghettoization within the station.
They grew weary of the department’s deployment of them as agents
of black oppression who took the pressure off white cops.85 Foremost
among their criticisms was that their assignment to black neighbor-
hoods stymied their advancement. In a series of oral histories con-
ducted with black officers in this period, sociologist Nicholas Alex
discovered great resentment among cops whom the NYPD transferred
to black neighborhoods like Harlem because it segregated them from
work in the more desirable white precincts.86 For them, posts in white
precincts had become a symbol of their mobility from the ghetto.
To be sent back was tantamount to demotion. “[The black officer]
is frequently assigned to ghetto communities where he is to be Mr.

Charley’s boy, white man’s stooge, agent of the white community,”
noted Alex, “only to be used to oppress and repress his friends and
neighbors.”87
Policing minority communities in the late 1960s and early 1970s
put black and Puerto Rican officers in the awkward position of ver-
bally and physically confronting neighbors, relatives, and friends.
These conflicts were more pronounced due to the scope of the civil
rights movement, which put increasing numbers of ordinary citizens
on the front lines. Some officers simply avoided those beats that forced
them to choose allegiances. “I wouldn’t work in Harlem,” noted one
black veteran of the force, “because I just can’t take the way they treat
my brothers.”88 However, police management’s priorities—especially
controlling black and Puerto Rican crime through the tactical dis-
tribution of minorities—almost always overrode individual officers’
preferences for particular posts. Whether they liked it or not, most
black and Puerto Ricans who sought the relative prestige, benefits,
and good pay of police work found themselves working in the ghetto
or barrio.
Community Defenders
Civil rights protests against police brutality and harassment politicized
previously silent officers. Some African American and Puerto Rican
cops embraced their roles as community defenders. This meant protect-
ing fellow citizens from crime inside the community and d challenging
the violence and abuse of police officers themselves. The NYPD told
officers of color that they were responsible for minority communities,
but this directive had multiple meanings. For management, responsi-
bility meant controlling black and Puerto Rican crime, while minority
officers’ interpretation included protection of black and Puerto Rican
people from police violence. Largely rejected by their white peers in
the department and afraid of losing the confidence of citizens in the
ghetto, some black cops took radical steps to change the way in which
they enforced the law. They refused to assimilate with “team blue” if
it meant ignoring police abuses in their own neighborhoods. Instead,
they insisted that they were “black men first, policemen second,” and
thus claimed a racial identity that unnerved departmental supervisors
who preferred to think of them as ghetto cops with primary loyalties
to the force.89
Officers of color who demonstrated their community allegiances by
challenging the politics and internal practices of the NYPD alienated
their white rank-and-file peers and supervisors. The fraternal organiza-

tions for officers of color, the Guardians Association, and the Hispanic
Society became politicized through civil rights activism, the riots, and
the fight over civilian review.90 They demanded that the department
step up recruitment of black and Puerto Rican officers, assign them
throughout the city, and promote greater numbers to supervisory
positions. The Guardians also broke from typical police practices when
they protested mistreatment of prisoners, assisted black citizens in fil-
ing complaints against the police, formed alliances with New York’s
civil rights groups, and participated in athletic, social, and recreational
programs for black youths.91 Guardian president William Johnson
explained, “For police officers to act only within the guidelines of a
law enforcement agency is no longer sufficient. Instead, black police
officers must work actively with the growing number of black com-
munity organizations aimed at improving the social, economic, and
political power of the black community.”92 The Guardians were at the
vanguard of civil rights advocacy, sometimes finding common ground
with the Hispanic Society.
The two fraternal organizations teamed in 1972 to sue the city
for discrimination against officers of color. These two groups, who
later won their case in the late 1970s, had placed five critical demands
through which the department could rectify past wrongs: declare the
patrolmen’s exam a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, make
all future exams bilingual, implement a residency requirement for
the position of patrol officer, begin an affirmative action program in
the department, and end the use of PA-15, which unfairly inquired
into the background of potential officers.93 In that same year, the
Guardians and Hispanic Society filed motions to subvert the right of
the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association to act as the sole bargaining
agent for all New York City cops. This act further alienated their white
peers.94
Although these moves did not all lead to successful outcomes, they
did bring the two minority organizations together. The Guardians’
greater numbers, longer history, and organizational experience put
them at the forefront of most initiatives. This occasionally became
a source of frustration for Puerto Rican cops, who did not feel as
if the Guardians always represented their interests. “Too often,”
Joseph Rodriguez noted in an address to black and Hispanic cops in
1971, “the Puerto Rican in New York city is an afterthought to other
groups. Rarely are we placed on equal footing with the black com-
munity. Rarely are we looked upon with equality by the black com-
munity. How can we sincerely clasp your hand as a brother should?”95
There was mutual interest between the two groups and they often
acted in unison, but many Puerto Rican cops feared that their agenda
was subsumed under the African American umbrella. This, too, could
be true for Haitian officers whose language and culture divided them
from African American cops.96 The Guardians were a diverse lot of
native New Yorkers, transplanted southerners, and Caribbean men
and women from different social and class backgrounds. Likewise, the
Hispanic Society started to include increasing numbers of Dominicans
and other Hispanics who were not Puerto Rican. Some officers held
memberships in both organizations. Individual officers of color
worked through the complexities of their identities and allegiances,
but their common racial marginalization usually led them to unified
action.
New York’s officers of color were not the only law enforcement offi-
cials growing more militant. Across the country, black police officers
formed new organizations and invigorated old ones that previously
had been apolitical: the National Black Policemen’s Association, the
Officers for Justice in San Francisco, the Afro-American Patrolman’s
League (AAPL) in Chicago, the Bronze Shields in Rochester, and
Guardians in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Hartford, Indianapolis, and
Detroit.97 Unlike the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the
other line organizations whose advocacy was limited to higher wages
and better working conditions, these groups engaged in racial activism
to snuff out discrimination in the department, upgrade professional
standards, reform police practices, and establish new links to minority
communities.98 As Newsweekk noted in 1969, “the Negro policeman is
beginning to march with the rest of the black movement. And his new
assertiveness could alter not only the image of the cop in the slums,
but the character of police justice.”99 The president of the Chicago
AAPL, Renault Robinson, explained that “the police department is
basically concerned with protecting white property, not the safety and
well-being of black people.”100 A similarly minded officer explained
“only through collective action and group empowerment could black
police officers avoid becoming a pawn of oppressing black people.”101
This was tough talk, though not all black cops agreed about how it
might translate into action.
New York Guardians were at the forefront of political organiza-
tion and national efforts to address the plight of African American
cops. In 1972, the Guardians assisted in the formation of the National
Black Police Association (NBPA) to improve the relationship between
minority communities and the police, promote minority recruitment
and reform police corruption, brutality, and discrimination.102 The
NBPA was the outgrowth of the Council of Police Societies, an orga-

nization started by New York Guardians and led by Calvin Allen.
New York Guardian James Hargrove became the first NBPA chair-
persons.103 Under New York leadership, the organization focused on
equal treatment for police officers of all races and backgrounds with a
particular focus on the black policeman as the “man in the middle.”104
Black police groups like the Guardians, the AAPL, Bronze Shields,
Offices for Justice and the NBPA were inordinately valuable in foster-
ing racial consciousness. As mainstream civil rights activism gave way
to black nationalism, these groups took on the arduous task of medi-
ating between the police and African American communities.
Black Nationalism and the Guardians

Radical black politics ascended to the top of the civil rights struggle
by the end of the 1960s and heightened already tense relations among
community residents, white cops, and officers of color. The confron-
tational rhetoric and community outreach of groups like the Nation of
Islam, the Black Panthers, and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) had
captured the imagination of young black men across the country. The
Young Lords, a Puerto Rican nationalist group, articulated an equally
radical and empowering rhetoric on behalf of Puerto Rican men.105
Most white cops found this kind of macho rhetoric belligerent and
offensive. Black and Puerto Rican cops were more conflicted. Radical
nationalist groups were both a threat and a source of inspiration. Law
enforcement officials naturally were wary of groups that sought to
overthrow the government through violent means, but black and
Puerto Rican cops took a more sympathetic view of radical organiza-
tions that challenged the status quo.
In New York, black cops relayed information to community activ-
ists about police surveillance practices. This action violated an unwrit-
ten departmental code of silence and infuriated white rank-and-file
members of the PBA. Guardian Howard Sheffey defended these
actions and recommended that officers reveal their assignments to
those whom they were supposed to infiltrate. “Its my job to inform
my community of what’s going on in the police department,” Sheffey
explained. “I’ll take my chances with any disciplinary actions that may
come my way.”106 Officers like Sheffey were willing to endure the
wrath of the PBA in order to maintain allegiances to the residents of
black communities.
The PBA was intended to be a representative body for all police
officers but rarely promoted black interests and often worked against
them. The Guardians’ frustration with the PBA stemmed from their
lack of representation in it. Due to the complicated nature of the elec-
tion process and their minority numbers, blacks had only a handful
of the 365 delegates on the board. The Guardians ended up starting
their own Legal Defense Fund simply to protect their own officers.107
The Kerner Commission’s conclusion that the nation was moving
toward “two societies, one black, one white” aptly described black
and white cops in the NYPD. PBA leadership had hoped to bridge
this gap by inviting Guardians president William Perry, Jr., to address
their 77th annual convention. It was a bold move, but it backfired.
Instead of being greeted warmly, Perry, who had taken a number of
controversial positions on civil rights, was heavily booed by the nearly
all-white audience. He responded to the jeers by raising his right fist
in in a black power salute. This only increased the crowd’s wrath. He
never spoke.108
For Perry and his fellow officers, the raised fist was a symbol of
solidarity and support for the black community that was consistent
with responsibilities as police officers. In the early 1970s, these offi-
cers challenged the nature of policing itself. In an open letter to the
Guardians in 1974, Officer Ulysses Williams urged his fellow officers
to take a firm stand against racism. “No More,” wrote Williams. “No
More Injustice. No more bite my tongue. No more ‘don’t rock the
boat. No more ‘turn the other cheek. No more misrepresentation,
and no more nigger grins. I am a man. I am black. I am a police offi-
cer. No man will intimidate me. I will be counted. I will be respected,
and so shall my people. Look at yourself, my brother. You are black,
not blue. Here we stand, my dear brother. Will you join us?”109 This
kind of macho bravado appealed to black men on the force but raised
the ire of white patrolmen.110 A white sergeant complained that his
black partner’s only conversation was to berate him for the oppres-
sion of blacks. “After that I avoided working with blacks whenever
possible. I would rather work with Puerto Ricans. At least they aren’t
arrogant.”111 This officer assumed that Puerto Ricans were relatively
docile compared to outspoken African Americans.
The most militant black cop on the force was Leonard Weir, also
known as Humza Al-Habeez and Leonard 12X. Weir had joined the
force in 1959, and converted to Islam in 1961, making him the first
known black Muslim in the department. Weir claimed that he was not
a black policeman, but rather a black man who happened to work for
the police. When asked if being a Muslim would affect his duties, he
responded, “Yes. It will. It will make me a better police officer.”112
Weir founded the Society of Afro-American Policemen (SAAP) after
the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots of 1964. He believed that

the Guardians did not sufficiently meet the needs of black police offi-
cers. Weir argued that the skin of the police officer mattered little if
he enforced the law in the same racist manner as cops had done in the
past. “For too long black policemen have patrolled the black com-
munity with the same attitudes white policemen have when they’re in
our neighborhoods,” Weir scolded his fellow officers. “As long as I
am aware that I am not white, that New York City does not belong to
me, and that America is not my country, I should get along fine.”113
Although Weir was a model police officer, the department tried to
keep him on his toes through transfers to less prestigious positions.114
They denied the SAAP charter membership as a fraternal organiza-
tion, contending that it was “an overtly political organization.”115
Undaunted by departmental opposition to the SAAP, Weir continued
recruiting cops in the early 1970s.
Weir pulled many cops within his gravitation despite some early
reticence among those who feared NYPD recrimination for guilt by
association. Weir won over his fellow officers by demonstrating his com-
mitment to the black citizens of New York. Like many black nationalist
leaders, he founded his platform on community empowerment. There
was little to find offensive or confrontational. Weir was an invited
guest of the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League in Chicago where
he outlined his movement’s platform: “To foster fraternity among
people of African descent and background, to promote the spirit of
pride and love, to improve the general welfare, give opportunity to
develop themselves, reclaim the fallen, administer and assist the needy,
provide an organized body for members having similar interests and
problems, believing always in the brotherhood of Man and the unity
of God.”116 Eventually the Afro-American Society started other chap-
ters among black policemen in other parts of New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The SAAP grew to over 300 nation-wide
members.117 The organization was not necessarily in competition with
the Guardians. Several men had dual affiliation in both organizations.
Even New York’s highest ranking black cop, Lloyd Sealy, himself nei-
ther a Muslim nor a member of SAAP, came out in support of the
Nation of Islam in a ceremony organized by Weir.118
Not all was amiable between Weir and the Guardians. Weir was
adamant about aligning himself with black power organizations over
the NYPD. When black cops working for the NYPD infiltrated New
York’s Black Panther organization, Weir lashed out at them for being
“traitors and prostitutes.” Sergeant Perry, who had been so bold as
to hold up the black power symbol to hundreds of white cops, took
a more temperate view. He said that he neither encouraged Guardian

members to do that kind of police intelligence work, nor held it
against them. “If a unit has to infiltrate the Panthers or the Young
Lords, then perhaps the bosses ought to be blacks,” explained Perry,
“so that the attitudes are correct, so that you have control over what’s
going on.”119 Assistant Chief Inspector Eldridge Waithe concurred
with Perry. He even suggested that “Infiltration by blacks can help
because it sometimes makes for more objective police work.”120 The
Guardians occupied an ambiguous position between radical activ-
ists and departmental stalwarts. They infiltrated radical black groups
while providing some of their key players with information about the
department. It undoubtedly confounded both sides.
Panthers and Muslims

Police violence was the driving force behind the formation of the
Black Panther Party whose confrontations with the police played out
violently.121 The NYPD and the Black Panthers entered into a lethal
conflict in the spring of 1971 that resulted in the death of six cops
and drove a deep racial wedge among the rank-and-file. Earlier in the
year District Attorney Frank Hogan had brought 13 Black Panthers
to trial on dozens of charges including conspiracy to bomb police
stations and murder police officers. During the trial the house of
Judge John M. Murtagh was fire-bombed.122 Many suspected that
the attacks came from the BLA, a splinter organization of the Black
Panther Party whose stated goal was to take up arms for the liberation
of black citizens. The trial ended on May 13 with the jury return-
ing not guilty verdicts on all charges. Hogan remained under heavy
police protection thereafter. On May 19, two white officers, Thomas
Curry and Nicholas Binetti, were stationed outside Hogan’s home
on Riverside Drive. They spotted an automobile driving the wrong
way down a one-way street. They were ignored when they attempted
to flag it down. They gave chase and caught up to the car on 106th
Street. When they asked the driver to pull over, he opened fire with
a .45 caliber machine gun.123 Curry took bullets in the face, right
shoulder, and upper stomach. Binetti took 12 bullets in the thigh,
knees, arms, hands, right shoulder, stomach, and the back of his
neck. Cops all over the city were understandably livid. PBA president
Kiernan held the Lindsay administration’s liberal policies accountable
for the shootings. He instructed his men to carry their own shotguns
on patrol at all times. “I refuse to stand by and permit my men to
be gunned down while the Lindsay administration does nothing to
protect them,” added Kiernan. The legality of Kiernan’s directive was

questionable, but its sentiments were chillingly clear. “I want all my
men to understand that in any situation in which they have to draw
their weapons, they are to shoot to kill.”124
The BLA provided rogue cops plenty of ammunition for vengeance.
Two days later, on May 21, the New York Timess received two packets
that included headlines from the machine gunning and included a
note from the BLA taking credit for the hits. This provocation hit a
raw nerve with cops across the city. “All power to the people. Here are
the license plates after the fascist state pig police,” read the note. “We
send them in order to exhibit the potential power of oppressed peo-
ples to acquit revolutionary justice. The BLA, who met out in the tra-
dition of Malcolm [X] and all true revolutionaries, real justice. We are
revolutionary justice.”125 That same night in Harlem, another police
team responded to radio call for housing development where the Polo
Grounds baseball stadium used to stand. A black cop, Waverly Jones,
and his white partner, Joseph Piagentini, were called into a domestic
dispute to the Colonial Park Houses on Harlem River Drive, a hous-
ing project in Upper Manhattan. They too were ambushed. Jones was
shot in the head and died on the street. Piagentini was shot 13 times
and died in the back of a radio patrol car en route to the hospital.
Rumors spread that members of New York’s Black Panther Party had
placed the call.126
Identifying the assassins proved challenging in both cases. Black
Panther member Richard Moore, later known as Dhoruba al-Mujahid
bin Wahad, was arrested and convicted shortly after the Curry and
Binetti attacks. His fingerprints were found on the package sent to the
New York Times.127 His participation in the assassinations was, how-
ever, less clear and his conviction was later overturned.128 Finding the
murderers of Jones and Piagentini required access to the BLA, which
was virtually impossible for any white officer. The BLA barely trusted
the black cops with whom they had contact. The department’s best
hope was to convince a black female officer to get access through the
wives of the BLA members.
Law enforcement officials captured the first perpetrator in California
shortly after the homicides, but detectives could not find his accom-
plice. The NYPD brought the wives and children of the BLA leaders
into the station, but they were reluctant to speak with white authori-
ties. PBA president Edward Kiernan urged fraternity as a means of
burying racial differences and pleaded with black police officers for
assistance. “One of our brothers is being buried today and tomor-
row another one,” reported a despondent Kiernan, adding that “this
is not a matter of black and white.”129 Guardian president Johnson

expressed empathy for the slain officers, one of whom was black,
but complicated Kiernan’s picture of unity. “No honest, hard work-
ing citizen wants to see a policeman shot down,” Johnson agreed,
but reminded Kiernan and others of police malpractices, noting that
“what no one is admitting is that the NYPD does not come into this
court with clean hands. In this case, the court is Harlem and [similar]
ghettos.”130 Johnson and like-minded officers, while no fans of the
BLA or other violent organizations, viewed them as an outgrowth of
a racist society and an aggressive police department.
Detectives suspected that the wives in custody would be more sym-
pathetic to a black woman. They asked an African American woman
named Olga Ford to perform the questioning. Although Ford grew up
in a predominantly white, Italian, middle-class Brooklyn community
and spent much of her social life with white people, the department
assumed that her blackness afforded her the opportunity to gain the
trust of suspects. Departmental supervisors believed that Ford’s sensi-
tivity, tact, and intelligence, and especially her race and sex, made her
trustworthy to the wives of BLA members whom they held in custody.
Ford had worked as a detective in the Criminal Investigation Bureau
and the Narcotics Division. The chief prosecutor in the Manhattan
District Attorney’s Office chose her to work with the 6th Homicide
Division on the case. Although the interviewees were hostile to Ford,
she was able to dupe them into identifying the second perpetrator.131
Her success was due more to her intellect and deductive reasoning
than to her social proximity to the interviewees.132 She was able to
cajole the wives into providing the identity of the five suspects, which
produced the first leads and broke the case, bringing the defendants
to justice.133
The NYPD may well have failed to solve the case without Ford’s
contributions but did little to recognize her. The brass decorated other
officers who worked on the case, mostly white and some black men,
by furnishing each of them with a plaque and an award dinner. Ford
received no such accolades. “No matter what you do,” Ford lamented,
“you’re not there. Somewhere it gets buried.” More troubling for
Ford were the death threats she received from members of the BLA,
who felt that she had betrayed her race by turning their wives against
them during the investigation. Also traumatic for Ford was how she
was later written out of portions of that history by District Attorney
Robert Tannenbaum in his bestselling account of the episode, Badge
of the Assassin. Tannenbaum credited her accomplishment to a white
cop. Upset by this exclusion, Ford phoned Tannenbaum, asking him
if he knew about the events’ “real” history. He merely replied that it

was hiss book and, therefore, hiss prerogative to tell the story as he saw
fit.134 “There was the sense that you were not there, that you were
invisible,” Ford recalled with regret.
There were two more high-profile killings the following year. On
January 27, 1972, the BLA killed two white rookie officers, Rocco
Laurie and his partner Gregory Foster in the East Village. Three or
four men passed the officers on the corner of 11th Street and Avenue
B and then shot them in the back. Foster was shot eight times and
died instantly. Laurie took six shots and died on the operating table.135
One killer was seen firing his weapon in the air in apparent exuberance
over the murder.136 Few questioned that the murders were brutal and
unprovoked.137 Laurie and Foster were Marine Corps veterans from
Vietnam who had been well liked by their fellow officers as well as
the residents of the Lower East Side.138 Henry S. Brown was brought
to trial for the slayings, but a State Supreme Court found him not
guilty.139 Despite a nation-wide manhunt, no one was ever convicted
of the murder, much to the ire of the rank-and-file.
The police shootings and Mayor Lindsay’s reticence to come down
harder on black crime fueled the rage of the white rank-and-file in
the department. This time the showdown was between white cops
and black Muslims. The Nation of Islam, despite its confrontational
rhetoric, had been largely nonviolent toward whites. Its bark was
often worse than its bite, though its members were not shy about
defending themselves. A constant source of tension was the way in
which many members felt unfairly scrutinized and monitored by the
NYPD. Figure 5.1 encapsulates the mistrust that white cops and
members of the Nation of Islam felt toward one another throughout
the 1960s and early 1970s. Tensions boiled over on April 14, 1972,
when a bogus 911 call was placed for a dispatch to the Nation of
Islam Mosque Number 7 at 102 West 116th Street.140 In violation
of their own department procedures, worked out with Minister Louis
Farrakhan, the cops invaded the mosque in response to the fraudulent
call that fellow officers were being held there.141 In previous situations
of this type the police had requested and received permission to search
the 116th Street Mosque and a similar mosque in Brooklyn. No such
permission had been asked or granted in this case.
The failure to follow police procedure and the exuberance of the
invading officers cannot be divorced from the context of police assas-
sinations or the directive from PBA president Kiernan for his men to
come “armed and ready.” Murphy ordered the invasion of the mosque
with officers Philip Cardillo and Vito Navarra leading the charge up
Figure 5.1 “Police Outside Nation of Islam Office,” Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division [1965].
the stairs to the second floor of the mosque. The invasion of the
mosque can be attributed to the false 911 call and a misunderstand-
ing between the police and the Muslims, but the recent attacks from
the BLA surely lurked in the minds of the officers. The Muslims held
their ground. All of the officers except Cardillo and Navarra made
their way out of the building. A fight and shootout ensued between
the Muslims and the invading officers in which Cardillo was shot
and Navarra was stabbed. As the scuffle unfolded, an angry crowd
of about a thousand people gathered outside the mosque, throwing
rocks, setting fire to a city bus, overturning a gypsy cab, and assault-
ing a reporter. In order to end the potential riot, the police allowed a
dozen suspects they were holding in the mosque’s basement to leave
without identifying them.142 A grand jury failed to convict anyone
in the murder and concluded “the long-term interests of justice in
apprehending criminals were overridden by the short-term concern
for preventing civil disorder.”143 Even members of the jury knew that
Harlem would explode if any Muslims were convicted.
Some black cops like Benjamin Ward, who would go on to be
the department’s first black police commissioner in 1984, played a
seminal role in keeping the peace, ushering enraged Muslims out of
the building, and serving as an arbiter between white police and the
Muslims.144 Guardians president Howard Sheffey lambasted the PBA
for having “fostered a policy of ‘shoot first, ask questions later,’” but
others expressed resentment about being rushed to black areas when

trouble arose.145 Sheffey’s comments were informed by an incident
earlier in the month in which patrolman Robert Kenney killed a black
detective in a case of mistaken identity.146
When Harlemites rioted after the invasion, PBA president Edward
Kiernan called it “an expectable result of the irresponsible statements
of Sergeant Sheffey.”147 Kiernan called for the firing of Ward and would
go on to say that “we will shoot them down like dogs and shoot first
and ask questions later.”148 Tough talk aside, the brass needed to cool
off Harlem. One week after the mosque incident, 21 white officers
were quietly dropped from the 28th Precinct’s plainclothes anticrime
unit and demoted to uniform duty. The officers were disciplined for
openly brandishing shotguns and automatic weapons without prior
authorization at the mosque.149 John Haugh, who had replaced Lloyd
Sealy as commanding officer of the Harlem precinct, resigned one
week after the shooting incident. The reason for his resignation was
that the department had failed to state that the patrolman acted prop-
erly by entering the mosque.150
The Amsterdam Newss and Minister Farrakhan contended that an
all-black police force in Harlem would have responded differently
to the mosque episode.151 The sentiments of black Muslims were
hardly marginal in Harlem. About 5,000 black residents gathered at
a Harlem Armory on May 1, 1972, to demonstrate their support for
the black Muslims and demand that all white policemen in Harlem
be replaced by “reeducated” black policemen. They cheered and
applauded when Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan denounced the
crimes of white people and demanded that Harlem be patrolled by
“black officers commanded by black commanders accountable to the
black community.”152 The Amsterdam m News supported Farakhan’s
call for an all-black police force in Harlem headed by black command-
ers. They viewed this incident as only the most heinous example of
day-to-day harassment of black citizens by white police officers.153
At this juncture, black police officers had to wonder if they could
do anything more to win the trust of the community. In the minds
of the Nation of Islam, the answer was a resounding no. By October
of that year, Farrakhan expelled dozens of African American police
members who he suspected were undercover agents. The Muslims
even barred Leonard 12X Weir at the door, explaining to him “you
can’t be a Muslim and a policeman at the same time.”154 Despite
Weir’s conviction that his identity could not be reduced to cop, black
Muslim, or community activist, others forced him to choose among
them. Here was the most radical black cop on the force and a devout
Muslim being told by the most powerful Muslim group in the city
that the black community could not trust him. Shunned by the rank-
and-file in the NYPD for his political activism and spurned by his
Muslim brothers because of his police credentials, Weir was stuck in
no man’s land.
For the Nation of Islam and other separatist groups, there existed
no hope for integration with whites. From their point of view no
amount of reform could alter the oppressive nature of the police
department. Black cops with far more moderate views than that of
Weir felt similar pressure from the radical left to demonstrate their
allegiance to the black community by breaking with the department.
Even more challenging to less political black cops was the burgeoning
backlash of the reactionary right. As white cops and their supporters
took to the streets to beat back the radicalism of the 1960s, black cops
would find themselves dancing around a treacherous high wire act of
identity politics. It became increasingly difficult to deny that “black”
and “blue” had become mutually exclusive.
Part III
Blue-Collar Backlash, 1968–1980

6
The Silent Majority

Strikes Back
All through the skittish 1960s, America has been almost obsessed with
its alienated minorities—the incendiary black militant and the welfare
mother, the hedonistic hippie, and the campus revolutionary. But now
the pendulum of public attention is in the midst of one of those great
swings that profoundly changes the way the nation thinks about itself.
Suddenly, the focus is on the citizen who outnumbers, outvotes and
could, if he chose to, outgun the fringe rebel. After years of feeling him-
self a besieged minority, the man in the middle—representing America’s
vast white middle class majority—is giving vent to his frustration, his
disillusionment, and his anger.
—“The Troubled American: A Special Report on the
White Majority,” Newsweek, October 6, 1969
I n the late 1960s, white middle-class Americans vented frustration,

disillusionment, and anger with everyday social interactions, local insti-
tutions, state governments, and national politics.1 These sentiments
found fertile ground in the right-wing campaigns of Richard M. Nixon,
George Wallace, and Barry Goldwater.2 Wallace and Goldwater waged
populist crusades that drew on localized racism, but it was Nixon who
offered solace to Americans anxious about the social movements of the
1960s. He captured the most popular appeal by hammering home the
law-and-order theme as a means of discrediting social protestors, civil
rights activists, feminists, and free speech advocates.3 The icon of the
police officer roused the hopes of Nixon’s “silent majority” by offering
a reassuring antidote to the black struggle for equality, America’s loss
in the Vietnam War, disorder in the streets, and a burgeoning revolu-
tion in the gender order.4 Nixon promised to turn back the clock so
that “the silent majority would come forth and show the world that all
was really as it had been–that men worked, women cooked, children
obeyed, pleasures were innocent and days were purposeful.”5
For Nixon and his constituents, who saw themselves as victims

of the social movements of the 1960s, it was the literal and meta-
phoric officer who could right past wrongs—punish protestors, arrest
delinquents, use violence to enforce order, and restore the system
of fair play and equal opportunity as it purportedly had existed in
the 1950s.6 Even Nixon’s postmaster general insisted, after issuing
the first commemorative stamp for policemen in 1968, “America
need[ed] to reaffirm the traditional role of the officer. As a protec-
tor and friend of citizens, he serves and encourages respect for law
and order.”7 Intellectuals like conservative critic William F. Buckley
reminded readers in a 1969 issue of the National Review w that “the
policemen are, in certain circumstances, precisely the agents of civili-
zation and humanity. Their availability is something that the forces of
reason and enlightenment should celebrate rather than deplore.”8
The patrol officer in the post-1968 landscape remained a focal point
for struggles over identity, citizenship, democracy, and fair employ-
ment, but became the hero rather than the scorn of the American
public. Intellectuals like Buckley, politicians like Nixon, and myriads
of individuals who were hostile to the social changes of the 1960s
employed law-and-order imagery to explain the disorder created by
dissident blacks, feminists, and other protestors. In New York, the
self-identified “forgotten Americans,” who saw themselves as a silent
majority, complained that the department, in an effort to appease civil
rights activists, had been too lenient in coddling criminals.9 They pres-
sured politicians to undo the unnecessary “handcuffing of the police”
and abetted the rank-and-file in their efforts to end affirmative action
programs that sought to make racial minorities and women their
peers.
The presence of women on patrol and the feminization of patrol
work made some New Yorkers wonder if the department had the
mettle to bring order to its streets. The white rank-and-file men in
the department, already insecure about the status, prestige, and per-
ception of their work, felt that female integration had denigrated the
position of patrol officer. For many rank-and-file officers and other
socially conservative New Yorkers, an unfortunate revolution in the
gender order went hand-in-hand with changes in race relations. If
law and order did not put an end to these revolutions, they argued,
the city would devolve into anarchy. Mildred Budion, the wife of a
patrol officer, gave voice to the racial fears of this constituency and
portended an ominous future for New York when she commented on
the city’s changes over the past decade: “I lived on this block prac-
tically all my life, and there were very few changes. But more and
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more it’s changing now. I’m not against all blacks. If they’re halfway
decent, who minds them? I lived on 18th Street with a colored family.
They were nice. If you get the right people, okay. But not the families
that come here. These are from down South. Most of them are on
welfare and have no sense of values. With the Negro people com-
ing, I feel we’ll have to get out. It won’t be a safe city.”10 Budion’s
sentiments were featured by Time Magazinee as representative of the
“Middle Americans,” a group the magazine named as its 1969 “Man
and Woman of the Year.”
The Thin Blue Line

New York cops sensed the changed political landscape and attacked
integration by invoking the dormant, yet powerful notion of a “thin
blue line.” This line traditionally described the fragile barrier that the
NYPD upheld against anarchy, but by 1968 the imaginary border
held new meanings for the rank-and-file and their supporters. The
line symbolized the division between a civilization that respected law
and order and a mobocracy that allowed barbarians to run rampant.
Law enforcement officers both policed this line and saw themselves
as exemplifying the virtues of model citizens. Cops took pride in
their profession as a patriotic calling to protect American citizens and
uphold its values of honor, respect, and hard work. The enemies on
the other side of the thin blue line included student and antiwar pro-
testors who assaulted the American ideals through verbal violence and
disorder in the streets.11 Cops also described the thin blue line in racial
terms, a color line that separated white from black. For them, the
ghetto was, as historian John Cooper has suggested, “the camp of the
enemy, a community of institutionalized deviancy.”12 From their per-
spective, the ghetto was every bit their foe as the North Vietnamese
were for their military brothers fighting overseas. For many officers,
“black militants” and “white agitators” represented the same menace
to law order.13
Male officers rarely viewed women as the enemy of the thin blue line
but defined the boundary in gendered terms that presented women as
weak. Most cops were used to treating women as the objects of their
protection, and, therefore, found it difficult to accept them as their
peers. They might begrudgingly acknowledge that in certain situa-
tions the sensitivity and communication skills of women could d be use-
ful but largely viewed rough and tumble work as appropriate only for
men. The tough streets of New York were, they argued, no place for a
lady. One white detective who defended cops’ migration from city to
suburbs asked rhetorically, “Would you let your wife walk these streets
at night?”14
The idea of a thin blue line provided a multilayered mental map
that lumped together antiwar protestors, feminists, black revolution-
aries, and student activists. Such groupings conflated the racial and
gender identities of the purported deviants, while shoring up those of
the officers themselves. Many officers defined their own masculinity
through their patriotism, sacrifice, durability, and independence. The
believed their character to be in contrast to blacks and Puerto Ricans
whom they saw as treasonous, unreliable, weak, and dependent. They
described violent black and Puerto Rican protestors as bestial and sav-
age. Others saw savagery and bestiality in white social protestors. Both
groups merited forceful responses. One cop, for instance, explained
why police officers attacked hippies at the “Yip-In” in Grand Central
Terminal in 1968: “Here’s a bunch of animals who call themselves the
next leaders of the country . . . I almost had to vomit . . . Its like dealing
with any queer, pervert, mother raper, or any of those bedbugs we’ve
got crawling around the Village. As a normal human being you feel
like knocking every one of their teeth out. It’s a normal reaction.”15
As the 1960s came to a close, increasing numbers of New Yorkers
agreed and authorized their officers to punish protest with violence.
Cops as Second-Class Citizens

The political landscape for much of the 1960s had made it difficult for
cops to explicitly resist the civil rights movement, but by the decade’s
end, they learned to appropriate its organizing and rhetorical strate-
gies. White men inverted the logic of civil rights by depicting them-
selves as victims of liberalism, affirmative action, and identity politics.
Such forces, they argued, dismantled a system of fair play and equal
opportunity. In New York and other urban areas of the North, these
feelings manifested themselves among first- and second-generation
white immigrants whose families had overcome humble origins and
ethnic discrimination. These “white ethnics,” predominately Irish,
Italian, Jewish, Polish, and German, framed their ancestors’ successful
immigration narratives in direct opposition to the struggles of blacks,
Puerto Ricans, women, and privileged college students of all back-
grounds. Although many white ethnic youths participated in the civil
rights movement, men of the immigrant generation argued that pro-
testors demanded special privileges and paid little respect to their val-
ues of hard work, sacrifice, family, and loyalty. These men “who existed
somewhere between the slums and the suburbs” created a bootstraps’
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interpretation of the past, in which their self-reliance and perseverance

had allowed them to overcome discriminatory obstacles.16 White eth-
nics were unable or unwilling to draw parallels between their ancestors’
discrimination and the structural sexism and racism of the American
economy. Instead, they attacked any government programs on behalf
of blacks, Puerto Ricans, and women as reverse discrimination.
For white ethnics among the department’s rank-and-file, affirma-
tive action to integrate women and racial minorities defied a meritoc-
racy system in which individuals overcame prejudice through personal
ambition and diligence.17 They viewed themselves as doubly discrimi-
nated: the same liberal political system that unfairly promoted racial
minorities and women as their peers also hampered law enforcement
by granting criminal suspects protective rights while usurping offi-
cers’ rights to enforce the law. The Crime and Kerner Commissions’
counsel to employ restraint, prudence, and sensitivity in dealing with
suspects was merely a politically motivated measure that pandered to
civil rights groups.
White rank-and-file cops regarded Democratic presidentt Johnson,
liberal Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren, and leftward-drifting
mayor John Lindsay as conspiring against them. From where they
stood, politicians and judges provided special privileges to minori-
ties and women, empowered criminals, and tied the hands of law
enforcement officers.18 For some, even Martin Luther King was at
fault for promulgating a new doctrine that one could obey those
laws that “one considers ‘good’ and disobey those laws one consid-
ers ‘bad.’”19 In the logic of a police journal editor, it was the court’s
laissez-faire approach in dealing with criminals that encouraged “the
feeble-minded to greater criminal endeavors.”20 The animosity that
liberals, blacks, Puerto Ricans, feminists, and free speech advocates
directed toward law enforcement made officers feel like an unfairly
outnumbered minority. Even those officers who were sympathetic to
the civil rights movement sensed that they were scapegoats for social
problems over which they had no control. Black and Puerto Rican
citizens viewed them as intractable symbols of oppression, whereas
privileged and socially conservative white New Yorkers faulted them
for failing to prevent a perceived breakdown of the social order.21
Harold Melnick, president of the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association,
observed that “the men saw minorities getting all kinds of benefits
from a liberal administration while cops [were] treated like fifth class
citizens—protecting people who were vilifying them.”22
Public criticism only added to the list of troubles facing rank-and-
file cops in the 1960s, including managerial control, declining salaries,
and perplexing work routines. The civil rights movement, though

responsible for none of these problems, became an easily identifiable
symbol of their misery. Nicholas Alex’s landmark study, New York
Cops Talk Back, provides valuable insight into the sources of officers’
embitterment. Alex interviewed dozens of white male officers whom
he dubbed the “beleaguered minority.” This group was not united
in its condemnation of African Americans. Still, most of the inter-
viewees were hostile to the civil rights movement and the project of
integration. Some officers acknowledged historical wrongs against
black Americans but saw themselves as unfairly blamed for them. As
one officer complained, “It’s terribly unfair to ask me to pay for past
injustices against blacks, as no doubt there was and no doubt there
will be in the future.”23 Some cops, despite profound evidence to the
contrary, looked nostalgically to a past in which the department pro-
moted individuals based on ability rather than race or sex. For them,
the administration’s abandonment of color-blind and sex-neutral poli-
cies explained the current departmental conflict. As another stated,
“We have to let deprived people on the job, they tell us, because they
didn’t have the same opportunities . . . and because of politics they are
letting in the dregs of humanity in my opinion.”24 Others sought to
excuse racism by casting themselves as scapegoats. “I hate to sound
prejudiced, but this job makes you prejudiced,” one cop said. “They
are lowering standards for this group [and] they are helping the poor,
which is fine, but they are not making things easier for me.”25 Finally,
there were those officers who didn’t bother veiling their hatred. One
officer complained that “They want to reverse positions with whites–
that’s all they want. Blacks are a different breed of people . . . They
want more and they don’t want to work and it’s just easier to steal.
They love it. They love to commit crime. They have a revenge for
doing this and they get money for it, too. They are ruthless people.”26
The collective sentiments of the rank-and-file put pressure on police
managers to resist further integration programs.
The NYPD brass mediated between conservative rank-and-file
officers and the liberal municipal administration by enshrouding
themselves in a language of neutrality and objectivity. The key for
Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy and other NYPD managers was to
rally their troops around a shared identity as law enforcement profes-
sionals. They hoped officer solidarity would defuse intradepartmental
clashes between management and the rank-and-file, among officers of
various racial and ethnic backgrounds, and between men and women.
Commissioner Murphy paid public homage to the rights of all indi-
viduals to participate in police work, but his primary strategy was
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to foster police solidarity by reminding his officers that they were a

noble, unified, and apolitical crime-fighting machine with only exter-
nal enemies. This feigned neutrality did not prevent him from deni-
grating civil rights activists who questioned the virtues of his officers.
Commissioner Murphy, for instance, pandered to the rank-and-file
when he attacked department critics and insisted that “the police offi-
cer, too, belongs to a minority group, and he is subject to stereotyp-
ing and mass attack. And he, like every member of every minority, is
entitled to be judged as an individual on the basis of his individual acts
and not as a group. We as police are not to be treated as second-class
citizens.”27 Murphy and his disciples knew that winning the public
battle against civil rights required adopting their language.
Individual officers echoed the sentiments of their leaders and cast
themselves as victims of civil rights tyranny. “As a policeman you are
handled like a second-class citizen,” complained one officer, conclud-
ing that “you have no rights like a normal person would have. You are
at everyone else’s discretion.”28 To mitigate confrontations between
white officers and those of color, police managers asked them to ignore
race and, instead, position themselves in opposition both to criminals
and to those New Yorkers who made fighting crime more difficult. In
so doing, they elided issues of race by turning officers’ attention to
external enemies. “In modern New York it has often been repeated
that a thin blue line stands between lawful and criminal society,” noted
Spring 3100, the department’s monthly journal, which also reminded
officers that “as policemen we recognize one color, BLUE.”29
Policing Protest
As the nation became increasingly polarized, the rank-and-file rallied
around a collective identity to fight against what they perceived to
be the forces of evil. Vietnam eroded Americans’ faith in the mili-
tary, which they came to see as imperialist, immoral, and divisive. The
humiliating defeat at the hands of the resilient Vietcong cast doubt on
the military’s methods, tactics, and mission. As domestic unrest over
the war escalated, police officers found themselves the targets of hos-
tility from both the left and the right. Liberals depicted police officers
as repressive agents of the state who perpetrated atrocities similar to
those committed by the army in Vietnam, while conservatives criti-
cized their inability to keep order. The unpopularity of the Vietnam
War initially put domestic police forces in a precarious position, but
the excesses of the protest movement ultimately provided them with
a clear political mission.
The ineptitude of the US Armed Forces in Vietnam and the fail-

ure of local cops to maintain order on the home front led anxious
Americans to press for greater control of the nation’s urban streets.
Whereas public attacks against police officers were rampant before
1968, by decade’s end white ethnics and middle-class New Yorkers
found new means of restoring officers’ honor. Conservative critics had
navigated tricky political waters when challenging civil rights protests
against police brutality. They changed the debate by positioning vir-
tuous law enforcement officers against unruly and treasonous black
rioters and dissident middle-class kids. Attacks against antiwar pro-
testors then became a means of denigrating multiple issues on the
liberal front. Right-wing appeals to the “silent majority,” “everyday
American,” and “the common man” defined the character of a virtu-
ous national identity and beckoned officers both to represent and to
police it.
Just as the war mobilized a generation of previously apolitical young
Americans in social protest, the antiwar movement politicized previ-
ously quiet social conservatives. As unpopular as the war may have
become, the disdain for the antiwar movement became even great-
er.30 “How long are we to endure the increasing efforts of our city
government to throttle the effectiveness of our police department?”
asked a self-identified “loyal American” in an angry letter criticizing
Mayor Lindsay for coddling antidraft protesters. “Your failure to take
any action in this case can only mean that you have forfeited the faith
placed in your office by those people who are really oppressed–the
decent people who are afraid to venture out in the streets except dur-
ing daylight hours.”31 African Americans and women were not the
only citizens who could claim they were victimized.
Perceived class slights awakened the animosity of New Yorkers.
“The common man is standing up,” warned a New York longshore-
man, “and someday he’s going to elect a policeman president of the
United States.”32 The antiwar protest of middle-class college kids
was especially painful for working-class Americans whose sons and
daughters fought and died in disproportionate numbers in Vietnam.
As Christian Appy explains Working Class War, “The war was fought
primarily by the nineteen-year-old children of waitresses, factory
workers, truck drivers, secretaries, firefighters, carpenters, custodians,
police officers, salespeople, clerks, mechanics and farmworkers.”33
Working-class claims to honorable military service, while valid,
often misrepresented labor as exclusively white and male. The workers
and soldiers of America included significant numbers of minority men
and women, many of whom supported civil rights, feminism, and the
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antiwar effort. Furthermore, despite American labor’s claim that the

working class carried a disproportionate burden of the war, divisions
did not split so evenly along class lines. Many financially well-to-do
Americans sought to tap into working-class anger and turn back the
social movements of the 1960s by forging alliances with the white
working class on patriotic grounds. But white working-class Americans
only begrudgingly gave their allegiances to the conservatives and
hawks. Few were as hostile toward antiwar protest, civil rights, and
feminism as popular caricatures depicted them.34 Nevertheless, the
disenchantment of previously silent, white, working-class Americans
was widespread and became a political force by the decade’s end.
Backlash against social protestors and civil rights advocates came into
critical coherence by the late 1960s, though there had been opposition
every step of the way. The ascendance of Richard Nixon to the presi-
dency in 1968 indicated a changed playing field in which disenchanted
Americans felt empowered to register their disapproval of the “excess
of the 1960s.” Citizens who may have feared or doubted their ability to
speak against the supposed breakdown of law and order now felt autho-
rized to voice their political opinions, and, in some cases, take back the
streets with force. The seminal event that demonstrated Americans’
exasperation with social protest was the 1968 Democratic Convention
in Chicago, in which police officers mercilessly beat student protestors
while a national television audience watched, often with great approval.
Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties, s describes the assault:
Again and again the police came down like avenging thugs. They
charged, clubbed, gassed, and mauled—demonstrators, bystanders and
reporters. They did it when there were minor violations of the law,
like the curfew; they did it when there were symbolic provocations like
lowering of the flag, and they did it when unprovoked. To out innocent
eyes, it defied common sense that people could watch even the sliver of
the onslaught that got onto television and side with the cops–which, in
fact, was precisely what the polls showed.35
For many Americans, the police actions in Chicago served as a

cathartic venting of a decade’s worth of frustration with social pro-
test. David Farber’s Chicago ’68
8 demonstrates how changed political
views had become by the end of the decade. According to Farber,
Democratic mayor Richard Daley authorized Chicago police officers
to beat students as a prowar expression, a means of silencing protest,
and as a symbol of their empowerment relative to their critics. The
police in Chicago, New York, and other cities around the country saw a
world where “criminals were coddled by the courts while hatred, scorn,
and violence were directed at the police.”36 Officers, embittered by

the anger directed at them, reached a boiling point at the Democratic
Convention. “When they had to confront ill-mannered, self-righteous
college kids,” notes Farber, “whom they believed came from privileged
backgrounds, out protesting in the streets and mixing with and sup-
porting Negroes about whom they knew nothing, the police saw Red.
To the police, all the demonstrators were dumb, un-American hippies
who didn’t respect way real people lived their daily lives.”37 Police and
protestors continued to draw gross generalizations about one another.
New York, although not neatly representative of national poli-
tics, witnessed four critical episodes in which police demonstrated an
emboldened willingness to stamp out social protest: a violent confron-
tation with students at Columbia University in 1968; formation of the
right-wing Law Enforcement Group (LEG) later that year; the tacit
approval of a 1970 construction workers’ riot; and in 1973, assistance
in the formation of the antifeminist Policemen’s Wives Association.
These incidents reveal a police force no longer willing to pay homage
to the apolitical departmental code of neutrality. They also demon-
strated the ways in which the politics of race and sex in and outside the
force became implicated in struggles over national identity.
“These Kids Ought to Be Down on

Their Knees”
Columbia University, a bastion of liberal student activity, became a
hotbed for radical activism and antiwar protest in the late 1960s, and
ultimately led students to a showdown with the NYPD. In many ways,
the confrontation had as much to do with cultural conflict as it did
with the issues at hand, neither of which had anything to do with
policing. On the surface, the two main issues were the administra-
tion’s support of defense research and its plans to build a gymna-
sium in Harlem. For years, Columbia’s Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS), a predominantly white free speech organization, had
been in conflict with the administration for its involvement with IDA,
the Institute for Defense Analyses. IDA was an academically affiliated
independent research organization that engaged in weapons evalua-
tion and riot research for the defense department. Protests against IDA
had been a means of mobilizing white students who were opposed to
the Vietnam War, but held less interest to black students concerned
with civil rights. The university decision in 1968 to go forward with
its plans to construct a gymnasium in nearby Harlem provided the
basis for an alliance between the two student groups.
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As far back as 1965 Harlem residents had stood in opposition to

the gymnasium construction on the grounds that it intended to seg-
regate the largely white university from the larger black community in
which it was situated. Of particular concern was the proposed design
of the gym, which would have required separate entrances for students
and community residents. As civil rights advocates grew more militant
about the segregationist nature of the gym, they came to refer to it as
“Gym Crow.”38 Both groups of students were interested in improving
the relationship between Columbia and the Harlem community. Many
white students, however, sought a showdown with the administration
over the suspension of several students for a demonstration held ear-
lier that year, the schools’ contract with the US defense department
to research and develop weapons, and the lack of student voice in the
decision-making processes of the university.39
Cicero Wilson, the undergraduate president of the Afro-American
Society, began to speak forcefully against the proposed gymnasium in
Morningside Park, which had separated the university from Harlem.40
Black and white student activists organized opposition drives, claiming
that the proposed gym encroached on the property rights of neighbor-
hood residents. This episode provided the opportunity for an inter-
racial student movement. On April 28, 1968, Wilson informed white
SDS members of their plans to barricade Hamilton Hall to protest
the gym construction. Representatives of the Afro-American Society
ordered all white students out of the building to focus protest on
the encroachment of white Columbia into the black community of
Harlem. White students followed instructions to assist the black stu-
dent cause by occupying other buildings on campus.
The students’ actions revealed divided loyalties among administra-
tion and faculty members. The members of the predominantly white
Columbia faculty, who were generally skeptical about protests regard-
ing the IDA issue, were impressed with the seriousness of the black
students and their claims.41 Columbia’s administration, unsettled by
the protests, never had control of the situation. Because the adminis-
tration was fearful of charges of racism, it failed to act forcefully when
it normally would have taken immediate action. When it became clear
that the situation was beyond its control, the administration turned to
the NYPD for help.
There had been a strong tradition among most colleges that munic-
ipal and state police forces did not belong on campus. That tradition
had been recognized by the NYPD brass, which indicated that they
would not send policemen to campus except at the request of the
highest university officials.42 Columbia president Grayson Kirk came
to view the protests as unmanageable. He called upon the NYPD

for assistance on April 30, unwittingly initiating a violent showdown
between white students and officers. Administration officials had mis-
characterized the protestors as a tiny fringe group and grossly under-
estimated the number of students at Low Hall to be around 300.
Police operated under the false assumption that the protestors would
be overwhelmed by a show of strength in which they were greatly out-
numbered. The police and occupiers ended up being relatively equal
in number. Over 1,000 police personnel arrived on campus to remove
800 student demonstrators from 5 Columbia buildings. When stu-
dents refused to leave their occupied buildings, cops responded by
pushing, shoving, dragging, punching, kicking, and clubbing anyone
in their way. Faculty eyewitnesses described the use of force as both
gratuitous and excessive.43 More than a hundred students reported
injuries serious enough to require medical treatment. The Civilian
Complaint Review Board received 120 charges of police brutality,
the largest number that had ever been received for a single police
action.44
In contrast with SDS, black students decided that there was little
to gain from a bloody arrest episode and instead agreed to cooperate
with the police. The administration and the department were par-
ticularly wary that a confrontation with black students at Hamilton
Hall could incite a race riot. As the bust unfolded on the other end
of campus, Assistant Chief Inspector Eldridge Waithe, a black officer
who had been in contact with the Hamilton strikers, agreed to arrest
the protestors peacefully. Black students allowed themselves to be
arrested, handcuffed, and led without offering resistance. The officers
eventually removed the handcuffs from these “militant” students and
escorted them to the paddy wagon.45 The misdeeds of a small num-
ber of white students, despite the remarkably dignified and peaceful
behavior of all the black and the majority of white students, was the
main story to emerge from the conflict. Because events played out
violently at the other end of the campus, New Yorkers focused on
the dangers of social protest. This, too, raised the ire of the silent
majority.46
The social distance between patrolmen and Columbia students
informed their behavior on campus. The police were foreign to
Columbia’s students, rituals, and traditions.47 Although some officers
had attended college, Columbia was an unfamiliar and elite institu-
tion. Some observers have suggested that officers were prepared to
dislike whatever they encountered, but others contend that white
students provoked them. Indeed, while the model behavior of black
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students enabled them to avoid confrontations with the police, a few

white students did self-consciously provoke them. They had hoped
for a confrontation by manipulating officers’ class, ethnic, racial, and
sexual insecurities. One especially nasty and bigoted case came from a
student leader’s cynical plan in dealing with the cops:
What we are dealing with is a certain kind of Irish Catholic prudity,

with a lot of sadism thrown in. We’ve seen these men before. They beat
up a black kid and take graft, but they get off their rocks with a priest
about once a week. So they have this crazy sense that they’re guardians
of morals. They’re the kind of guys who have a hard time with sex, a
hard time getting hard is what I mean. So here’s what we want to do.
We want to shake them . . . pull up your skirt . . . tell em’ their mother
sucks black cocks or takes black cocks in the ass. The important thing is
that you got to use these words. I know that can be tough. We aren’t all
completely liberated. But if we use words like suck about their mother,
these fuckin’ cops will blow like a balloon. And when they blow, they’ll
be naked and the whole country will see the naked face, the naked ass
of fascism.48
Even black cops were not immune to the vitriol of these students.
“Hey, nigger cop, you’re looking good in your uniform,” taunted one
student. “Think you’re part of the establishment, don’t’ you? Well,
you’re not because you’re black and being used by Whitey.”49 Such
comments were meant to incite the police, and to their defenders,
succeeded in producing violent police responses.
There was little evidence of widespread student provocation. Most
police violence was undertaken coolly, without provocation, and as a
form of punishment, as the Civil Liberties Union well documented
in its expose on the Columbia confrontation.50 The large numbers
of students whom the officers clobbered but did not bother to arrest
suggests that cops saw themselves as administrators of justice. A fact-
finding commission concluded that it was beyond dispute that “police
engaged in acts of individual and group brutality for which a layman
can see no justification unless it be that the way to restore order in
a riot is to terrorize citizens.” While it was true that some students
incited the police, “their fault was in no way commensurate with the
brutality of the police.”51
Most cops on the scene disregarded the seriousness of the Harlem
property issue, the dignified behavior of black students, and the passive
protest of the majority of white students. They regarded the protest as
a showdown of sturdy, hardworking citizens against the benefactors
of elite privilege. Some officers indicated that their superiors approved
of, and even encouraged, their actions. When a reporter asked a lieu-
tenant if he felt any guilt over the students being beaten behind him,
he calmly responded with a smile that he was “a compartmentalized
man. I do what I’m told, and I do it where I’m told.”52 Other cops
proudly took responsibility for their actions, and instead explained
them as a lesson for Columbia students who did not appreciate their
privilege: “These [kids] oughta been down on their knees thanking the
Lord that he had let them go to college. I woulda been on my knees
myself . . . Everything I got in life I worked for. It gets me sore when
I see these kids, who been handed everything, pissing it away, talking
like bums, dressing like pigs . . . It’s some joke, ain’t it, a rich kid call-
ing a police officer a pig?”53 Robert Fogelson, a professor of Political
Science at Columbia University, helped to explain the militancy: “To
begin with, the police feel profoundly isolated from a public which,
in their view, is at best apathetic and at worst hostile, too solicitous of
the criminal and too critical of the patrolman. They also believe that
they have been given a job to do but deprived of the power to do it.
Excessive force is a way to even the score.”54 The NYPD rank-and-file,
already a conservative bunch, swung even further to the right.
The LEG and Police Militancy

The Columbia riots helped to push the already conservative rank-and-
file to the right, but it was the trial of Black Panther Party members
accused of killing off-duty officers that brought out the vitriol of the
most rogue cops in the department. To varying degrees, individual
officers violated the department’s golden rule of officer neutrality
and fashioned a “get-tough” policy for unruly student demonstra-
tors, ghetto protestors, and other activists. An especially outspoken
faction was the Law Enforcement Group (LEG), an organization that
officers from Brooklyn’s 80th Precinct initially formed in 1968 to
remove Brooklyn Judge John. F. Furey from the bench for permit-
ting disorderly conduct by Black Panthers in his courtroom.55 The
Panthers had been on trial for an ambush attack by two Brooklyn
Patrolmen.56 Several patrolmen drafted a petition that charged the
judge with permitting more than 300 sympathizers of the defendant
in the courtroom. They claimed that the sympathizers smoked, kept
on their hats, shouted threats at the arresting officers, and intimidated
the judge into releasing them on parole pending hearing.57
LEG chairman Robert Raggi created a plan to abolish the depart-
ment’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, oust civilians from clerical
jobs in precinct houses, and raise the physical and mental requirements
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for prospective policemen—a thinly veiled attack on women and

minority officers. Officers who flocked to the LEG were most trou-
bled by a sniper attack on fellow patrolmen that they believed to be
the work of the Black Panther Party. They saw this attack as the final
straw in a long line of hostile threats and attacks by black militant
organizations.58 Cops around the city had known of the LEG’s exis-
tence, but the organization was brought into the public eye when
its members assaulted Black Panthers at a Brooklyn criminal court in
September of 1968. They 150 off-duty officers donned campaign but-
tons for segregationist George Wallace, chanted “white power,” and
ambushed the accused before they could reach the courtroom. Many
wore their shirttails untucked, barely concealing guns, blackjacks, and
bats tucked into their belts. The heads of two Panther leaders were
bloodied and another complained of being shoved down and kicked
20 or 25 times in the back. Uniformed officers standing by eventually
intervened but made no attempt to arrest the instigators.59 Inside the
courtroom they chanted “White Tigers eat Black Panthers!”60
The LEG was an amorphous movement of dissident policemen
with varying levels of affiliation. Most remained underground rather
than face repercussions from the department. Archie Harris, the
group’s volunteer civilian publicity director, insisted that the group
was neither racist, nor political, nor a vigilante organization. It was,
he claimed, an effort to bring more efficient law enforcement and
to improve the image of the policeman.61 The LEG was made up of
patrolmen, detectives, lieutenants, and a few civilians. It focused on
greater police militancy against criminals and demonstrators who dis-
rupted the peace. The LEG put pressure on Commissioner Leary and
Mayor Lindsay to remove the handcuffs from the police so that they
could take more forceful action against protestors.62 The LEG also
sought to push PBA president John Cassese and his successor Edward
Kiernan into more staunch positions in their negotiation over patrol-
men’s contracts.63
Young militants in the department who formed the LEG reacted
in part to the timid bread-and-butter tactics of the PBA. Michael
Churns, an outspoken LEG member, explained that his group dif-
fered from the “union-like” PBA because it was more concerned
with “constitutional and moral issues” rather than “purely monetary
considerations. We’re thinking of the betterment of the country.”64
Throughout 1968 and 1969 the LEG assigned off-duty members to
attend court sessions and record misbehavior by judges, prosecutors,
and other officials as a means of singling out “coddlers.” Leon Laino,
a LEG cofounder, explained that “Nowadays the courts let people
get away with anything. Even disrespectful conduct while in court.

We hope to put an end to that.”65 Laino was instrumental in getting
5,000 police officers to sign a petition calling for a grand jury inves-
tigation of the “coddling” of criminal suspects and the abolition of
the Civilian Complaint Review Board.66 The review board itself was
constituted of police personnel, but even the idea of a forum for civil-
ian complaints had become intolerable for the LEG. The organization
went so far as to demand the removal of civilians from clerical duties
in precinct houses. Although the group claimed it was not part of
any political faction, it set an agenda to contact and support US sena-
tors who were trying to “prevent another Warren Court.” Henry de
Suvero, the director of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, said
“the police grab for power is in the open now.”67
Commissioner Leary attempted to diminish the significance of
the LEG by claiming it was merely the reflection of a more general
swing to the right in the community at large. “They are responsible
to what they believe the community wants,” said Leary.68 The LEG
represented a fringe of officers on the radical right, but nevertheless
expressed the frustration of the majority of officers. White police-
men often saw themselves as victims of an “establishment conspiracy”
that fostered confrontational forms of protest and civil disobedience,
particularly from blacks and student activists. For many rank-and-file
officers in New York and across the country, segregationist George
Wallace became a hero. During his 1964 and 1968 presidential cam-
paigns, Wallace frequently referred to the heroic activities of police
and denounced the Supreme Court and “bleeding heart intellectu-
als for undermining the police efforts to maintain law and order.”69
John Harrington, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, a
90,000-member national organization of police officers, publicly
endorsed Wallace for the presidency. White officers who feared integra-
tion turned to right-wing organizations like the John Birch Society.70
The tough talk and vigilante actions of groups like the LEG chal-
lenged the authority of Commissioner Howard Leary and PBA presi-
dent Cassese. While Leary and Cassese were sympathetic with the
sentiments behind LEG’s disenchantment, and may have privately
shared some of the group’s racial sensibilities, they had to navigate
trickier political waters. As public figures, they had to at least pay lip
service to the civil liberties of New York citizens, even if only to nar-
row their range. The LEG pushed the commissioner and rank-and-
file leader to the right.71 Leary, despite condemning the behavior of
rogue cops at the courthouse, defended their politics as an expres-
sion of New Yorkers: “They’re reflecting the community. They are
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responsive to what they believe the community wants.”72 President

Cassese, hoping to usurp the leadership of Leary and resist challenges
from below, passed a PBA resolution that condemned any person
“bringing discredit on the NYPD through unlawful, antisocial, or
violent acts.”73 Thus, he hoped to condemn both black militants and
rogue officers. Cassese saw the LEG as a potential rival, not only for
members but also for bargaining certification. To regain the PBA’s
preeminent status, Cassese tried to appear as tough-nosed as the
young conservatives.74 His status as rank-and-file leader was hardly
secure in 1968, as evidenced by the paltry one-quarter of voting offi-
cers who agreed to support a resolution he proposed to ban groups
like the LEG.75
The groundswell of rank-and-file support for the political groups
like the LEG and the John Birch Society convinced President Cassese
that he could present himself as a reasonable moderate while turn-
ing the PBA into an activist, right-wing organization. By distancing
himself from the LEG and Birchites and positioning his organization
against Mayor Lindsay and Commissioner Leary, Cassese staked a
claim for police activism as “responsible.” By decade’s end, it was
clear that Cassese had the backing of enough disenchanted New
Yorkers to empower his officers, even if it meant violating the cher-
ished ideal of officer neutrality. In 1968, Commissioner Leary and
Mayor Lindsay had ordered officers to refrain from arresting dem-
onstrators, vandals, and looters during moments of social protest.
Cassese defied his superiors, telling his troops that “In the last two
and a half years, we’ve followed a policy of restraint that emanated
from City Hall–a policy of turning the other cheek and not getting
involved. Now I say let’s try the other side of the coin.” Although
Cassese never explicitly advocated brutal tactics, his get-tough
message was clear: “As soon as the first demonstrator puts the first
foot on the hood of an automobile, he should be grabbed by the
neck and arrested.”76 Cassese announced that because the commis-
sioner was incapable of issuing police guidelines he would do so in
order to enforce the law “one hundred percent.”77 Cassese may have
been to the right of his fellow citizens, but he was moderate relative
to his peers. “The alternative to Cassese,” warned one police official,
“is far worse than anything we can imagine.”78 If more reactionary
elements got the reins of the PBA it could be a force for even greater
militancy and malevolence.
Cassese’s activism was not driven solely by officers’ desire to con-
trol the way in which they policed, but also as a means of mobilizing
support for contract negotiations with the city.79 The PBA, like most
police organizations that were legally barred from striking, had always
been a peculiar combination of fraternal society and labor union
that traditionally stayed out of formal politics. Although individual
members and union leaders had always shaped politics through their
actions in the streets and claims on City Hall, they more often than
not paid homage to the ideal of the officer as a neutral law enforce-
ment automaton. But the new activism of New York cops reflected a
national trend away from police neutrality. By the late 1960s, police
employee organizations emerged from a 40-year period of relative
dormancy to become a driving force in urban politics through their
own quest for better salaries and working conditions.80
The backlash of rank-and-file officers was a response to managerial
control as much as it was a reaction against social protest. Officers
complained that management harassed and humiliated officers by
“trying to destroy human beings and turn them into robots that
just say ‘yes sir, yes sir.’”81 David Lederman, former PBA secretary
for transit officers, warned Mayor Lindsay in 1970 of the ways in
which officers were “abused, harassed, and threatened by superior
officers in the department to the point where superior officers have
been instructed to not give favorable testimony at disciplinary hear-
ings for patrolmen, even if favorable information is known to them,
because as part of the management team, their loyalty should lie with
management.”82 Police officers took a cue from civil rights activists
and unionists by employing strikes, sick calls, and picketing to achieve
their job goals.83
In 1970, newly elected PBA president Edward Kiernan threatened
a work stoppage to gain greater leverage in negotiating with the city.
Technically, the PBA could not strike due to the state’s Taylor Law,
which prohibited strikes, work stoppages, and slowdowns by public
employees. Instead, Kiernan ordered a mass sick call by patrolmen, a
de facto strike. He claimed the sick call was because the city had vio-
lated its contract with both patrolmen by giving police sergeants a raise
while failing to do so for patrolmen. The everyday officer, he claimed,
was entitled to a $1,200 annual raise.84 He said that he and other offi-
cers of the PBA were prepared to go to jail because of the planned job
action. The city contended that it could not raise the patrolmen’s pay
because this would lead to a demand for higher salaries by firemen,
sanitation workers, corrections officers, and other uniformed services.
Such raises might bankrupt the city.85 But Kiernan could not always
control his troops. When a State Court of Appeals ordered a trial in
their pay-parity case on January 15, 1971, hundreds of policemen
refused to go out on patrol. Murphy was nervous enough to contact
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the National Guard as a contingency plan in the event of a more wide-

spread work stoppage.
Kiernan had to work hard to channel the anger of the rank-and-
file in a constructive manner. “I ask those of you who are considering
job action tonight to do your job instead. It will be difficult, I know,
doing your job when you know that all the forces of power in this city
and the state—the mayor, the newspapers and the courts—are against
you,” pleaded Kiernan. “But I ask you to swallow your pride for four
more days. If action must be taken, I ask that we do it together.”86
Policemen in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens went ahead with their
own job action, ignoring orders from Kiernan. A PBA delegate, after
meeting with patrolmen, reported that the men were “disgusted” by
the court ruling. Patrolman Wallace Page of the 43rd Precinct in the
Parkchester Section of the Bronx made it clear that the job action
was taken spontaneously and that “Nobody was leading it. Nobody
could have stopped it.”87 Kiernan spent the next several days implor-
ing officers to end the strike. Many patrolmen remained defiant, but
delegates from the PBA eventually voted 225 to 113 to return back to
work. LEG members barked at Kiernan that he was a sellout.88 As the
debate unfolded, 300 patrolmen in the balcony shouted and threat-
ened the delegates below as they debated the return to work question.
Throughout the meeting, there were chants of “Kiernan must go.”89
The New York Timess reported that patrolmen saw the outcome of the
vote as “yet another example of ‘betrayal’ that included the Court of
Appeals decision and public attitudes, that tend to equate policemen
with corruption and repression.”90
There were some indications that the vote broke down along
generational lines with the younger representatives willing to take a
more militant stand.91 During the height of the work stoppage, New
Yorkers watched a picket line of militant patrolmen chanting out-
side the hotel where the PBA and city negotiators were meeting. A
group of 30 young cops eventually stormed the officers of their own
union. They demanded the resignation of PBA president Edward V.
Kiernan because of his refusal to allow them to strike. The patrol-
men, shouting and cursing, smashed the office doors, terrorized the
six women employees, and threw papers and records all over the outer
office. “These young cops, they’re like college kids,” commented one
observer. “They have no respect for age. I never dreamed the police
would really strike. They’re supposed to be the finest.”92 The militant
tactics of these younger cops, though certainly for different ends, per-
haps were not so dissimilar from the college kids, black nationalists,
and war protestors whom they loathed.
Cops and Construction Workers

If the officers saw reds at Columbia University and blacks at the
Brooklyn Courthouse, it was red, white, and blue that predominated
in what came to be known as the Hard Hatt Riots. The ire of New
York construction workers stemmed from a May 8, 1970 antiwar
demonstration staged by New York University, Hunter College, and
Pace University students who gathered at Broad and Wall Streets to
demand the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam
and Cambodia. After several days of such protests, construction work-
ers confronted the students in what was, by almost all eyewitness
accounts, a staged act coordinated within the industry.93 As the work-
ers approached the protestors, a speaker naively advised the crowd
that “if they come again, don’t try to fight them. The police are here
to protect us.”94 Following harsh words, 200–300 helmeted con-
struction workers rampaged through the Wall Street area, chasing and
beating antiwar demonstrators. Police officers stood idle as construc-
tion workers rampaged through downtown.
In a panicked rush that followed, the construction workers pursued
fleeing demonstrators through the streets of the financial district. They
indiscriminately beat both men and women with whatever they had in
hand including helmets, tools, and metal flagpoles.95 At nearby Pace
College, a group of construction workers invaded a campus building,
smashed its windows with clubs and crowbars, and pummeled stu-
dents. The workers then stormed City Hall where they forced officials
to raise the American flag to full staff, which had stood at half-mast in
mourning for the four students killed at Kent State University on the
previous Monday.96 Several of the construction workers held signs that
identified Mayor Lindsay as a “red,” “Communist” and “faggot.”97
Most police officers on the scene allowed the violence to unfold as
an act of defiance against the students.98 As city officials raised the flag
at City Hall and workers sang the “Star-Spangled Banner,” one of the
ringleaders yelled at nearby police officers to “get your helmets off!” as
a sign of respect. Grinning sheepishly in agreement, 7 of the 15 officers
followed his instructions.99 Joe Kelly, one of the leaders of the move-
ment, expressed no regret over the violence that transpired. “When we
first went up on the steps and the flags went up there, the whole group
started singing ‘God Bless America; and it damn near put a lump in your
throat” explained Kelly. “It was really something. I could never say I was
sorry I was there. You just had a very proud feeling.”100 Kelly’s use of
“you” is telling. For Kelly and his fellow construction workers, as well as
many of the nearby police, the assault was unequivocably patriotic.
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The official police report on the hard-hat riots assigned no culpa-

bility to the officers or the department at large but simply expressed
concern about the inability of police officers to restrain the construc-
tion workers.101 Commissioner Leary contended that the first attacks
had occurred “out of the immediate view and control of the police,”
a statement at variance with reports of almost all eyewitnesses.102 The
riots were, his report claimed, simply an unfortunate incident because
large numbers of rioters overwhelmed the few officers on patrol. The
report blamed this on a dubious technical problem, in which portable
communication radios did not provide sufficient range to verify the
riot. The department brass gave its tacit approval to the actions of the
construction workers and wooden officers by blaming a protestor for
instigating the riot. According to this version, the “instigator” egged
on the construction workers by blowing his nose into an American
flag. The report indicted the credentials of the protestors by dismiss-
ing its purported ringleader as “someone who has a history of mental
disorder for some 11 years . . . a persecution complex directed at the
U.S. Government who he claims cheated him. He is subject to sudden
seizures which make him appear drunk.”103
Alternative voices provided an account that contested the police
department’s official version of protestor instigation and police tech-
nical difficulty. Manhattan deputy borough president Leonard Cohen
charged in a telegram to the mayor that police had shown “gross neg-
ligence” in failing to restrain the demonstrators,” and that they were
“mingling amiably on the steps of City Hall with the construction
workers while the students were brutally beaten.” Pace University’s
Faculty Council wrote an indignant letter to their school’s president
and reported that police had been warned in advance of the impend-
ing attack and that she found it difficult “to accept the lack of police
response as due to misinterpretations of orders, insufficient man-
power, or logistics. I see it as an expression of class struggle, where the
police tacitly, if not explicitly, encouraged the construction workers
to vent their rage on the ‘privileged, commie, long haired creeps.”104
R. F. Spinelli, of the Office of Executive Vice President, provided a
similar account, noting “what upset me to the point of physical sick-
ness was the fact that the police stood there and didn’t even attempt
to help the students . . . from what I could see the police didn’t seem
willing to offer assistance.”105 Another concerned citizen commented,
“What amazed me even more was a group of uniformed policemen,
marching in rank peacefully across the street, not moving one inch
towards the place of the disturbance.” Wondering about the inac-
tion, she asked, “Could somebody tell me why all this? Should the
policeman in these circumstances, (like a doctor), put his political idea

aside and help his ‘enemy’ as well as his ally?”106 Representative Allard
K. Lowensteinth independently observed that when the construc-
tion workers shoved against the precinct line, they just melted away
without raising a single night stick. “What made me sick,” lamented
Lowensteinth, “was the police.”107
The rank-and-file contradicted the official police report regard-
ing police inaction. Although the PBA refused to indict any officers
for their failure to stop the construction workers, President Kiernan
blamed “inadequate preparations” and past “inconsistent directives”
from the mayor’s office.108 For Kiernan and his supporters, the melee
was the natural result of an administration that coddled protestors
by directing officers at previous demonstrations to remove their hel-
mets and nightsticks and take minimal action. Kiernan disregarded
the charge that the police tacitly supported the rioters and instead
concluded with glee that when “the demonstrations got out of
hand . . . the police were criticized for not taking enough action.”109
Kiernan absolved his members of any guilt. He lauded the work of
the rank-and-file and blamed Mayor Lindsay’s liberal politics for the
melee. “What we have here,” observed a spokesperson on behalf of
the police, “is the working men of New York City pitted against the
students and the only ones who are going to lose are the people of
New York. This [confrontation] was brought about by the remarks of
people in city government.”110
Rioting construction workers and their accomplices primarily tar-
geted students and were encouraged by Wall Street onlookers. Many
white-collar employees of the financial district cheered on the con-
struction workers, erroneously presuming that their loyalties were one
and the same. Office workers lined the streets with tickertape and data-
processing punch cards to celebrate the triumphant construction work-
ers who marched up Broadway. Often removed from, but in view of,
the violence, such sympathetic Wall Street employees enjoyed watch-
ing those whom they otherwise dismissed as working-class “thugs”
doing their dirty work. However, not all of Wall Street’s sympathies
were with the rioters; nor did the construction workers exclusively
reserve their wrath for the protestors. Allegiances of class and country
were often muddled. Side skirmishes broke out between well-dressed
onlookers and rioters. In one incident, a construction worker knocked
out a well-dressed young man in a business suit who had the audacity
to disagree with his assessment that “these hippies are getting what
they deserve.” Another important caveat about the incident is that the
action of the construction workers was not necessarily representative of
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general union or even white working-class sentiment.111 Nevertheless,

national media widely represented the rampaging construction work-
ers as representative of white working-class sentiment.
The riots played into superficial stereotypes depicting white work-
ing-class New Yorkers as the northern equivalent of southern racists.
“In no time at all,” notes cultural critic Barbara Ehrenriech, “the term
hardhatt replaced redneckk as the epithet for a lower-class bigot.”112
This caricature of the working class was a middle-class construction
that pitted white against black workers. “But for all the talk of racial
backlash,” Ehrenriech asserts, “black and white workers were march-
ing, picketing, and organizing together in a spirit of class solidarity
that had not been seen since the thirties.”113 Younger workers were
not so socially distant from middle-class college kids. They, too, began
wearing their hair shoulder length, smoking marijuana, and question-
ing the totalitarian regime of factory life.114 The battle lines were not
so easily drawn between white workers on the one side and blacks and
student radicals on the other.115
For many of the participants and their supporters, the riot was a
complicated mixture of class, racial, and gender trouble: it was an
attack on class privilege, a defense of the American military, a demon-
stration of manliness, and an effort to “take back” the streets of New
York from the long-hairs, gays, women’s libbers, and blacks.116 For
many native-born white workers, manhood was as much a racial and
ethnic category as one of gender. Many white construction workers
and their police allies saw their manliness threatened by middle-class
protestors they debunked as effete and poor African Americans they
saw as lazy. Like the construction trade, then, police work built upon
gender anxiety to foster a group identity based upon exclusion of
nonwhites and also women. Efforts by nonwhites to enter their jobs
threatened their status as producers, citizens, and men. In the early
1970s, women who sought to become patrol officers only heightened
those anxieties.
The Policemen’s Wives Association

Whereas rank-and-file cops encountered the civil rights and antiwar
protestors on the streets of New York, their primary encounter with
feminism came in perceived job competition. There were few physical
clashes between male patrol officers and women’s rights protestors.
Feminists occasionally participated in civil rights marches and protests,
and later adopted similar tactics, but their actions were rarely violent.
Women on patrol, however, met male resistance at almost every level
and rank.117 Whereas race wars were public, the struggle for sexual
equality was fought on a day-to-day basis within precinct houses and
patrol cars, often away from the public eye. Although few male officers
openly admitted it, the integration of women into patrol work robbed
them of an essential part of their identity. If women were competent on
patrol, either masculinity was irrelevant to the job, or there were simply
no substantive differences between men and women.
The newly coeducational police academy in late 1972 reflected
the increasingly unisex nature of patrol work. Women took the same
courses as their male peers, including marksmanship and physical edu-
cation. Men and women in patrol work, previously called patrolmen
and policewomen to indicate their difference in status, now shared
the unisex title of patrol officer. Women on patrol no longer wore the
distinctive blue and gold badge, but donned the ordinary silver shield
worn by their male peers. Women could be promoted to any rank and
had already filled the roles of sergeant, lieutenant, and detective. By
1974, over 400 women patrolled the streets of New York.118
Women did not simply assimilate into the male world of the patrol
officer but helped to redefine the job as “feminine.” Captain Thomas
Mullin, an instructor at the police academy, noted this when he
explained that new training for officers favored the traditionally femi-
nine skills of communication, sensitivity, and restraint. “It used to be
that we concentrated on the mechanics of hitting the bulls-eye, but
now we emphasize the oral, ethical and legal aspects of the job,” noted
Mullin. “We tell the recruit over and over again that his function is to
arrest, not to punish.”119 As the academy stressed brains over brawn, it
seemed to some instructors as if the male recruits were less physically
impressive than those in the past. “Whereas in previous years the aver-
age recruit had a burly physique acquired in carrying bricks or beer
barrels during the years between leaving high school and joining the
force,” reported Mullin, “many recruits bear the stigma of soft urban
living–slumping shoulders, oversized bottoms, and soft skins where
the muscles ought to be.”120 The description of cops’ physical decline
was not meant to be complimentary.
The incorporation of women into patrol work may have challenged
men’s sense of themselves as masculine, but it also jeopardized the
feminine credentials of the women. Acting too feminine put them
in the amorous vixen role that distracted men from fighting crime.
Women who took on atypical roles in patrol and supervisory capacities
received mixed messages about how they should act. Exhibiting tra-
ditionally male or female characteristics could be problematic. Their
male peers might razz them for not “being one of the guys” or lambast
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them for being “bitchy, defeminized, castrating lesbians.”121 Women

who avoided the macho label were vulnerable to criticisms that their
femininity disrupted officer solidarity. Because of these stereotypes,
some male cops refused to ride in patrol cars with women.122 Rumors
abounded of women patrol officers who froze instead of pulling their
guns, panicked and called for help in routine situations, or sat in radio
cars applying make-up and puffing up their hair while their male part-
ners performed all the work.123 In the closed atmosphere of the patrol
car, officers often shared the intimate details of their lives. In many
people’s minds, the idea of a man and a woman spending eight hours
together in a patrol car conjured up erotic images.
Police journals themselves warned of such encounters. A Roman
Catholic priest, Father Joseph A. DeSanto, writing in Police Chief, f
lauded the fraternity of patrol work because it engendered “trust and
respect among [male] partners, which comes from the sharing of being
emotionally naked in the presence of another who cares. But put a man
and a woman under these conditions,” DeSanto warned, “and you
have all the usual ingredients that most authors agree lead to sexual
behavior. There are enough problems faced by a police patrol team in
its day-to-day activity without adding this potentially [sexual] one.”124
DeSanto put the onus of sexual distractions on women. Furthermore,
DeSanto never considered the possibility of sexual relations between
men who were “emotionally naked” in the presence of one another.
DeSanto’s main point was that women’s mere presence threatened to
disrupt men’s homosocial bonding, a sentiment that undoubtedly res-
onated with his readers, officers’ wives, and millions of New Yorkers.
The loudest public organized opposition to the women on patrol
work came from the wives of patrolmen. They feared that putting
women on patrol would result in romantic affairs with their male part-
ners. By December 1973, a number of officers’ wives began pick-
eting in front of the police precincts to protest the use of women
officers on patrol. Phyllis Schlafly, the president of Fight ERA, pro-
vided an important model for conservative women troubled by the
gender revolution.125 Civil rights activists, student protestors, and
feminists provided these normally passive women with lessons in activ-
ism, while Schlafly’s attack on the Equal Rights Amendment dem-
onstrated how “traditional” women could mobilize domesticity and
virtue for political ends.126 Sherrie White took a cue from Schlafly and
recruited women into the Policemen’s Wives Association as a means
of discrediting policewomen who sought equal opportunity in the
department. In carefully coordinated protests meant to contrast their
virtuous domesticity with the unladylike behavior of women patrol
officers, the wives wore conservative dress, gathered their children,

descended upon the precinct, and formed an orderly and quiet circle
around the station while tactfully picketing and distributing leaflets
against women on patrol.
The wives claimed that women’s presence on patrol jeopardized
their husbands’ lives. “It’s ridiculous to say we’re doing this because
we’re jealous,” said Jane Wansler, another of the group’s leaders.
“We’re all concerned about getting a call that our husband was shot
or hurt in a situation where it could have been avoided if he had a
male officer for a partner.”127 Conjuring up the old argument about
women in police work, Wansler argued that there were plenty of areas
in the police department other than patrol where women’s “natural
instincts” would be superior and that they could perform better, such
as the rape squad or juvenile department. “It’s a question of what they
want,” Wansler explained, “beauty or brawn.” But she was clear that
“women are not physically or emotionally capable of backing up their
partners on patrol.”128 She failed to cite concrete examples or elabo-
rate on why that was the case.
Although policemen’s wives were the most vocal opponents of women
patrol officers, they had powerful male allies in the department. Protests
came two weeks after newly elected PBA president Joseph K. McFeeley
won election on a platform that included opposition to assigning
women to patrol.129 By the summer of 1974, President McFeeley was
calling for the removal of women from foot patrol because they “lacked
the physical and emotional ability to handle violent situations.”130
Dr. Harvey Schlossberg, department psychologist, lent his credentials
to these claims by employing pseudoscience to assert that “psychologi-
cally, a woman’s system is different . . . it’s more complex, more delicate
and therefore it has to be more in balance.”131 Much of the opposi-
tion was covert, as few men wanted to be quoted as opposing Police
Commissioner Michael J. Codd. Still, there were reports of men calling
in sick on the day they were assigned to work with a woman.
The New York Policemen’s Wives Association drew support from
men in the department when they staged a two-hour march from
police headquarters to City Hall to protest the assignment of women
officers to patrol duty with their husbands. This particular action
stemmed from a widely publicized 1974 robbery in a Greenwich
Village jewelry store in which a 26-year-old woman officer on her first
day of patrol failed to fire a single shot from her service revolver while
her partner emptied his. According to the police wives, this woman’s
inaction proved that women had no business riding with men in patrol
cars because they were neither physically nor emotionally capable of
The S
Si l e n t M
B ck 187
backing up their partners. However, an official investigation of the

episode concluded that the woman officer had acted properly in not
using her gun because there was a strong possibility of endanger-
ing civilians. Her partner, by implication, could have been investi-
gated for recklessly disregarding the safety of innocent bystanders.132
Nevertheless, this incident became a rallying cry for New Yorkers who
opposed women on patrol.
Personal jealousies aside, the Policemen’s Wives Association expressed
a citywide anxiety about women patrol officers’ assault upon male bond-
ing. Foremost among the stated concerns of officers’ wives was suppos-
edly the “compromising living situation” their husbands faced when
the department paired them with women rookies. President White
explained that “the relationship between two male partners—each of
whose life may some day depend on his partner’s reflexes—has tradi-
tionally been compared to the closeness of a marriage with many wives
admitting that, in many ways, their husbands share a closer relationship
with their partners than with their spouses.”133 Perhaps just as much of
a concern to police wives was the potential for extramarital affairs—and
certainly paramount in the minds of concerned New Yorkers—was the
way in which women officers challenged the manliness of their cowork-
ers. Wives of police officers likely shared much of the traditional gender
politics of their husbands. The prospect of women performing tasks
purportedly reserved for their virile spouses disrupted the wives’ sense
of gender order. Officers’ wives worried that women’s competent per-
formance of their duties in this quintessentially masculine job under-
mined their image of their husbands as “real men.”134
The Policemen’s Wives Association tried to rectify the gender order
that its members imagined to have existed before the 1960s. Police
officers at the Columbia riots, the LEG protests, and the Hard Hat
Riots made a similar effort to turn back the clock on free speech and
civil rights. These officers felt authorized to act in ways that had been
less possible during the high tide of 1960s liberalism. After 1968 New
York’s silent majority appropriated the tactics and rhetoric of liberals
with the goal of returning society to the pre-1960s status quo. As
the city entered a financial abyss in 1975, apocalyptic visions of racial
disorder led increasing numbers of residents to sound the call for
traditional cops: manly, virtuous, reliable, and white. Such demands
would have grave consequences for African American, Puerto Rican,
and women police officers.
7
Welcome to Fear C ity:

Last H ired, First Fired
The backlash against civil rights, feminism, and social protest

impeded the momentum for police integration, but it was the debili-
tating fiscal crisis of the 1970s that threatened to end it entirely.
Social justice advocacy and a robust economy, the very forces that
had enabled African Americans and women to make inroads into the
NYPD in the 1960s, languished by middle of the 1970s. In a remark-
ably short period, African Americans and women went from highly
desired patrol assets to supplemental and ultimately expendable per-
sonnel. Strategies that accentuated the unique nature of these groups
became a double-edged sword. African American men who claimed
they could defuse combustible interactions between the NYPD and
the ghetto became de facto coded by race. Women who gained access
to patrol by championing their sensitivity and communication skills
became de facto coded by sex. As the economy took a turn for the
worse and the number of opportunities for careers in policing shrank,
both groups discovered that the very strategies that created their jobs
could be used to take them away. In this more conservative climate,
identity politics trumped equal opportunity, fair play, color blindness,
and sex neutrality.
Drop Dead
The abysmal state of New York’s finances in the summer of 1975
caught many New Yorkers by surprise. There had been few indicators
of economic decline through much of the 1960s when the economy
grew rapidly and consistently. The city’s economy appeared strong due
to an increasing demand for municipal services and expanding rev-
enues to finance them, intergovernmental aid, tax-rate and economic
base increases, and the city’s ability to borrow.1 The reality was that the
city had run budget deficits in every year since 1961. Former mayors
Robert Wagner and John Lindsay won political victories by increas-
ing expenditures and drawing up unrealistic long-term budget projec-
tions.2 The gulf between revenue and spending eventually caught up
with the city. Wagner and Lindsay’s moves ultimately convinced the
major banks that city securities were too risky so that they refused to
purchase them. New York, unable to sell its securities, veered on the
edge of bankruptcy.3 In the summer of 1975 the city finally ran out of
money and could no longer pay for its operating expenses.
New York’s budget trickery and crisis was compounded by a national
recession stemming from deindustrialization, spiking oil prices, and mil-
itary spending.4 Troubles in the nation’s economy were soon followed
by those in New York and other municipal governments: employment
fell, the tax base decreased, expenditures outstripped revenues, and state
and federal aid increased at a much slower rate.5 The combination of a
debilitating recession, the Watergate scandal, and a humbling defeat in
the Vietnam War dealt a heavy blow to the national psyche. For many
observers the economic collapse was coupled with a general decay of
law and order and became a national symbol of urban decline.
The countrywide malaise of defeat, resignation, and humiliation
was especially heightened in New York, whose reputation as an empire
city had morphed into that of a crime haven. Films like Black Caesar
(1973), Mean Streetss (1973), Serpicoo (1973), Death Wishh (1974), The
Taking of Pelham One Two Threee (1974), and Taxi Driverr (1976)
depicted New York as a bastion of vice, malfeasance, racial pathology,
and corruption. John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, a 1981 futur-
istic fantasy film about the 1990s looking back on the 1970s, por-
trayed a postapocalyptic Manhattan converted to maximum-security
prison. The famous Daily Newss headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead,”
although not a direct quote from the president, made clear his refusal
of federal assistance to keep New York out of bankruptcy. The head-
line captured New Yorkers’ worst fears that their city was falling into
the abyss without anyone to save them. Ford would change course six
months after issuing the original refusal to provide a federal bailout for
New York, but this would do little to assuage New Yorkers’ anxieties.6
Last Hired, First Fired

Mayor Abraham Beame set up an austerity plan in 1975 by slashing
the city workforce, freezing salaries, raising taxes, and restructuring
the budget. The city followed the common practice of retaining senior
employees, more colloquially known as “last hired, first fired.” The
W e l co m e t o F e ar C i t y 191
layoff plan was based on an established principle known as Section 80

that required employees with the most seniority to be given prefer-
ence in retaining their jobs. Police, sanitation workers, and firefight-
ers faced the greatest casualties. Beame planned substantive cuts in
education, health care, and transit. The initial proposal included the
termination of 6,000 police officers, but through a series of nego-
tiations, financial shuffling, and eventual reinstatements, the mayor
reduced police layoffs to approximately 3,000.7 Beame’s layoffs trans-
lated into a 7 percent rate attrition rate for the NYPD. Less publicized
were the daunting layoff rates for racial minorities and women offi-
cers: 16 percent for African Americans; 21 percent for Hispanics; and
68 percent for women.8
The city’s long-serving civil service leaders found the layoffs
unjust, but they supported the seniority system that protected work-
ers with longer service—and usually higher wages—from economic
cuts. The Civil Service system had been a hard-won gain by labor to
protect older workers who had paid their dues and would be more
likely fired in economizing moves. In some instances, such workers
fought to keep jobs for fellow employees, but did not intend senior-
ity to discriminate against women or racial minorities. PBA and other
city unions touted Section 80 as a color-blind and sex-neutral policy
that could even prevent discrimination against racial minorities and
women. No one, the reasoning went, could fire a city employee on
the grounds of race or sex. These arguments failed to acknowledge
the historical reasons why so many of those workers had failed to
accrue significant seniority.
Cops of all backgrounds, as protectors of the city and victims of the
austerity program, found themselves at the center of this crisis. The
most important story of the layoffs for the PBA was its devastating
impact on the overall number of officers on the streets and the con-
sequential difficulties for policing the city. The PBA attacked Mayor
Beame’s layoffs as unwise, cruel, foolish, and short-sighted but deemed
that the system for implementing them fit squarely with its sense of fair
play. In this context, PBA leaders disregarded the previous decade of
struggle in which civil rights activists and feminists had compelled the
department to hire more women and black and Puerto Rican men as
compensation for historical discrimination. Indeed, the PBA rank-and-
file had never supported affirmative action programs on behalf of either
of these groups. The fiscal crisis enabled them to embrace a color-blind
and gender-neutral seniority system that undid a decade of integration.
In the 1950s and 1960s a healthy economy had made it possible for
women, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans to join the department
without taking old privileges away from tenured officers. Even then,
the PBA had attacked minority and female recruitment programs as
“unlawful integration” and “political opportunism.” The fiscal cri-
sis and layoffs of 1975 only heightened that confrontation by turn-
ing affirmative action and union solidarity into a zero-sum game. A
lean economy tipped the playing field in favor of the status quo and
diminished the political will to undo discriminatory practices against
women and racial minorities.
The PBA had little to say about the racial disparity of the layoffs,
but race factored heavily in its response. In the late 1960s and early
1970s, the PBA leadership had deflected rank-and-file criticism of
their leadership toward external enemies, whom they increasingly
described in racial terms. By the time fiscal crisis forced police layoffs
in July of 1975, greater numbers of New Yorkers believed that they
lived in an unsafe city overrun by what PBA president Cassese had
dubbed “the black and Puerto Rican peril.”9 Protesting the layoffs
became a means of challenging political leadership and venting frus-
tration toward communities of color. The voices of angry, white cops
overwhelmed the concerns of their black and Puerto Rican peers.
The PBA’s gendered view of labor also justified the seniority sys-
tem. According to PBA representatives, men were valiant cops while
women were either helpless victims or peripheral workers. The NYPD,
in addition to terminating more than half its female force, assigned
many of the remaining female officers to the matron duties of search-
ing and guarding female prisoners.10 PBA leaders and the rank-and-file
knew that New Yorkers had been fearful about the lack of police pres-
ence on their streets and turned that to their advantage.11 They took
to the streets to win back their jobs and demand that City Hall justify
its firing of “hardworking, solid, family men.”12 The mainstream press
reinforced this narrative, completely ignoring the debilitating attrition
of women and racial minorities. Along with city officials and the PBA,
the press accepted the last-hired, first-fired policy as fair.
The primary concern of police leaders and their supporters was the
safety of the city, and they accordingly rallied around an old trope of
“man as protector.” The press featured police officers who had been
emasculated by clerical work and asked why they were not out on
the streets protecting citizens. The first deputy commissioner of the
NYPD, James M. Taylor contended that “Realistically, we shouldn’t
have any officers in clerical jobs. What do you tell that poor old lady
who’s just been mugged and can’t find a cop on the street . . . and then
she walks into a station house and sees a big guy banging on a type-
writer?”13 Other officers used this moment to attack the feminization
of their work: “Today you are like a secretary. A secretary riding

around with a gun in your belt. In a precinct like I am in where we
take reports more than anything else in great quantity, I can be busy
over the phone for five or six hours every day just handling stolen car
reports or past burglaries instead of being out trying to catch a perpe-
trator.”14 Real cops were real men, and real men caught criminals with
their bodies rather than their minds.
News reports sympathetic to the laid-off officers and concerned
about crime called upon the city to call men back to work. In the-
ory, such reports included men of all races, but they more often than
not represented white officers as the guardians of the thin blue line
and protectors of society against black and Puerto Rican criminals.
Through their words and actions, PBA leaders and the rank-and-file
played upon fears of black and Puerto Rican crime as a means of pres-
suring the city to reinstate their jobs.15
Welcome to Fear City

In June 1975, PBA president Joseph McFeeley masterminded a plan
to bring pressure to bear on the Beame administration by intimidat-
ing potential visitors to the city. Under his direction, the PBA printed
and distributed a pamphlet titled “Fear City,” which warned visitors
to stay away from New York because the layoffs did not allow officers
to ensure their safety. The pamphlet’s cover donned a hooded figure
of death and the legend “Welcome to Fear City—A Survival Guide
for Visitors to the City of New York.” PBA members visited airports
and other transportation terminals throughout the city to distribute
the pamphlets in an effort to turn away tourists and punish the city
for the layoffs.16 An introductory paragraph to this “survival guide”
explained to visitors “by the time you read this, the number of public
safety personnel available to protect residents and visitors may have
been still further reduced. Under those circumstances, the best advice
we can give you is: Until things change, stay away from New York
City if you possibly can because of the high incidence of crime and
violence and other inescapable local dangers.”17 The guide instructed
visitors to stay off the streets after 6 p.m. and to avoid the outer bor-
oughs. The latter portion made explicit reference to the South Bronx
as “Fort Apache,” a not so subtle allusion to the film by the same
name and a hardly veiled racist depiction of the black community as
an isolated and ominous outpost for white police officers.
All the police talk had been about the ways in which layoffs, inves-
tigations, and disciplinary actions had destroyed police morale and
threatened the city’s safety. There were alternative voices, but the Fear
City campaign made them difficult to hear outside of sympathetic
audiences. Sergeant James Hargrove, president of the Guardians,
identified the racial undertones of the campaign. From his perspec-
tive, Fear City was even more terrifying than the crime about which
it issued a warning. He pointed out how the campaign tried to create
empathy for police and fire unions, but conjured up the racial and
gender dimensions of the layoffs. “The Fear City campaign launched
by the PBA and United Fire Association is the most asinine in his-
tory,” noted Hargrove. He asked why the unions were so obsessed
with “dangerous communities’” when blacks, Hispanics and females
constituted less than 10 percent of the police department but were
expected to be fired at a rate of 40 percent. “It is the communities
of these minorities that will be most drastically affected by the reduc-
tion of services and firings.”18 The Amsterdam Newss similarly noted
how indifferent and hostile police officers destroyed morale in minor-
ity communities. The paper identified four commandments of police
officers: don’t question officers’ actions; harass and disrupt an entire
city when it furthers a police labor dispute; reserve parking and traffic
regulations for anyone except police officers; no matter how depraved
an act, never testify against a brother officer. “In the black commu-
nity,” explained the Amsterdam Newss, “there seems to be an inverse
proportionate relationship between community morale and police
morale which must be cleared up soon.”19 The paper made it clear
that the real danger to New York was not President Cassese’s fictional
“black and Puerto Rican peril,” but the blue wall of silence.
The irony of the Fear City campaign was that in past years police
officers had taken themselves off the streets in order to further their
negotiations with the city. Apparently, they had found it acceptable
to jeopardize public safety when their own salaries were at stake.20
Furthermore, white officers participated in carefully orchestrated
marches and demonstrations to complement the Fear City campaign.
Like the construction workers who rampaged through Wall Street in
1970, these officers displayed their patriotic credentials by marching
up and down lower Manhattan carrying the American flags and signs
that read “Burn City Burn” and “Beame Is a Deserter, a Rat!” Other
signs informed frightened onlookers that they would no longer be safe
in a city without their protection: “Force This Contract Down Our
Throats and I’ll Never See My Daddy” and “Family Life—Murdered
by Beame.” For several nights, thousands of off-duty cops roamed the
streets and brought traffic to a standstill. Many of the marchers had
been drinking, and several displayed their police guns as a show of
force. Under PBA instruction, officers invaded black and Puerto Rican
neighborhoods in the postmidnight hours where they blew whistles,
banged garbage can lids, shouted obscenities about the mayor, and
broke into ear-splitting choruses of “God Bless America.”21 Their
actions expressed frustration with the layoffs, racial minorities, city
leaders, and perceived acts of treason.
These protests were a last-ditch effort to restore white men’s jobs
and their reputation as noble, virtuous, and virile defenders of the
city. In July of 1975, a crowd of approximately 500 dismissed officers
marched on City Hall in protest and then stormed the approaches of
the Brooklyn Bridge, creating major traffic tie-ups in lower Manhattan.
Former officers in civilian clothing set up wooden police department
barricades at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. They also hurled
beer cans and bottles and shouted obscenities at uniformed officers
and commanders who meekly pleaded with them to clear the road-
ways. At one point the protestors hoisted Telly Savalas—who, as tele-
vision’s Kojak, played a New York City detective—on their shoulders
while he raised a coffin to illustrate the officers’ forewarning about
murder resulting from their absence.22 Their roguish behavior and
militant protests did little to further their cause, but had the effect,
however unintentional, of drowning out protests for race and gender
equity.
Pink Slip
In a city anxious about a labor shortage among its protectors, neither
arguments on behalf of women’s special abilities nor calls for racial
diversity had much political currency. A tighter city budget left all civil-
ian employees vulnerable to layoffs, especially the hundreds of recently
hired women, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans. The New York
City Commission on Civil Rights, noting that recessions often fell hard-
est on the shoulders of the least powerful, warned of an ominous future
for women and racial minorities after the recession deepened and unem-
ployment rose to an alarming postwar high. Chairperson Edith Lynton
issued a report raising concern that the city had not maintained its com-
mitment to fair employment practices. She predicted that maintenance
of the seniority system in particular would have dire consequences for
affirmative action. There would be, she argued, an unequal burden of
unemployment for women and racial minorities:
Currently, disproportionate joblessness has fallen again on those least

equipped to sustain it, and threatens to perpetuate the inequality of
opportunity that has been an historical characteristic of the national

labor market. Through arduous efforts made under affirmative action
in recent years, more minorities and women have only recently been
included in stable full-time and better paying jobs, and thus are for the
first time part of the labor force that offers greater security and advance-
ment opportunity. The current conflict between affirmative action and
seniority must be recognized as a transition phenomenon. When all job
seekers have enough access to work opportunities long enough, the
application of seniority rules to employment decisions will no longer
manifest a significant disparate effect on the basis of race or sex.23
Lynton’s caveat fell on deaf ears. In the panicked days of the fiscal
crisis, neither Mayor Beame nor Commissioner Codd was interested
in the gender or racial impact of their economic decisions.
The fiscal crisis thwarted proponents of diversity and equal oppor-
tunity, particularly those whose strategies emphasized the unique roles
of women and racial minorities. Facing an ever-shrinking labor force,
the department no longer considered the specialized skills of women
or racial minorities to be essential. Officer Maureen Kempton helped
to organize the Committee of Female Police Officers, a group of 400
laid-off female police who decided to fight for their jobs rather than
sit home quietly and collect unemployment compensation. Kempton
argued in Ms. Magazinee that society would suffer from absence of
women in police work because of the elimination of special women’s
units like the rape prevention squad. She contended that most men
still saw rape victims as women on the prowl and, therefore, were com-
pletely unqualified to handle such cases. Kempton also argued that the
elimination of women from patrol duty would result in the “depart-
ment’s missing the calming influence that women provide in fam-
ily disputes and streets fights.”24 Arguments predicated on women’s
gentle nature, which had provided great leverage for women in the
postwar period, gained little traction during fiscal crisis and backlash.
Women police officers accentuated their differences from men but
still took the department to task for implementing a double standard
in determining the layoffs. “Just when women police officers were
getting off the ground, we were cut down, wiped out,” explained
Dina Acha, who had been assigned to patrol duty in Manhattan
South.25 She and her husband Carlos joined and were fired from the
department on the exact same days. But because of the additional
30-months seniority he received for being a veteran, he was among
the 2,000 laid-off police officers that the department called back to
duty a few days later. The 30-months seniority provision for veterans
was one of the laid-off women officers’ biggest complaints. Another

sore point among women was the additional five points added to vet-
erans’ police examination scores.
The aggrieved women all expressed a preference for reinstatement
over financial compensation. “It’s like losing something you love,
being laid off,” explained Maureen Murphy who had been assigned
to patrol duty in the 103rd Precinct in Queens. “I loved the job, I
really did. It’s just a gut feeling, something I can’t explain, a need to
help that I’ve had ever since I was a kid.”26 Patricia Meyers echoed
those sentiments. “For 26 years of my life I’ve been raised with the
idea [that] there’s security in the police department. I had been work-
ing for American Airlines for four years, but the deciding factor that
made me quit and join the department was security. So I join and then
I get the pink slip. I threw it down and said, ‘This is security? Thanks
a lot.’”27 No matter how much resistance women faced in becoming
and serving as police officers, they continued to be drawn to its pres-
tige, security, and challenge.
The wives of male police officers, who had strongly opposed the
idea of putting women on patrol with their husbands, publicly rejoiced
in the fact that so many of the women officers were laid off. “At first
they were jealous of us,” said Acha. “And then they said we endan-
gered their husbands on patrol. Well, they have no facts to support
themselves. Frankly, cops’ wives have always been isolated from their
husbands’ lives, and I think they saw the issue of female officers as
an opportunity to get involved.”28 Acha did not defend women on
patrol by contending that they were men’s equals but, like Kempton,
focused on how women’s essential skills were best suited to specific
tasks such as rape analysis and investigation, searching women arrest-
ees, and providing services to children. She argued women had the
general advantage in dealing with some male lawbreakers. “They’re
not as threatened by women officers as they are by men,” said Acha,
noting that “All you have to do is smile. They’re not going to slug a
woman.”29
Women police officers brought arguments about femininity and
equal treatment into the courtroom. In the summer of 1975 they
filed suit in Federal District Court, asking that the City of New York
and the police department be enjoined from terminating female offi-
cers according to the last-hired, first-fired formula. Acha v. Beame
contended that this policy constituted sex discrimination in violation
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.30 Before 1973, there had been 350
women in the department, part of a quota system that designated
them as policewomen. The department had not counted their service

under this category toward seniority as “patrol officers.” Although
Federal District Judge Kevin Duffy dismissed the assertions of sex
discrimination in the seniority system in the lower federal appeals
court, Judge Wilfred Feinberg overturned the decision. Feinberg
determined that women were entitled to “constructive seniority”
back to the date when they would have been hired had there been
no discrimination. 31 “If a female police officer can show that, except
for her sex, she would have been hired early enough to accumulate
sufficient seniority to withstand the current layoffs,” Feinberg wrote,
“then her layoff violates [the Civil Rights Act] since it is based on
sexual discrimination.”32
Women’s numbers had grown significantly from the time the
department started putting them on patrol and dropped the sepa-
rate categorization of patrolmen and policewomen. For 40 years,
the department had maintained a rough 1 percent quota for women
that peaked to 1.34 percent in 1972. The lifting of these restrictions
had increased women’s representation to a modest but significant
2.62 percent by the time the fiscal crisis hit in 1975.33 This growth
indicated that many women before 1972 would have entered the
force and accrued security if given the same opportunities as men.
One of the arguments against women on street patrol had been that
men were stronger, fitter, and more capable of responding to violent
situations. Women countered that after the fiscal crisis the depart-
ment replaced them with middle-aged men who had spent the last
few years at desk jobs, and had neither the enthusiasm nor the fitness
for the job.
Feinberg made clear that an award of seniority to those who actu-
ally had been discriminated against was not a “preference” because of
sex, but rather a remedial device. The appeals court actually affirmed
the last-hired, first-fired plan, which it believed to protect women and
racial minorities against unfair layoffs. The court argued that flexibility
was necessary to recognize how past discrimination prevented women
from obtaining seniority. The appeals court ordered that the lower
court “expeditiously determine” which women would have been
hired early enough to obtain sufficient seniority to avoid dismissal
if there had not been discriminatory practices. The decision did not
specify what form that relief would take.34 Even after the successful
case, policewomen advocates had to rely on organizations like the
American Civil Liberties Union to ensure that the laid-off women
were reinstated. Two years after firing 400 of the city’s 618 women
during the fiscal crisis, 194 were rehired.35
“One in a Billion”
The case of laid-off black and Puerto Rican police officers proved
as difficult and even more protracted than that of women. Like
policewomen, blacks and Puerto Ricans needed to prove to the
courts that their lack of seniority had been systematic and discrimi-
natory. Policewomen were able to demonstrate that they were last
hired because of separate job categories and restrictive quotas. The
Guardians and the Hispanic Society could not document such obvi-
ous cases of quotas and separate classification but were able to uncover
the subjectivity of the department’s examinations.36 The Guardians
led the charge but were soon followed by the Hispanic Society, a still
largely Puerto Rican fraternal society that now included other nation-
alities, especially Dominicans, under the Hispanic umbrella.
The joint case of the two fraternal organizations demonstrated the
subtle ways in which the department maintained a façade of objectiv-
ity as it filtered blacks and Hispanics from eligibility. Before 1973, the
NYPD accepted applicants who achieved passing scores on entry-level
examinations, but selected them from a ranked list of highest scores.
On its face, this seemed to be a fair, merit-based system that rewarded
applicants who were most qualified for the position. Thousands of
blacks and Hispanics received passing exam scores, but they generally
did not perform as highly as whites and, therefore, went to the bot-
tom of the qualified list. The problem was that the tests themselves
were poor indicators of job performance. In none of the cases could
the defendants provide any evidence that the exams had content valid-
ity. When asked to testify on the statistical likelihood of the racial
distribution of test scores of the 1968 and 1970 exams, expert wit-
ness Dr. Bernard Cohen declared that they were “one in a billion.”37
The courts were convinced that the department had established an
entrance criterion that had little to do with the job itself and unfairly
excluded racial minorities.
Commissioner Patrick Murphy testified on behalf of the case and
admitted that he “did not try as hard as [I] would have liked to
increase minority representation on the police force” but explained
that he never actively discriminated against blacks and Hispanics.38
The courts agreed, but did not find this to be sufficient grounds to
challenge the status quo. The primary infraction, the courts found,
was not intentional discrimination, but the complacency of officials in
the police department and the Department of Personnel with respect
to racial imbalance and their failure to take active steps toward increas-
ing minority representation. By 1977 the department had laid off
9.8 percent of white police officers, with layoff rates of 18 percent for
black officers and 22 percent for Hispanic officers.39
The Guardians and Hispanic Society case continued in multiple
forms through the early 1980s, each time being affirmed by the courts
who found that “the imbalance between Hispanics and blacks on the
one hand and whites on the other in the New York City police force
is directly caused by present and current discriminatory practices.”
The courts made clear that affirmative action was only an interme-
diate measure until such discrimination had been totally eliminated
or until the department complied with Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964. At the time, blacks and Hispanics made up 12 percent
of the police department and 30 percent of the labor force. Judge
Robert L. Carter dismissed concerns of reverse discrimination and
explained “requiring defendants to take positive steps to eliminate the
imbalance will not have adverse consequences for a small number of
readily identifiable minority members.”40 At issue was whether or not
the department could select its future applicants from a ranked list of
applicants who had passed the entrance exams, or if they were to select
from otherwise qualified applicants with the objective of creating a
racially diverse force. In February of 1980, the appeals court issued a
temporary order that permitted New York City to hire police officers
on the condition that one of every three new officers was black or
Hispanic.41
“Taxation without Representation”

As these court battle played out, women, African Americans, and
Puerto Ricans took their fight directly to the PBA leadership. In 1977,
the Guardians and Policewomen’s Endowment Association accused
the PBA of negligence, insensitivity, sexism, and engaging in discrimi-
natory practices. There were no women and only two black repre-
sentatives among the 367 PBA delegates. President William Ward
and Sergeant Howard Sheffey of the Guardians and Anne Powers of
the Policewomen’s Endowment Association insisted that efforts to
change the PBA had been resisted by “top level incompetence, calcu-
lated indifference, and arrogance” on the part of their fellow officers.”
Ward pointed to the PBA as an example of taxation without represen-
tation. He suggested that the two black delegates stood little chance
putting racial questions on the union agenda because they were out-
numbered and unwilling to stand for racial advocacy. “You can put
a question mark next to one of them,” Ward noted, “because in the
past six or seven years he has not done one positive thing for black
members.” Remarkably, black cops failed to constitute a majority in

a single precinct throughout the city and, therefore, had great dif-
ficulty rallying around any particular candidates. Powers complained
that female representation in the PBA was nonexistent in the PBA and
the organization “intended to keep it that way.”42 These accusations
brought some public attention to the inequities but did little to shift
the power structure of the union. Despite modest integration, New
York’s Finest remained divided and unequal.
The protests of rank-and-file officers failed to achieve their stated
goal of putting more officers back on the streets but became a means
of shoring up white masculinity and silencing critics who questioned
the gender and race composition of the force. White men on the force
who felt threatened by black and Puerto Rican citizens, bitter about
the integration of women and racial minorities into their ranks, and
emasculated by the prerogatives of police management asserted their
authority through protest. They continued to bolster an old narrative
about whiteness, masculinity, and policing. While these protests won
them no higher wages, no new jobs, and no increased power rela-
tive to management, they provided a catharsis, a psychological wage
for their trials. By defining their labor as noble, virtuous, and, most
important, in opposition to that of women and men of color, these
officers reveled in a celebration of their layoffs as tragic. Rank-and-file
cops who had little power in the economic or political arena found
some compensation in festive displays of patriotism, manhood, and
honor.
Notes
Introduction
1. See New York City Police Department Annual Report, 1941, and Roger
Abel, The Black Shieldss (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006): 340.
2. Leonard Levitt, NYPD Confidential: Power and d Corruption in the
Country’s Greatest Police Forcee (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2009);
James Lardner and Thomas Repetto, NYPD: A City and d Its Police
(New York: Henry Holt, 2000); Robert M. Fogelson, Big City Police
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Gerald Astor, The
New York Cops: An Informal Historyy (New York: Charles Scribner
Sons, 1971); Kerry Segrave, Policewomen: A Historyy (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 1995).
3. J. P. Viteritti, Police, Politics, and n New York Cityy (Beverley
d Pluralism in
Hills, CA: Sage, 1973); Alice Mulcahey Fleming, New on thee Beat:
Woman Power in thee Police Forcee (New York: Coward, McCann, &
Geoghegan, 1975).
4. Some examples of good books sponsored by the Police and Ford
Foundation include Susan E. Martin, On thee Move: The Status off Women
n Policingg (New York: Police Foundation, 1990); Peter B. Bloch
in
and Deborah Anderson, Policewomen on n Patroll (New York: Police
Foundation, 1974); Catherine Milton, Women in n Policing, a Manual
(New York: Police Foundation, 1974). Anthony Pate and Edwin E.
Hamilton, The New York City Police Cadet Corps Evaluation Technical
Reportt (New York: Police Foundation, 1992).
5. Nicholas Alex, Black and d Blue: A Study of thee Negro Policemann (New
York: Meredith, 1969).
6. James I. Alexander, Blue Coats, Black Skin: The Black Experience in
thee NY City Police Department Since 1891 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition
Press, 1978).
7. Blackk Police, White Societyy (New York: New York University Press, 1983).
8. Ibid.
9. Nicholas Alex, New York Cops Talk Back: A Study of a Beleaguered
Minorityy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976).
10. William J. Bopp, The Police Rebellion: The Quest forr Blue Power
(Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1971); Paul Chevigny, Police Power:
Police Abuses in New York Cityy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969);
204 No t e s
Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind thee Shield: The Police in n Urban Society

(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967); Allen Z. Gammage, Police
Unionss (Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1972); John Buropo, The Police Labor
Movementt (Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1971).
11. W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in n America a (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1996).
12. Catherine Milton, Women in Policingg (Washington DC: Police
Foundation, 1972); Alice Mulcahey Fleming, New on the Beat: Woman
Power in the Police Forcee (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan,
1975); Connie Fletcher, Breaking and Entering: Women Cops Talk About
Life in the Ultimate Men’s Clubb (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); Kerry
Segrave, Policewomen: A Historyy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995); Joyce
Sichel, Women on Patrol: A Pilot Study of Police Performance in New York
Cityy (Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 1978); Peter Horne,
Women in Law Enforcementt (Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1974).
13. Dorothy Moses Schulz, From Social Worker too Crime Fighter: Women in
thee United States Municipal Policingg (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995).
1 Meritocracy and the Illusion

of Color Blindness
1. James E. Frazier, Interview with the Author, November 16, 1997
2. Russell Buchanan, Black Americans in World War III (Santa Barbara,
CA: Clio Books, 1977) and Neil Wynn, The Afro-American and the
Second World Warr (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977).
3. On African Americans Military Service, see Herbert Aptheker, The Negro
in the American Revolution n (New York: International, 1940); Joseph
Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and
White Officerss (New York: Free Press, 1990); John David Smith, Black
Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil Warr Era (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Ron Field, Buffalo
Soldiers: African American Troops in the U.S. Forces, 1866–1945 5 (New
York: Osprey, 2008); Edward Van Zile Scott, Unswept: Black American
Soldiers and the Spanish American Warr (Montgomery, AL: Black Belt
Press, 1996); Maria Höhn and Martin Klimke, A Breath of Freedom:
The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIS and Germanyy (New
York: Palgrave, 2010); Robert J. Dalessandro, Willing Patriots: Men
of Color in the First World Warr (New York: Schiffer, 2009); Adriane
Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
4. Shielded by color blindness, whites can express resentment toward
minorities; criticize their morality, values, and work ethic; and even claim
to be victims of reverse racism. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without
Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Equality in the
United Statess (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010): 4.
Not e s 205
5. James I. Alexander, Blue Coats, Black Skin: The Black Experience in

the NY City Police Department Since 1891 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition
Press, 1978): 15. The black population of Bedford-Stuyvesant increased
fivefold from 30,000 in 1930 to 155,000 in 1955. Between 1940
and 1957, the black population of New York increased 315 percent.
See Edwin R. Lewinson, Black Politics in New York Cityy (New York:
Twayne, 1974): 83–91.
6. Alexander, Blue Coats, Black Skin, 15–17.
7. The steam went out of the disorder with the publication of a photograph
of Lino Rivera flanked by Lt. Samuel Battle, a black police lieutenant who
was first black Manhattan resident to join the department. Samuel Battle
would later serve as a character witness for the department. Ironically,
Battle couldn’t pass the physical exam in 1911. Battle joined the force
only after Charles Anderson, a powerful black politician, intervened on
his behalf. Years later (in the Schomberg Collection of Negro history),
Battle recorded memories of his early days on force when sightseers came
to Harlem to witness the novelty of a black cop and children yelled,
“There goes the nigger cop!” See Gerald Astor, The New York Cops: An
Informal Historyy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971): 170–172.
8. Charles H. Roberts, The Negro in Harlem: A Report on the Social and
Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935 5 (New
York: Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, 1935): 102.
9. Ibid., 10–11.
10. Ibid., 102.
11. Valentine to La Guardia, April 30, 1936, New York Municipal Archives,
La Guardia Papers, Box # 2550. Quoted in n Dominic J. Capeci, Jr., The
Harlem Riot of 1943 3 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977): 6.
12. Thomas Kessner, Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of New Yorkk (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1989): 375.
13. Lewis J. Valentine to Fiorello La Guardia, May 15, 1942, New York
Municipal Archives, La Guardia Papers, Box #752. Quoted in Capeci,
Harlem Riot of 1943, 26. Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History
of Police Violence in New York Cityy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003).
14. Barringer, Ernest N. to La Guardia, Mayor F[iorello] H., May 16, 1942,
New York Municipal Archives, La Guardia Papers, Microfilm 77, 793.
15. Frank Schibersky, Memorandum: Mass Meeting Protesting the Killing
of One Wallace Armstrong by a Patrolman of this Department of
Commanding Officer, Criminal Alien Squad, May 17, 1942, New York
Municipal Archives, La Guardia Papers, Box #752. Quoted in Capeci,
The Harlem Riot, 27; See also Charles V. Hamilton, Adam Clayton
Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma a (New York:
Atheneum, 1991): 122–123. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Editorial, The
People’s Voicee (May 23, 1942).
16. Capeci, Harlem Riot of 1943, 99.
17. Ibid., 99–101.
206 No t es
18. Astor, The New York Cops, s 170–172; “Mob Out for Negro Blood,”
New York Sun n (August 16, 1900): 2; “West Side Race Riot,” New York
Tribunee (August 16, 1900): 1. “Quiet after Rioting,” New York Evening
Postt (August 16, 1900): 1; Citizens’ Protective League, The Story of the
Riott (New York: Arno Press, 1969).
19. Bureau of Special Services, Office of War Information, “Report of the
Harlem Riot of 1943” (August 21, 1943): 5.
20. “Harlem Is Orderly with Heavy Guard Ready for Trouble,” New York
Timess (August 3, 1943): 1.
21. “Race Bias Denied as Rioting Factor,” New York Timess (August 3,
1943): 11.
22. Ibid., 11.
23. “Not a Race Riot,” People’s Voicee (August 14, 1943): 1.
24. “Hoodlums Wreck Community; Six Dead, Hundreds Injured,” New
York Agee (August 7, 1943): 1.
25. “Harlem’s Wild Rampage Brings Death, Destruction, Looting and
Shame,” Lifee (August 16, 1943): 32–33.
26. In addition to the outbreak of violence in Harlem, the year 1943 wit-
nessed rioting in Detroit, Beaumont, Mobile, and Los Angeles. Detroit
saw the worst violence with 34 killed, mostly blacks at the hands of police.
See Kessner, Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of New York, 530.
27. Ibid., 121.
28. “Report of the Harlem Riot of 1943,” 1.
29. “Harlem Hoodlums,” Newsweekk (August 9, 1943): 48.
30. “Harlem’s Wild Rampage Brings Death, Destruction, Looting and
Shame,” Lifee (August 16, 1943): 32–33.
31. “Harlem: Dense and Dangerous,” Collierss (September 23, 1944): 1.
33. Ibid., 2.
34. Ibid., 10
35. On a similar pattern of demonizing young black men in Great Britain,
see Ellis Cashmore and Eugene McLaughlin, eds., Out of Order?:
Policing Black Peoplee (London: Routledge, 1991).
36. Ironically, it was the perceived virtues of black southern labor that seems
to have been at the heart of Biddle’s recommendation that blacks stop
migrating to the North. Biddle’s recommendation has been viewed
as keeping with the wishes of southern plantation owners and Dixie
industrial employers who were alarmed over the large numbers of black
people who were leaving the South. “Keep Negro in the Southland,
Attorney General Urges,” Amsterdam Newss (August 14, 1943): 1.
37. Benedict Anderson investigates the concept of “imagined communities”
in relation to national identity, but one could suggest that white’s process
of conceiving black Harlem is a similar form of identity formation within
the nation. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections
on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism m (London: Verso, 1992).
38. Ibid., 7.
Not e s 207
39. Several accounts corroborate the War of Information’s version of the

riots as primarily a response to mistreatment of black soldiers and harass-
ment by white policemen. See “NAACP Informs War Department that
Riot Occurred Because of Soldier Brutality,” New York Agee (August 14,
1943): 1; “The Harlem Outbreak,” Militantt (August 7, 1943): 1.
40. Jervis Anderson, This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900–1950.
(New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981): 298.
41. “Excerpts from Messages of Praise,” Spring 3100 0 (September, 1943):
6–7.
42. Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma, The Negro Problem and
American Democracyy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944): 567.
43. David McCullough, Truman n (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992):
587.
44. Mary Penick Motley, The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black
Soldier in World War III (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975):
25. See also Chapters 7–10 in Richard M. Dalfiume, Desegregation in the
U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939–53 3 (Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press, 1969). On black opposition to wartime
politics see C. L. R. James, George Breitman, Edgar Keemer, Fighting
Racism in World War III (New York: Monad Press, 1980).
45. Sherry, In the Shadow of War, 145–147.
46. Ibid., 148.
47. Lou Smith, “War and Post-war Problems: Racial and Other Perplexities,”
Spring 3100 0 (May, 1943): 12–13.
48. John F. O’Ryan, “The Policeman as Soldier,” Spring 3100 0 (January,
1934): 8–9.
49. Francis J. Quigley, “We’re in the Army Now!,” Spring 3100 0 (May,
1943): 16–17.
50. Ibid., 17.
51. Arthur Wallander, “Comments Relative to the Written Exam for
Patrolmen,” New York Municipal Archives, O’Dwyer Collection, Dept.
Correspondence, Box #13, Folder #4 (June 6, 1946).
52. David Montgomery, Workers Control in America: Studies in the History
of Work, Technology and Labor Struggless (Cambridge: Cambridge
53. “La Guardia Calls on Armed Forces to Free Patrolmen,” New York
Timess (November 24, 1945): 1.
54. “Police Marksmen to Join War on Crime,” New York Timess (November
21, 1945) 1; “O’Dwyer Maps out Plan to Recruit Police,” New York
Timess (November 16, 1945): 1.
55. Ibid., 1.
56. J. Inciardi and C. Faupel, eds., History and Crime: Implications for
Criminal Justice Policyy (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980): 218.
57. Joseph Burns to Fiorello La Guardia, La Guardia, August 3, 1943, New
York Municipal Archives, La Guardia Papers, Box #752. Quoted in
Capeci, Harlem Riot of 1943, 144.
208 No t e s
58. Editorial, Amsterdam Newss (August 14, 1943): 10.

59. Capeci, Harlem Riot of 1943, 144.
60. Kessner, Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of New York, 536.
61. The term ethnic is used here to describe those “whites” who identi-
fied with a particular European national origin. While the term is prob-
lematic because of its presumption of nonethnicity regarding other
“whites,” as well as its troublesome connotations about race, it is
instructive because it illustrates the ways in which urbanites understood
themselves and their communities. The NYPD remained a bastion for
Irish patronage well into the late twentieth century, but began incorpo-
rating Italians and Jews in the 1920s and 1930s. See Alex, Black in Blue,
xvii. To millions of ethnic Americans, especially Jews and Catholics from
Southern and Eastern Europe, the war was the time when they felt most
fully accepted as Americans. See John Morton Blum, When V Was for
Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War III (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976): 147–181.
62. “2,000 Attend St. George Breakfast,” Spring 3100 0 (May, 1945): 1.
63. “Valentine Wants More Negro Police,” New York Timess (May 1, 1944):
23.
64. “Preventing Riots,” Spring 3100 0 (February, 1945): 3.
66. “Harlem Is Orderly With Heavy Guard Ready for Trouble,” New York
67. “Fragment of Harlem Survey,” New York Municipal Archives, La
Guardia Papers, Box #2550, n.d. Quoted in Kessner, Fiorello H. La
Guardia and the Making of New York, 374.
68. “Preliminary Report on Reactions to the Harlem Riot,” August 6, 1943,
4–5 in “Report of the Harlem Riot of 1943”; “Fragment of Harlem
Survey,” New York Municipal Archives, La Guardia Papers, Box #2550,
n.d. Quoted in Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of New
York, 375.
69. W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in America a (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1996): 70–71.
70. “The Organizations,” Spring 3100 0 (March, 1965): 22–25.
71. Thomas Sowell’s work has gained great currency among conservative
academics and politicians, but traces American immigration history in
an extremely cursory and ahistorical manner. Sowell asks why black
Americans cannot model the success of “ethnic” immigrants in over-
coming obstacles like discrimination and poor skills. For Sowell, neither
race nor the legacy of slavery is important factors. If blacks would sim-
ply “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” like ethnic immigrants, he
argues, they too could garner the fruit of the American dream. Such
analyses disregard the structural barriers of race. Thomas Sowell, Ethnic
America: A Historyy (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Michael Omi and
Howard Winant demystify the comparison of blacks and other racial
minority groups to earlier generations of European immigrants. They
Not e s 209
illustrate how structural barriers made the immigrant analogy inappro-

priate. Many blacks rejected their ethnic identity in favor of a more
radical racial identity that was grounded in group rights and recogni-
tion. Thus, ethnicity theory found itself increasingly in opposition to
the demands of minority movements. In turn, the ethnics’ argument,
as best exemplified by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer’s
Beyond the Melting Pot, t was reworked into a conservative egalitarian
perspective, which emphasized the antidemocratic character of minor-
ity rights. See Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in
the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980ss (New York : Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1986): 20–21; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer,
Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and
Irish of New York Cityy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963).
72. Nicholas Lemann argues that the history of affirmative action can be
seen as a struggle over the fairness of the modern meritocracy. But
instead of creating a fair system, organizations like the NYPD insti-
tuted an “integrated authority system,” which gave blacks a small
stake in order to promote peace. Nevertheless, most of black America
remained a separate world. Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret
History of the American Meritocracyy (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,
1999); Nicholas Lemann, “Taking Affirmative Action Apart,” Nation
(June 17, 1996).
73. The Parents Committee of West 164th Street, “Protest against
Treatment that Children Receive from Police,” March 31, 1947, New
York Municipal Archives, La Guardia Papers, Correspondence, Box #28,
Folder #5; “Communists Protest ‘Brutality,’” New York Timess (January
9, 1949): 34; “NAACP Committee Charges Brutality against Negroes,”
New York Timess (March 10, 1949): 17; “Truman Restates Civil Rights
Stand,” New York Timess (July 13, 1949): 30; “Police Brutality Protested
in Harlem,” New York Timess (November 14, 1949): 10.
74. “Brutality Hearing Asked,” New York Timess (September 19, 1949): 24;
“Picket City Hall,” New York Timess (October 11, 1949): 36.
75. Assistant Attorney General James McInerney conceded that such an
agreement had been in effect in 1952. See “Police Brutality,” Newsweek
(March 2, 1953): 27; “Monaghan Denies Accord Existed,” New York
Timess (February 18, 1953): 1; “Brutality Charges against Police under
U.S. Inquiry,” New York Timess (February 17, 1953): 1; “Representatives
of Nineteen Organizations Seek to Oust Monaghan,” New York Times
(February 20, 1953): 1.
76. See Salvatore J. LaGumina, New York At Mid-Century: The Impellitteri
Yearss (Westport, IN: Greenwood Press, 1992): 199.
77. Barbara Ransby, “Cops, Schools and Communism: Local Politics and
Global Ideologies—New York City in the 1950s,” in Clarence Taylor,
Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2011): 40.
210 No t e s
79. Robert M. Fogelson, Big City Policee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

80. Ibid., 217.
81. On anticommunism and labor unions in the 1950s, see Bert Cochran,
Labor and Communism: The Conflict that Shaped American Unions
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); David Sapross, Communism
in American Unionss (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959); Harvey Levenstein,
Communism, Anti-Communism and the CIO O (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1981).
82. “Police Questioned on Ties to Front,” New York Timess (February 9,
1940): 1.
83. “Police Neutrality,” Nation n (February 17, 1940): 249
84. Ibid., 249.
85. “La Guardia and Valentine Confer: PBA Starts Revolt,” New York Times
(February 9, 1940): 1.
86. “Police Balk at ‘Front Queries,’” New York Timess (February 10, 1940): 17.
87. “Police Chief Gets Warnings of Peril,” New York Timess (October 12,
1948): 12.
88. “Monaghan Backed by 5 Police Groups,” New York Timess (March 2,
1953): 1.
89. “Monaghan Forbids City’s Policemen to Join any Union,” New York
90. “Quill Challenges Police Union Ban,” New York Timess (August 9,
1951): 1.
91. “TWU Sue to Void Police Union Ban,” New York Timess (August 10,
1951): 1
92. “Unionized Cops?” Timee (August 7, 1958): 14.
93. L. H. Whitemore, The Man Who Ran the Subways: The Story of Mike
Quilll (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1968): 175–178.
94. See LaGumina, New York at Mid-Century, 165–166.
95. New York City Department of Labor, “Report on the Recognition and
Organization of Unionized Police in New York City,” 3. Quoted in
Allen Z. Gammage and Stanley L. Sachs, Police Unionss (Springfield, IL:
Charles C. Thomas, 1972): 55.
96. Ibid., 81.
97. “Should the Police Organize,” Nation n (June 13, 1959): 530–533.
98. “Should the Police Organize”; “If Hoffa’s Dreams Come True,” U.S.
News & World Reportt (January 9, 1959): 84–86.
99. “Next for Teamsters: A Policemen’s Union?” U.S. News & World Report
(September 5, 1958): 80.
100. “Union Cops? No!” Newsweekk (January 12, 1959): 30.
101. “Teamster Leader Drops Drive Here to Enroll Police,” New York Times
(January 3, 1959): 1.
102. Gammage and Sachs, Police Unions, s 50–51.
103. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study of the Civil Rights
Movementt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); David Oshinsky,
Not es 211
A Conspiracy So Intensee (New York: Free Press, 1983); Stephen J.

Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold Warr (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1996); David Caute, The Great Fearr (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1977).
104. Benjamin Davis, prior to 1948, was a communist party member of the
New York City Council. At the time of the Hamilton’s review, Davis was
on trial with others in the US District Court of New York for an indict-
ment charging him with violation of the Smith Act in conspiring to
overthrow the government with force and violence. He was convicted
on October 13, 1949. See Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem in the
Great Depressionn (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983).
105. Supreme Court of the State of New Yorkk, Jervey C. Hamilton v.
Paul Brennan et al., as Commissioners of the Municipal Civil Service
Commission of the City of New York, February 19, 1953.
106. The NYPD, after accusing Hamilton of sending the telegram, failed to
produce it when the case came to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court of
New Yorkk, Jervey C. Hamilton v. Paul Brennan et al., February 19, 1953.
107. “Cop-to-Be Wins ‘Red’ Smear Case,” Amsterdam Newss (February 21,
1953): 1.
108. Supreme Court of New Yorkk, Jervey C. Hamilton v. Paul Brennan et al.,
February 19, 1953.
109. Policewomen were just as vulnerable to such smear campaigns. The
NYPD fired Policewoman Helen Bloch in 1954 for allegedly being a
member of the Communist Party in the 1930s. Bloch, a World War II
veteran who had served stateside in the naval reserve and was later a
WAVE, tried to resign in lieu of being fired, but the department refused
the request. See “Policewoman Gets Ouster in Lie Case,” New York
Timess (January 27, 1954).
110. Rhea Dulles and Melvyn Dubovsky, Labor in America, A History
(Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1993): 36; David Brody,
Workers in Industrial America a (New York: Oxford University Press,
1980): 172–175; Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective
Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in
the Postwar Era,” in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of
the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 0 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989): 122–152.
111. “Patrolmen Demand Grievance System,” New York Timess (January 7,
1959): 1.
112. “PBA Is Accused of ‘Power Play,’” New York Timess (November 30,
1960): 28.
2 The Alter Ego of the Patrolman

1. As Joanne Meyerowitz and others argue in her collection of essays on
gender and postwar America, it was indeed true that postwar conservatism
212 No t es
shaped women’s identities, weakened their limited protests, and contained

their activities within traditional bounds. However, that narrative in itself
provides a one-dimensional view of the period. Women’s sense of them-
selves included not only gender identity, but also their interrelated class,
racial, ethnic, sexual, religious, occupational, and political identities. See
Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar
America, 1945–1960 0 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994): 2–3.
2. Sylvia Smith, Interview with the Author, April 22, 1998; Olga Ford,
Interview with the Author, March 19, 1998.
3. Olga Ford, Interview with the Author, March 19, 1998.
4. Lee P. Brown, Commissioner of Police, A Century of Women in Policing,
1891–1991 (New York: NYPD Archives, Unpublished Report, 1991): 3.
5. Ibid.
6. In a highly publicized 1890 episode, a police officer pled guilty to the
attempted assault of a 15-year-old girl being detained in a station house
lockup. See Kerry Segrave, Policewomen: A Historyy (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 1995): 6.
7. Theresa M. Melchionne, “Policewomen: Their Introduction into the
Police Department of the City of New York,” PhD diss., Bernard M.
Baruch School of Business and Public Administration, City University
of New York, January, 1962, iv.
8. Yetta Cohn, “Sober Respectable Women!” Spring 3100 0 (April, 1942): 43.
9. Melchionne, “Policewomen,” 37.
10. Segrave, Policewomen, 11.
11. “The First Municipal Woman Detective in the World,” New York Times
(March 3, 1913): Sec. 5, 1.
12. “Women’s Auxiliary for Police Reserve,” New York Timess (May 10,
1918): 11.
13. Ibid., 11.
14. Melchionne, “Policewomen,” 95.
15. Ibid., 58.
17. “Widow Is Named a Police Deputy,” New York Timess (January 29,
1918): 1.
19. See Melchionne, “Policewoman,” 45–95; Brown, A Century of Women
in Policing, 6–10.
20. Segrave, Policewomen n 55.
21. Mary E. Hamilton, The Policewoman: Her Service and Idealss (New York:
Frederick A. Stokes, 1924): 69–77.
22. Ibid., 4.
23. “Police Jobs Attract Women,” New York Timess (November 6, 1939): 22.
24. “The New Policewoman,” New York Timess (March 3, 1926): 11.
26. Dorothy Moses Schulz, From Social Worker to Crimefighterr (New York:
Praeger, 1995): 242.
Not e s 213
27. See, for example, William H. Chafe, The American Woman: Her
Changing Social, Economic and Political Roless (London: Oxford
University Press, 1974); Rochelle Gatlin, American Women since 1945
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1987); Karen Anderson,
Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women
during WW III (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981); Alice Kessler-
Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the U.S.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); D’Ann Campbell, Women
at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era a (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); Maria Diedrich and Dorthea
Fischer-Hornung, eds., Women and War: The Changing Status of
American Women from the 1930s to the 1950ss (New York: Berg); Julia
Kirk Blackwelder, Now Hiring: The Feminization of Work in the United
States, 1900–1995 5 (College Station: TX: Texas A&M Press, 1997);
Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by
Sex during World War III (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,
1987).
28. Anderson, Wartime Women, 11.
29. Ibid., 177; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, 299.
30. Campbell, Women at War with America, 237.
31. Milkman, Gender at Work, 9; The boundaries between women’s and
men’s work shifted their location, but were not eliminated. Employers
called essentially similar jobs by different titles and then filled the lower-
paying jobs with women. Sex segregation in employment continued to
be supported by an ideology that assumed that any occupation filled
mainly by women had less value than work done by men. See Gatlin,
American Women since 1945, 2.
32. Diedrich and Fischer-Hornung, Women and War, 6.
33. “Victory Dinner of the Policewomen’s Association,” Spring 3100
(November, 1945): 10–14.
34. Campbell, Women at War with America, 22, 34.
35. Leisa D. Meyer, Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s
Army Corps during WW III (New York: Columbia University Press,
1996): 3; Diedrich and Fischer-Hornung, Women and War, 7.
36. The presence of women in the military has been viewed as depriv-
ing young men of their manhood. This has often been coupled with
the myth that the purpose for which men fight is to protect women.
See Lucinda Joy Peach, “Gender Ideology in the Ethics of Women in
Combat,” in Judith Hicks Stiehm, ed., It’s Our Military Too! Women
and the U.S. Militaryy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996):
156–194; Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States
since the 1930ss (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995): 107;
Campbell, Women at War with America, 37–43.
37. Meyer, Creating GI Jane, 52–53.
38. Ibid., 148–178.
39. Campbell, Women at War with America, 25.
214 No t e s
40. Brenda L. Moore, “From Under Representation to Over Representation:

African American Women,” in It’s Our Military Too! Women and the
U.S. Military, 120.
41. Ibid., 121.
42. Martha S. Putney, When the Nation Was in Need: Blacks in the Women’s
Army Corps during World War III (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992).
43. Meyer, Creating GI Jane, 30.
44. Ibid., 180.
45. “War and Post-war Police Problems: Delinquency-Juvenile or Parental,”
Police Chieff (February, 1943); See also “Selection and Training of
Personnel in the Police Department, Spring 3100 0 (April, 1941): 26–41;
NYPD, Policewoman Position Description n (August 27, 1947), New York
Municipal Records, Civil Service Announcement.
46. “War and Post-war Police Problems,” 1–3.
47. “Techniques for Repressing Unorganized Prostitution,” Police Chief
(November–December, 1942): 17–18.
48. Women in law enforcement defended the sexual promiscuity of women
in a way that played into men’s definitions of them as passive victims.
See, for example, Rhoada J. Milliken, “The Role of the Policewomen’s
Bureau in Combating Prostitution,” Federal Probation n (April/June
1943): 20–22.
49. Eleanore Louise Hutzel, Policewomen’s Handbookk (New York: Columbia
50. Irma Buwalda, “The Policewoman,” Police Journall (February, 1946): 6–7.
51. Likewise, Lois Higgins, president of the International Association
of Women Police, drafted a resolution at the end of World War II to
outline women’s commitment to aiding law enforcement administra-
tors in this limited role. In particular, it was the policewoman’s place
to “prevent juvenile delinquent from becoming a commercial prosti-
tute and to remove environmental ‘moral hazards’ leading to delin-
quency and crime.” National Women’s Advisory Committee on Social
Protection of the Federal Security Agencyy (Washington, DC: National
Advisory Police Commission on Social Protection). Techniques of
Law Enforcement in the Use of Policewomen with Special Reference to
n (Washington DC: Federal Security Agency, Office of
Social Protection
Community War Services—Social Protection Division, 1945) quoted in
“Historical Background of Policewomen’s Service,” Journal of Crime,
Law, Criminology, and Police Sciencee (May 23, 1945): 833.
52. “Some Cops Have Lovely Legs,” Saturday Evening Postt (December 24,
1949): 11.
53. “The Cop Is a Lady!” Sunday Mirrorr (July 11, 1948): 13.
54. “Some Cops Have Lovely Legs,” 12.
55. “Detective Story, Female Department,” New York Times Magazine
(February 28, 1960): 48.
56. “She Dopes Peddlers,” This Week Magazinee [1950]. See New York City
Municipal Records, New York City Policewomen, Vertical File.
Not es 215
57. US National Advisory Police Commission on Social Protection,

Techniques of Law Enforcement in the Use of Policewomen with Special
n (Washington, DC: Federal Security Agency,
Reference to Social Protection
Office of Community War Services—Social Protection Division, 1945).
58. Ibid., 37.
59. Ibid., 38.
60. Police departments around the country increasingly recruited women
for traffic duty in the postwar period. By 1954 the number of women
working as traffic cops tripled. See “Women Are Tougher as Traffic
Police,” American Cityy (May, 1954): 183. In New York, Commissioner
F. W. Adams boasted about how he was able to increase the number of
personnel doing patrol work by replacing with women those men work-
ing as crossing guards. The replacement of men with women allowed
for a downgrading of the job, which meant lower pay for the newly
employed women. See Commissioner F. W. Adams, Radio Transcript,
July 24, 1955, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Papers, Box #104, Folder
#1241, New York City Municipal Archives; Alan E. Lawder, “Women
School Crossing Guards,” Law and Orderr (October, 1957): 8–9.
61. A good deal of the humor in the cartoons in Spring 3100 0 in the 1940s
and 1950s keys in on heterosexuality of policemen as normative. Perhaps
a good deal of this has to do with the degree to which police forces
increasingly cracked down on gay cruising areas and sought to rout out
deviants in the gay community. See John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual
Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States,
1940–1970 0 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983): 46–49.
62. “For Better or Worse,” Spring 3100 0 (June, 1945): 18.
63. “Model Wife Courses for Women,” Spring 3100 0 (December, 1946): 18.
64. “What Price for Glamour?,” Spring 3100 0 (January, 1947): 16.
65. “Cover Girl,” Spring 3100 0 (December, 1949): 22. On a national level,
policewomen had difficulties making the distinction between social
worker and policewomen, but indicated an awareness of the importance
of maintaining that distinction. IAWP president Lois Higgins conceded
that “The two areas of endeavor are similar in aim and purpose, but dif-
ferent in philosophy and method. The needs of the human beings who
come into contact with the workers in each field are similar. The ultimate
aim is to rehabilitate the human being.” In other words, both profes-
sions operated in the same female domain, but there something vaguely
distinct and unique about the philosophy of police work that possibly
merited better compensation. See “Women Police Service,” Journal of
Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Sciencee (June, 1950): 101–106.
66. Evabel Tenney, “Women’s Work in Law Enforcement,” Journal of
Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Sciencee (July/August, 1953): 239.
67. Ibid., 241.
68. Ibid., 241.
69. Ibid., 243.
70. Ibid., 245.
216 No t es
71. Ibid., 7.
72. S. E. Rinck, “Arresting Females: The Policewoman’s Story,” Law and
Orderr (November, 1953): 6; See also “Crime Busters in Skirts,” Readers
Digestt (November, 1957): 222–225.
73. “Policewomen Deny Trying to Boss Men,” New York Timess (May 5,
1954): 17; “Policewomen Asking for Equality With Men,” New York
Timess (May 3, 1954): 22.
74. Felicia Shpritzer, “A Case for the Promotion of Policewomen in the
City of New York,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police
Sciencee (December, 1959): 6.
75. “Cupid on the Trail of Lady Cops,” World Telegram m (April 1, 1946).
76. “New York’s Finest Female Division,” New York Times Magazine
(November 20, 1955): 26.
77. Ibid., 27.
78. Ibid.
79. The International Association of Policewomen (IAP) was initially orga-
nized on May 17, 1915. The Policewomen’s Association disseminated
information about policewomen to police agencies and the general public
and actively promoted the concept of police department’s hiring police-
women to perform preventative and protective work with juveniles and
females. Most of the members wanted to be recognized as being separate
from male officers to improve their own standards and career mobility
and to publicize their existence. Most of policewomen in the Association
had bachelor’s degrees or more and had background in social work,
teaching, or nursing. These women professionals considered themselves
unique and different from their male counterparts. They viewed them-
selves as social service workers rather than “cops” and as such brought
the philosophy of social work. Most women’s duties were preventative
in nature and dealt with juvenile delinquency, female criminality, miss-
ing persons, and aiding and interviewing victims of sex offenses. The
IAPW was unable to function in 1932 after financial benefactors died.
The IAWP was renamed and revised in 1956. See Peter Horne, Women
in Law Enforcementt (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1975).
80. See D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 37–40; Meyerowitz,
Not June Cleaver, 3–7.
81. Higgins, Dr. Lois, Address to Annual Convention of the IAWP, “The
Feminine Force in Law Enforcement,” March 17, 1958.
82. “122 Pass Physical for Policewoman,” New York Timess (August 17,
1956): 20. .
83. Higgins, Lois, “Golden Anniversary of Women in Police Service,” Law
and Orderr (August, 1960): 4–16.
84. The claim that women committed fewer crimes than men was gener-
ally true. According to NYPD Annual Reports, women constituted
3.45 percent of the total number of arrests and summonses in 1962.
New York City Police Department Annual Report, 1962.
Not es 217
85. Lois Higgins, Policewomen’s Manuall (Springfield, IL: Charles C.

Thomas, 1961), xiii.
86. Lois Higgins, “Women in Law Enforcement,” Law and Orderr (August,
1962): 22–26.
87. Lewis Milton, “Are You as Smart as a Cop?,” This Week Magazine
(January 22, 1956).
88. Ibid.
89. Bosch, Chaplain A. Edmund, “The Spiritual Attitude of the Police
Officer,” Spring 3100
0 (March, 1956): 15.
90. “This Is Your Policeman,” New York City Police Department, New
York City Municipal Archives, Mayor Robert Wagner Papers, Box #104,
Folder #1237, Police Department, Press Release.
91. Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield: The Police in Urban Society
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967): 21.
92. Shpritzer v. Lang,
g Supreme Court of New York, December 8, 1961. 32
Misc. 2d 693; 224 N.Y.S.2d 105.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid., Author’s emphasis.
96. Shpritzer v. Lang,
g Court of Appeals of New York, June 6, 1963. 13
N.Y.2d 744; 191 N.E.2d 919; 241 N.Y.S.2d 869.
97. “Lady Police Captain Packs Quiet Punch,” Long Island Presss (November
15, 1971): 8.
3 Harlem and Civilian Review

1. For example, see August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study
in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942–1968 8 (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 1975): 250–251. While few Puerto Rican New Yorkers
would participate in the 1964 riots, they shared a history of protest with
members of the black community, if not always in tandem. They too
would unleash a similar riot in East Harlem in the summer of 1967. See
“East Harlem: Do Not Cross Flat Foot!” Nation n (August 14, 1967):
107; Federico Ribes Tovar, El Libro Peurtorriqueno de Nueva Yorka
(New York: Plus Ultra Educational, 1970): 46; Alfredo Lopez, The
Puerto Rican Papers: Notes on the Re-emergence of a Nation n (New York:
Bobbs-Merill, 1973): 213–214. In addition, the residential segrega-
tion and mobility patterns of Puerto Rican New Yorkers were more like
those of blacks, as they often lived in mixed settlement areas. See Terry
J. Rosenberg, “Residence, Employment, and Mobility of Puerto Ricans
in New York City,” PhD diss., Department of Geography, University
of Chicago, 1974, 204; Clara E. Rodriguez, Puerto Ricans, Born in the
U.S.A. (Boston: Uwin Hyman, 1989): 106–119.
2. Barry Gottehrer, New York City in Crisiss (New York: David McKay,
1965): 106–119.
218 No t e s
3. For overviews on 1960s political culture, see John Morton Blum, Years
of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961–1974 4 (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1991); William O’Neill, Coming Apart: An Informal History of
America in the 1960ss (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); Kim McQuaid,
The Anxious Years: America in the Vietnam-Watergate Era a (New York:
Basic Books, 1989); Allen J. Matusow w, The Unraveling of America: A
History of Liberalism in the 1960ss (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).
4. Charles R. Morris, The Cost of Good Intentions: The Liberal Experiment,
1960–1975 5 (New York: Norton, 1970): 94.
5. Ibid., 95.
6. Ibid.
7. See Fred C. Shapiro and James W. Sullivan, Race Riots: New York, 1964
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1964): 1–4.
8. Gerald Astor, The New York Cops: An Informal Historyy (New York:
Charles Scribner Sons, 1971): 176–181. Some white journalists, like
Murray Kempton, writing for the New Republic, questioned the ability
of the NYPD to keep its own house in order, when police officers serv-
ing on the review board had every interest to protect their fellow men
in blue. See “How Cops Behave in Harlem,” New Republicc (August
22, 1964): 7–8. Other publications provided the counterargument
that, because of liberals, the police department’s hands were tied, and
they were, therefore, unable to fight “criminals, hoodlums, and delin-
quents.” See “New York’s Finest,” Commentaryy (August, 1965): 29.
9. “Speaking Out: Civilians Shouldn’t Judge Cops,” Saturday Evening
Postt (May 7, 1966): 12.
10. Shapiro and Sullivan, Race Riots, s 7.
11. Ibid., 131.
12. Almost all black activist organizations, including the Congress for
Racial Equality, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, the Black Muslims, and the Harlem Progressive Labor
Movement, agreed that police brutality laid at the heart of the rioting.
While they debated the degree to which looting, arson, and theft were
political actions against injustice, all agreed that the rioting could not
have taken place without a long and powerful history of police brutal-
ity against black residents of New York. See Shapiro and Sullivan, Race
Riots,s 10–13.
13. “Editorial,” New York Amsterdam Newss (July 25, 1964): 2.
14. The first agency created in New York City to hear complaints against
police brutality was instituted in 1952. It was made in response to
demands by the New York Civil Liberties Union and Representatives
Adam Clayton Powell and Jacob Javits. The review board, despite the
intention of its proponents, consisted solely of police personnel and
had no civilian representation. See J. P. Viteritti, Police, Politics, and
Pluralism in New York Cityy (Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 1973): 24.
15. “Mayor, Council Together,” New York Amsterdam Newss (August 15,
1964): 1.
Not e s 219
16. “Negroes in Poll Ask for More Police,” New York Timess (September 9,
1966): 23. In addition to criticizing the inadequate numbers of police
officers in their neighborhoods, black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers
called attention to the police acceptance of crime as “normal” in minor-
ity communities. See Kenneth Clark, “The Wonder Is There Have Been
so Few Riots,” in August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, ed., Black Protest
in the Sixtiess (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970): 109.
17. See “Police Told to End Extra Harlem Unit,” New York Timess (July 19,
1959): 70; “Action on Harlem Sunk by Mayor,” New York Times
(July 22, 1959): 57. Even before the riots, civil rights leaders like Adam
Clayton Powell had been calling for more black police officers in Harlem
who would be more understanding of the social and cultural values of
the community. Assemblyman Bessie Buchanan similarly argued that
black and Puerto Rican police would better understand the problems
“of their people.” She recommended that every squad car have a black
and a white policeman. “The Policeman: The Black Cop,” New York
Postt (November 13, 1968): 22.
18. Ruth Cowen, The New York City Civilian Review Board Referendum of
November 1966: A Case Study of Mass Politicss (PhD Thesis, New York
University, 1970): 43.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 138.
21. “The People Must Have a Say,” New York Amsterdam Newss (October
29, 1966): 1.
22. “On the Beat,” Spring 3100 0 (September, 1957): 12.
23. Ibid.
24. “Unofficial Citizen Panel to Study Accusations of Police Brutality,”
New York Timess (May 23, 1964): 11.
25. Cowen, The New York City Civilian Review Board Referendum of
November 1966, 138.
26. “The Police Trainee Program: Policemen of Tomorrow,” Spring 3100
(June, 1968): 21.
27. The program was instituted on May 9, 1966. See James I. Alexander,
Blue Coats, Black Skin: The Black Experience in the New York City Police
Department since 1891 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1978): 78–80.
28. Telegram from Floyd B. McKissick to Mayor J[ohn] Lindsay, May 4,
1966. New York City Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers, Departmental
Correspondence, Box #68, Folder #857.
29. Frank Zullo, “The Effect of the Civil Rights Movement on Administration
in the New York City Police Department” (Masters Thesis, City
University of New York, Department of Public Administration,
1968): 41.
30. Commissioner Leary vehemently opposed having John Birchers among
his ranks but felt that he was not authorized to challenge officers’ affili-
ations. Perhaps this had to do with his tolerance of officers like Leonard
Weir who organized black officers into the Afro-American Society—an
220 No t e s
informal, militant version of the Guardians Association. See Seymour

Martin Lipset, “Why Cops Hate Liberals and Vice Versa,” in William
J. Bopp, The Police Rebellion: The Quest for Blue Powerr (Springfield, IL:
Charles C. Thomas, 1971): 23–39; “Police Birchites: The Blue Backlash,”
Nationn (December 7, 1964): 425; “Leary to Allow Birchers in Force,”
New York Timess (February 23, 1966): 1; “Mayor Denounces the Birch
Society,” New York Times,s (February 25, 1966): 1; “Leary Assails Birchers;
Seeks Advice on Legality,” New York Timess (March 12, 1966): 1; “Bircher
Charges Police Harassing,” New York Timess (March 19, 1966): 1.
31. Vincent Cannato, The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle
to Save New Yorkk (New York: Basic Books, 2001): 123.
32. “Mayor Receives a Pledge to ‘Cool’ Brooklyn Unrest,” New York Times
(July 24, 1966): 1; “A Knifing Alerts East New York,” New York Times
(June 16, 1967): 40.
33. Immediately following the riots, acting mayor Paul R. Screvane
sent more black police to patrol the streets of Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant, full well realizing that residents would be less likely to riot
against them. See “Acting Mayor Screvane Announces Civilian Review
Plans,” New York Timess (July 21, 1964): 1.
34. Civil rights groups had suggested for years that racial bias was behind
the failure of a black police captain to be given a command assignment.
In appointing Sealy, Murphy had to skip over a number of senior white
captains who were also waiting for promotion. “Mayor Tours Harlem
in Unmarked Vehicle,” New York Amsterdam Newss (July 25, 1964): 3.
35. “Police Shake-Up Begun by Leary,” New York Timess (February 26,
1966): 1; “Harlem Police Leader: Lloyd George Sealy,” New York
36. “Harlem’s Plea,” New York Amsterdam Newss (July 25, 1964): 1.
37. “Murphy Appoints a Negro to Head Harlem Precinct,” New York Times
(August 15, 1964): 1.
38. Ibid.
39. “Captain Sealy Appointed to 28th Precinct,” New York Timess (July
15, 1964): 1; “White Sergeants in Harlem Precincts Replaced by Five
Negroes,” New York Timess (July 28, 1964): 1; “Wagner Orders More
Recruiting from Minority Groups,” New York Timess (August 7, 1964): 1.
40. “Harlem Killings Reported Urged,” New York Timess (July 28, 1964): 1.
41. “Captain Sealy Appointed to 28th Precinct,” New York Timess (July 15,
1964): 1.
42. Sealy would later go on to command all uniformed forces in Brooklyn
North—the scene of racial strife during the summer of 1964—and then
move on to assistant chief inspector. See “Sealy Gets a New Police Post,
Highest Ever by a Negro,” New York Timess (September 27, 1966): 9.
43. Robert Fogelson, “From Resentment to Confrontation: The Police, the
Negroes, and the Outbreak of 1960s Riots,” Political Science Quarterly
(June, 1968): 220. Historians George Rude and Eric Hobsbawn, writing
about seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century Europe, have
Not es 221
illustrated the ways in which conservatives successfully identified political

crowds, mobs, and riots as criminal in character as a means of denigrat-
ing the participants as savages. Each found examples of respectable and
employed people among the purported “rabble,” which was defined as
criminal and illegitimate. See George Rude, The Crowd in History: A Study
of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848 8 (London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1981): 47–65; Eric Hobsbawn, Primitive Rebels:
Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movementss (Manchester, England:
Manchester University Press: 1959): 111–116. Likewise, Allan Silver
sees the imagery of “dangerous classes” being reborn in America’s urban
poor, especially blacks. See Allan Silver, “The Demand for Order in Civil
Society: A Review of Some Themes in the History of Urban Crime,
Police and Riot,” in David J. Bordua, ed., The Police: Six Sociological
Essayss (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967): 1–24.
44. Sullivan and Crowell, 42.
45. On rioting in the nineteenth century, see Paul A. Gilje, The Road to
Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 4 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Paul O. Weinbaum,
Mobs and Demagogues: The New York Response to Collective Violence in
the Early Nineteenth Centuryy (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press,
1979); Joel Tyler Headly, The Great Riots of New York, 1712–1873
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970); Richard Moody, The Astor Place Riot
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1958); Richard Hofstader
and Michael Wallace, American Violence: A Documentary Historyy (New
York: Vintage, 1970); Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots:
Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the
Civil Warr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
46. “Murder a Day,” Nation n (August 28, 1954): 165–166.
47. The 1960s census reported that 892,513 people of Puerto Rican origin
lived in the United States, with three quarters of that population in New
York City alone. On this migration, see Tovar, El Libro Peurtorriqueno
de Nueva Yorka, 20–27.
48. “One More Nightstick,” Nation n (September 12, 1959): 123. The arti-
cle also identifies discrimination, which caused poor housing, low levels
of education, and poor employment prospects, as the cause of crime.
49. Lopez, The Puerto Rican Papers, 211.
50. Many Puerto Ricans arrived in New York at the nadir of the civil rights
movement. For most Puerto Ricans, civil rights meant educational
access and fair treatment, but the leaders of the civil rights movement
were defining the problem in terms of color and de facto segregation.
Therefore, when Puerto Ricans became involved in civil rights action,
they were fighting an issue that many of them did not recognize. To
some extent, their fear of being identified with American blacks led them
to withdraw from the movement or form movements of their own. See
Joseph Fitzpatrick, Puerto Rican Americans: The Meaning of Migration to
the Mainland d (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971): 101–114.
222 No t e s
51. Lorrin Thomas, Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity
in Twentieth-Century New York Cityy (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2010): 137.
52. “Leibowitz Urges Cut in Migration to Combat Crimes,” New York
Timess (September 25, 1959): 1; Although the term “Carribean” pre-
sumably included non-Hispanic immigrants, the number of English-
speaking West Indians migrating to New York City was limited before
1970 due to discriminatory immigration laws in 1924 and 1952. Like
Joseph Fitzpatrick, sociologist Philip Kasinitz illustrates how all per-
sons of anyy known African ancestry, regardless of somatic character-
istics, were considered “black” in Americas, and, therefore, have been
subject to all of the social and legal disadvantages that this implies. See
Philip Kasinitz, Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics
of Racee (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992): 25–32.
53. Ibid., 1; On the racial dynamics and environmental causes of juve-
nile delinquency in the 1950s, see James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage:
America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950ss (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1986).
54. “Spanish Course Inaugurated at Police Academy,” Spring 3100
(November, 1953): 12.
55. Michael J. Murphy, Press Release, August 17, 1961, Municipal Archives
of New York, Mayor Robert Wagner Papers, Box #106, Folder#1244,
Police Department, Press Release.
56. “Police Move to Win Puerto Rican Amity,” New York Timess (January 15,
1964): 1; “I Don’t Think the Cop Is My Friend,” New York Times
Magazinee (March 29, 1964): 28
57. “Police Parley Set on Puerto Ricans,” New York Timess (January 16,
1964): 27.
58. “Police Move to Win Puerto Rican Amity,” New York Timess (January 15,
1964): 1.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. “Residents of East Harlem Found to Have Ingredients for Violence,”
New York Timess (July 27, 1967): 20.
63. “Puerto Ricans Demonstrate for a Civilian Review Board,” New York
Timess (February 14, 1964): 31.
64. “Lindsay Is Assailed by Puerto Ricans,” New York Timess (April 19,
1966): 27.
65. “History,” NYPD Hispanic Society, http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb
/html/history.html. Accessed March 19, 2012.
66. Ibid.
67. “Puerto Rico Bid on Rights Is Made,” New York Timess (December
31, 1931): 26; “Police Boycotted by Puerto Ricans,” New York Times
(April 10, 1965): 31.
Not es 223
68. Puerto Rican New Yorkers walked a fine line between by distancing
themselves from the rioters and dubbing themselves “a peaceful peo-
ple,” while empathizing with its causes. See “Creen Boricuas no se Veran
Envueltos en la Violencia,” El Diario La Prensa a (July 22, 1964): 3;
“Investigan Policia Par Muerte de Nino,” El Diario La Prensa a (July 19,
1964): 1.
69. “Where Police Are Not Safe,” U.S. News and World Reportt (October
10, 1961): 106.
70. Ibid., 72. White youths could prove themselves just as capable of vio-
lence as black teens who took to the streets. For example, after the
shooting of Powell, a number of CORE workers set up a picket line at
New York’s police headquarters on Manhattan’s Centre Street, a pre-
dominately white Italian neighborhood. White teens shelled the picket-
ers with rocks, bottles, and rotten eggs yelling, “Go back to Harlem!”
and “Goldwater for president!” See “Hatred in the Streets,” Newsweek
(August 3, 1964): 16–20. The assaults on police officers in the 1960s
ought not be minimized, but the grandiosity of the kinds of claims
being made by the mainstream press did a disservice to the potential for
substantive dialogue about crime and poverty in America’s ghettos.
71. The fear that black protest was spreading to the North was already a prob-
lem before the riots in 1964. Civil rights groups noted that this was simply
the last massive assault on “northern style discrimination and segrega-
tion.” They identified the causes of population pressure, lack of access to
education, housing discrimination, and poor employment opportunities.
Dissatisfied with gradualism, even the more moderate civil rights orga-
nizations demanded freedom in the present. See Blum, Years of Discord;
“New York’s Racial Unrest: Negroes’ Anger Mounting,” New York
Timess (August 12, 1963): 1. No doubt, southern politicians delighted
in racial friction in New York city, a purported bastion of liberalism that
was often critical of southern racial politics. See “Southern Senator Finds
Unrest Here,” New York Timess (July 31, 1959): 6; “Georgian Attacks
Segregation Here,” New York Timess (June 13, 1956): 7; “New York City
in Trouble,” U.S. News and World Reportt (June 15, 1964): 44–45.
72. On the radicalization of civil rights activists in mainstream organizations,
see Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of
the 1960ss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981): 214–216;
Inge Powell Bell, CORE and the Strategy of Non-violencee (New York:
Random House, 1968): 169–173; Stokely Carmichael and Charles
V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America a (New
York: Random House, 1968).
73. “Ghetto Ignites,” Nation n (August 10, 1964): 49–51.
74. “Nobody Wants to Hear that Nonsense in Harlem,” New Republic
(October 16, 1965): 20.
75. Robert M. Fogelson, Violence as Protest: A Study of the Riots and Ghettos
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971).
224 No t e s
76. Meier and Rudwick, Black Protest in the Sixties, 301–302.

77. “Harlem: Hatred in the Streets,” Newsweekk (August 3, 1964): 16–17.
78. Ibid., 18.
79. Ibid., 19.
80. Ibid.
81. “Ghetto Ignites,” Nation n (August 10, 1964): 50.
82. Edwin R. Lewinson, Black Politics in New York Cityy (New York: Twayne,
1974): 98.
83. Murphy would often praise civil rights activists as “men of intelligence,
stature, and good judgement,” but would denounce what he under-
stood to be the more fringe elements of that movement who made
false claims about police brutality. Time and time again, he cut off dia-
logue—which he worked hard to create—with black and Puerto Rican
communities by scoffing at claims that the department had a systemic
problem with brutal cops. See Michael J. Murphy, “New York Board of
Trade,” April 23, 1964, in Civil Rights and the Police: A Compilation of
Speechess (New York: New York City Police Department, 1964); Michael
J. Murphy, “Luncheon Meeting of Engineers’ Club,” April 28, 1964,
in Civil Rights and the Police: A Compilation of Speechess (New York:
New York City Police Department, 1964); “Murphy Assails Critics of
Police,” New York Timess (August 23, 1963): 48.
84. Civil rights groups had lobbied for the resignation of Commissioner
Murphy because of his seeming indifference to police brutality.
Contemporaries believed that these groups would now be less likely to
translate their resentment against Murphy into anti-Wagner votes in the
fall. See “Head of Force Will Direct Automobile Theft Bureau,” New
York Timess (May 19, 1965): 1.
85. Among the rank-and-file officers in the department, the consensus
seemed to be that Commissioner Murphy’s resignation was closely
linked to the City Council’s recommendation to establish a permanent
group to review police department findings of police brutality. Some
rank-and-file officers predicted a strike if civilian review were to prevail.
See “Police Stunned by Murphy Action,” New York Timess (July 19,
1965): 1.
86. Murphy stayed on the force and was transferred to the automobile divi-
sion (ibid., 99). See also “Inside Report: Lindsay vs Police,” Herald
Tribunee (February 17, 1966): 12.
87. Vincent Broderick to Mayor John Lindsay, February 8, 1966, New York
Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers, Box #85, Folder #83.
88. “Broderick Is Firm on Review Board,” New York Timess (January 29,
1966): 1.
89. Vincent Broderick to Mayor John Lindsay, February 8, 1966, New York
Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers, Box #85, Folder #83.
90. J. P. McFadden, “Who Will Police the Police,” National Review w (April 5,
1966): 311.
91. Viteritti, Police, Politics and Pluralism in New York City, 24.
Not es 225
92. Prior to the initial review board in 1953, complaints were handled in local
precincts. After the creation of a police review board, complaints could be
made in writing, in person, or by telephone. The officer in charge of the
investigation interviewed all of the witnesses, and then decided if it was
necessary to hold a hearing. The investigating officer then made a deci-
sion about whether the case should be filed, a reprimand made, or a trail
to be held. The problem, for civil rights advocates and Mayor Lindsay,
was that the public was entirely excluded from such decision-making pro-
cesses. See the Committee on Civil Rights, Civilian Complaints against
the Policee (New York: New York County Lawyers Association, 1965).
93. John V. Lindsay, The Cityy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970): 88.
94. “Not Exactly a Jimmy Cagney Cop: Police Commissioner Leary,” New
York Times Magazinee (October 30, 1966): 28.
95. “Employment Issue—Civilian Review,” Herald Tribunee (February 16,
1966): 1.
96. “Howard R. Leary Named Commissioner,” Spring 3100 0 (March, 1966):
42.
97. Ibid., 29.
98. Viterriti, Police, Politics and Pluralism in New York City, 25.
99. Ironically, that very philosophy would later be employed to attack affir-
mative action. In other words, the incorporation of black and Puerto
Rican men and women into white male bastions of work would come to
be seen as an assault on the nation’s status as a meritocracy. By the late
1960s, conservatives were already arguing that affirmative action placed
color and gender ahead of ability, in much the same way that civil rights
activists and feminists earlier argued that affirmative action was meant
to disrupt personal networks of exclusion.
100. “Not Exactly a Jimmy Cagney Cop,” 29.
101. Lindsay proposed the review board after it had been introduced by
city councilman Theodore Weiss as legislation to investigate charges of
police brutality. See “Brutality Cases Urged for Study,” New York Times
(April 7, 1964): 1.
102. Howard R. Leary, “Crime in the City: Can’t It Be Controlled?” Vital
Speechess (October 15, 1967): 22–23.
103. The board was set up under an executive order issued by Commissioner
Leary, amending the department’s rules and regulations. Although civil
liberties and civil rights groups expressed disappointment at what they
termed a “compromise” that fell short of a fully independent civilian
review, they hailed the appointment of Algernon D. Black, senior leader
of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, Manual Diaz, chief consul-
tant and acting director of the Puerto Rican community Development
Project, and Thomas R. Farrell, a lawyer who was a former president of
the Bronx chapter of the Catholic Interracial Council. Commissioner
Leary appointed the three policemen, including one black and two
white officers. See “No! Says the PBA,” New York Times Magazine
(October 16, 1966): 36.
226 No t e s
104. For a summary of Lindsay’s ascension to mayor as it relates to the

review board issue, see David W. Abbot, Police, Politics, and Race: The
New York City Referendum on Civilian Review w (Cambridge: American
Jewish Committee, Joint Center for Urban Studies of Massachusetts
and Harvard, 1969). While Senators Javits and Kennedy were ardent
supporters of the bill, Rockefeller supported it only tentatively, and
refused to campaign on its behalf when it was put on the 1966 ballot
as a referendum item. See “Governor Backs Civilian Run Police Review
Panel,” New York Timess (September 15, 1966): 1; “City Police Board
Called U.S. Issue,” New York Timess (October 13, 1966): 17.
105. Civil rights leaders, like James Farmer of CORE, upon hearing about
Leary’s appointment, said the feeling was “one of relief and hope that
the new commissioner will deal with the problems of brutality on
minority members instead of ignoring them.” See “Police Stunned by
Murphy Action,” New York Timess (July 19, 1965): 23.
106. Also, in response to the demonstrations, the NYPD devised and
instructed its members in the principles and tactics of crowd control,
and reshaped its community relations efforts to place greater emphasis
upon police-black relationships. Zullo, “The Effect of the Civil Rights
Movement,” 24; “Bedrock of Community Relations,” Spring 3100
(May, 1966): 7; “Civil Rights Groups Back Leary Appointment,” New
York Timess (August 29, 1966): 15.
107. The Committee on Civil Rights, Civilian Complaints against the Police.
108. “No! Says the PBA,” New York Times Magazinee (October 6, 1966):
36–37.
109. “Leary Announces His Review Board,” New York Timess (November 23,
1966): 1.
110. Algernon D. Black, The Police and the Peoplee (New York: MacGraw-
Hill, 1969): 71–100; “Civilian Review of the Police,” Lifee (October 21,
1966): 4; “New Police Board Has Two Negroes and a Puerto Rican,”
111. Viteritti, Police, Politics and Pluralism in New York City, 26
112. “No! Says the PBA,” New York Times Magazinee (October 16, 1966):
36–37.
113. “PBA Plans Door-to-Door Fight against Review,” New York Times
(September 26, 1966): 20.
114. “PBA Reports Stand on CCRB,” Spring 3100 0 (September 1966): 30–32.
University Press, 1996): 73.
116. No! Says the PBA,” New York Times Magazinee (October 16, 1966):
36–37.
117. Ibid., 37.
118. “The Civilian Review Board,” New York Amsterdam Newss (October 22,
1966): 1.
119. Another prominent argument against civilian review was the fact that it
had been tried in nearby Rochester and Philadelphia, but produced fewer
Not es 227
substantive numbers of complaints. By the same token, there seemed

to be no indication, as New York’s PBA claimed, that it destroyed the
morale of the Philadelphia or Rochester police departments. See “Who
Polices the Police,” Timee (April 30, 1965): 58; “Study Bids Council Set
Up Own Unit to Curb Abuses,” New York Timess (May 19, 1965): 1;
“Policing the Police,” Newsweekk (March 7, 1966): 27–28; “Employment
Issue—Civilian Review,” Herald Tribunee (February 16, 1966): 12.
120. “Senators Back Mayor on Police,” New York Timess (August 25, 1966): 1.
121. “PBA Head Scores a Civilian Review,” New York Timess (August 3,
1964): 1.
122. “PBA Plans Door-to-Door Fight against Review,” 20; “Policemen to Sue
for Writ Barring Civilian Review,” New York Timess (May 9, 1966): 1.
123. The officers were responding directly to the Gilligan’s harassment at the
hand of civil rights protestors. On the previous Saturday, demonstra-
tors from Brooklyn’s chapter of Freedom Now marched on Gilligan’s
residence in Stuyvesant Town—a historical bastion of exclusive white
housing at the time. See “Off-Duty Policemen Picket to Protest Attacks
on Gilligan,” New York Timess (May 31, 1965): 1.
124. “Summer Upheaval,” Spring 3100 0 (September, 1964): 24–27.
125. Ibid. Interestingly, in reporting on the riots, Spring 3100 0 could not get
a single quote from a politician to back its claims that police officers
were unjustly criticized. Instead, they published quotes from senators
Mike Mansfield of Montana and Frank Lausche of Ohio, who argued
that police were the victims of abuse, insults, and violence. See “Words
of Praise for Police,” Spring 3100 0 (October, 1964): 3.
126. “In the Middle,” Law and Orderr (March, 1965): 38. The Civil Rights
Commission found enough cases where the issue was beyond reasonable
doubt to conclude that police brutality was a serious problem, and that
it disproportionately affected poor black communities. See Fogelson,
From Violence to Protest, 56–60.
127. “Police Decry Bill for Review Panel,” New York Timess (June 17, 1964): 1.
128. For example, the police investigation manual of the 1960s asked
potential officers to confirm their allegiance to the US government
by swearing that they were never part of any communist or subver-
sive organization. George P. McManus and Alexander T. Davis, Police
Investigation Manuall (New York: NYPD, 1960). The NYPD publica-
tion, Spring 3100, argued that all attacks on police officers were the
products of communist propaganda. See “Sifting for the Finest,” Spring
31000 (November, 1962): 5–7.
129. “Police Brutality,” U.S. News & World Reportt (September 27, 1965):
116–117. The parallels between fighting communists at home and abroad
led police officials to adopt the “devices and tactics tested in battle against
communist guerillas in the jungles of Vietnam,” in battling rioters in the
crime-ridden streets of American cities. See “Latest Moves against Crimes
in the Streets,” U.S. News & World Reportt (April 11, 1966): 38–40.
130. “Policing the Police,” Newsweekk (March 7, 1966): 27–28.
228 No t es
131. “Finest Could Be Finer,” New York Times Magazinee (April 3, 1966):
28–29; Despite such claims about the connection between the Communist
Party and the civil rights movement in New York, the link between the two
was actually quite weak. While black militants and communists were both
victims of police harassment and brutality, in the 1960s the Communist
Party failed to make substantive inroads into black movements for social
justice. See Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds: Race and Conflict,
1919–1990 0 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995).
132. Fogelson, 27.
133. “Police Brutality—Fact or Fiction?” U.S. News and World Report
(September 6, 1965): 37–40.
134. “Take the Handcuffs Off Our Police!” Reader’s Digestt (September,
1964): 64–68.
135. “Behind Those Police Brutality Charges,” Reader’s Digestt (July, 1966):
41–46.
136. The riots had often placed black police in the awkward position of
restraining or arresting activists who protested on behalf of the black
community. In turn, black police officers often found themselves in
the position of taking violent, physical action against other African
Americans. At the same time, black citizens called upon black police
officers to protect them from their overzealous colleagues. See Dulaney,
Black Police in America, 72–73.
137. See “Puerto Ricans Picket Police,” New York Timess (April 11, 1965): 80.
138. “Negro Policeman Criticizes PBA,” New York Timess (August 29, 1966):
15.
139. “Negro Unit Suing PBA over Dues,” New York Timess (November 6,
1966): 86.
140. In an interesting move, Johnson promised that he would disband the
Guardians organization if the other ethnic and religious fraternal orga-
nizations would do the same. For him, such organizations were divisive.
It was only because black police had been so marginalized by the other
organizations that he felt the need to prolong its existence. In particu-
lar, the Emerald Society served as a “power bloc” for Irish officers on
the force. See “Ethnic Societies of Police Scorned by Head of One,”
New York Timess (April 2, 1966): 22.
141. “Negro Cops Ask for a Civilian Review Board: Move Made as
‘Civilians,’” New York Amsterdam Newss (June 12, 1965): 1.
142. “Negro Cops Back Civilian Board,” New York Amsterdam Newss (March
5, 1966): 1.
143. Some recent historians of black police, as well as affirmative action advo-
cates, suggest otherwise, but the evidence is inconclusive. For example,
see W. Marvin Dulaney’s otherwise thoughtful book, Black Police in
America a (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996): 114.
144. Lewinson, Black Politics in New York City, 176.
145. “Cassese Says PBA will Sue Lindsay and Leary,” New York Timess (May 9,
1965): 1.
Not es 229
146. James Hargrove, Interview with the Author, February 5, 1997.

147. Roger Abel, Interview with the Author, January 24, 1997; James
Hargrove, Interview with the Author, February 5, 1997.
148. Lewinson, Black Politics in New York City, 176–192; Nicholas Alex,
Black and Blue: A Study of the Negro Policeman n (New York: Meredith,
1969): 167. The 1960s and 1970s saw a flourishing of organiza-
tions constituted of increasingly vocal black police officers who iden-
tified themselves as the link in the black struggle against oppression.
Organizations like the Afro-Americans Police Officers League and the
Black Police Association aligned themselves with the black community
and the civil rights movement. See Dulaney, 77–80.
149. Despite the fact that this “new” review board was really based on the
old system of limiting it to police personnel, it was dubbed the Civilian
Complain Review Board because of its political currency. The “civil-
ian” part of the title referred only to those who could file complaints,
rather than those serving on the board. See Viteritti, Police, Politics and
Pluralism in New York City, 1973.
150. “Crecen Por Millares, los que Respaldan a la Junta Civil,” El Diario La
Prensaa (November 6, 1964): 3; “Filadelfia Respalda su Junta Civil,” El
Diario La Prensaa (November 4, 1966): 1; “Review Board Is a Central Issue
as Candidates Court Minorities,” New York Timess (November 6, 1966): 1.
151. Ibid., 1; Many Jewish property owners who feared that the mainte-
nance of the police review machinery would diminish the effectiveness
of law enforcement vocally opposed it, while many young Jewish lib-
erals were in the forefront of the fight to keep it. See also Gertrude
Himmelfarb, “Are Jews Still Liberals? How they Voted on Civilian
Review,” Commentaryy (April, 1967): 67–72.
152. “New York State Appeals Court Unanimously Bars Conservative
Question,” New York Timess (October 27, 1966): 1.
153. On the John Birch Society and civil rights, see Benjamin R. Epstein and
Arnold Foster, The Radical Right: Report on the John Birch Society and
Its Alliess (New York: Random House, 1966): 95–106; Gerald Schomp,
Birchism Was My Businesss (New York: Macmillan, 1970): 104–108,
166–174.
154. Queens, Richmond (Staten Island), Brooklyn, and the Bronx all came
out against civilian review. The final vote was 63 percent in favor of
abolishing the board and 36 percent in favor of keeping it. Sociologist
Joseph P. Viteritti sees civilian review as an example of a case in which
the PBA, as a “functional elite,” mobilized the bias of the white majority
in order to frustrate a legitimate demand of the nonwhite citizenry. In
other words, the racial issue prevented the review board question from
being decided on its own merits. Viteritti, Police, Politics and Pluralism
in New York City, 242.
155. Letter from Joseph Modugno to Mayor John V. Lindsay, May 2,
1966, New York Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers, Departmental
Correspondence, Box #68, Folder #857.
230 No t es
156. “Police Review Killed by Large Majority in City,” New York Times
(November 9, 1966): 1.
157. Many white Americans believed that blacks had received just about every-
thing in the way of “special treatment” that the civil rights movement
had demanded. Very early in the 1960s, white conservatives constructed
narratives about the excesses of the civil rights movement. See Harold
Cruse, Plural but Equal: A Critical Study of Blacks and Minorities and
America’s Plural Societyy (New York: William Morrow, 1987): 7–8.
158. “Harlem Went for Board, City Didn’t,” New York Amsterdam News
(November 12, 1966): 1.
159. Historians of the civil rights movement, Benjamin Muse and Robert
Weisbrot, pinpoint the year 1966 as a critical moment of white backlash
against civil rights. For the first time since 1962 when the Gallup poll
was initiated, a majority of Americans found the pace of civil rights
reform was moving “too fast.” See Robert Weisbrot, Freedom Bound: A
History of America’s Civil Rights Movementt (New York: W. W. Norton,
1990): 220; Benjamin Muse, From Nonviolence to Black Power, 1963–
19677 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1968): 255.
4 Ladies on Patrol
1. “The Finest,” New York Amsterdam Newss (May 29, 1965): 16.
2. Ibid.
3. “Policewoman Shoots Suspect on 45th St.,” New York Timess (May 25,
1965): 1.
4. Susan Erlich Martin, Breaking and Entering: Policewomen on Patrol
(Berkeley: California University Press, 1980).
5. Dorothy Moses Schulz, From Social Worker to Crimefighterr (New York:
Praeger, 1995): 132.
6. For an overview of the riots, their social causes, and the role of the
police, see Robert M. Fogelson, Violence as Protest: A Study of Riots
and Ghettoss (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971); Roger W. Wilkins,
Quiet Riots: Race and Poverty in the United Statess (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1988); Ralph Wendell Conant, The Prospects for Revolution: A
Study of Riots, Civil Disobedience, and Insurrection in Contemporary
America a (New York: Harpers Magazine Press, 1970); Joe R. Feagin and
Harlan Hahn, The Politics of Violence in American Citiess (New York:
Collier-Macmillan, 1973); Louis H. Masotti, ed., Riots and Rebellion:
Civil Violence in the Urban Communityy (Beverley Hills, CA: Sage,
1968). For a sociological study on the riots, see Rodney F. Allen and
Charles H. Adair, Violence and Riots in Urban America a (Worthington,
OH: Charles A. Jones, 1969). On the US Army occupation of ghetto
communities as a means of supplementing failed police efforts, see
Garry Wills, The Second Civil War: Arming for Armageddon n (New York:
New American Library, 1968). On the Milwaukee riot, see Karl H.
Flaming, Who Riots and Why? Black and White Perspectives in Milwaukee
Not es 231
(Milwaukee: Milwaukee Urban League, 1968). On Newark, see William

M. Dann, Transitions in the Negro Movement for Community Power in
the Light of Health and Welfare Issues and the Newark Riott (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1968). On Watts, see Paul Bullock, Watts,
The Aftermath: An Inside View of the Ghetto by the People of Wattss (New
York: Grove Press, 1969); On Philadelphia, see Lenora E. Berson, Case
Study of a Riott (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1966).
7. Kerry Segrave, Policewomen: A Historyy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995).
8. Ellen Herman’s insightful book on the rise of the psychology profes-
sion in the postwar period argues that the riots presented psychological
experts with the opportunity to make use of the tradition of collective
behavior and crowd psychology to forge their particular political agen-
das. For Herman, such psychological studies were neither an unqualified
social good nor a sinister form of modern social control. The public con-
sequences of psychological expertise could be both repressive and liber-
ating. See Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political
Culture in the Age of Expertss (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1995): 12, 15, 62; Likewise, James Miller, historian of the New
Left, discusses how social psychologists used the neutrality of the “quan-
tification ethic,” to disguise their attempts at social reform. See James
Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987): 158.
9. See, for example, Albert Morris, “What Is the Role of the Community
in the Development of Police Systems,” Correctional Research Bulletin
(November, 1969): 7; Louis A Radelet, The Police and the Community
(Beverly Hills, CA: Glencose Press, 1973): 43; Roy R. Robert, The
Changing Police Role: New Dimensions and New Issuess (San Jose, CA:
Justice Systems Development, 1976); John A. Webster, The Realities of
Police Workk (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1973); Alvin Cohn, Crime
and Justice Administration n (New York: J. P. Lippincott, 1976): 224.
These studies worked to disrupt the notion that police work was physi-
cally based. In part, this stereotype was attributable to the amount of
media-portrayed violence and death related to policing. One study
found that the shots fired by police officers in one week’s television
shows exceeded the number of shots fired by the whole NYPD in a year’s
time. Even young police officers like rookies and recruits had this same
distorted picture of police work as violent. See Peter Horne, Women in
Law Enforcementt (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1975).
10. ”Police Violence: A Changing Pattern,” New York Timess (July 7, 1968): 1.
11. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration
of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Societyy (Washington, DC:
US Printing Office, 1967): 125. The Crime Commission was the work
of 19 police commissioners, 63 staff members, and 200 consultants
and advisors—many of whom were psychologists and sociologists. The
commission laid out seven objectives: preventing crime by strengthen-
ing law enforcement and reducing criminal opportunities; developing a
232 No t es
broad range of techniques to deal with individual offenders; eliminate

existing inequalities among Americans; recruiting more people with
expertise and education to law enforcement; increasing research on
criminal administration; infusing courts and correctional agencies with
money; and demanding that citizens take responsibility for planning
and implementing changes.
12. Idid., 125.
13. James I. Alexander, Blue Coats, Black Skin: The Black Experience in the
New York City Police Department Since 1891 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition
Press, 1978): 68.
14. Ibid., 3.
15. Moses Schulz, 133.
16. Ibid., 133. Nevertheless, resistance to women in patrol work was well
established in departments around the country, thus making implemen-
tation difficult. In 1965 the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
found that, despite federal legislation and numerous court decisions
outlawing sex discrimination, women remained underrepresented in
every employment category except clerical and secretarial. The adminis-
tration found that women were systematically excluded from many jobs
based on “irrational and outdated sex role stereotyping.” In addition,
they received uniformly lower pay for the same work as male counter-
parts, and were generally denied opportunities for advancement. The
problem, as the administration understood it, was rooted in misconcep-
tions about civil rights legislation and equal opportunity programs. See
United States Law Enforcement Administration, Report of the LEAA
Task Force on Women n (Washington, DC: US Government, 1965).
17. “Survey Criticizes City Police Setup; Urges Overhaul,” New York Times
(August 10, 1967): 1.
18. Ibid., 1.
19. This had led other criminologists, even before the release of Knapp
Commission Report on police corruption, to conclude that the NYPD
was insular to a fault. Paul Chevigny argued that the NYPD’s hostility
to outsiders created a complete solidarity up the chain of command,
but made it impermeable to criticism from outsiders. The only solu-
tion, Chevigny concluded, was a direct attack upon the monolithic
adherence to the police ethic and the unofficial code of secrecy. See
Paul Chevigny, Police Power: Police Abuses in New York Cityy (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1969): 273.
20. ”By the Numbers: Statistic of Police Departments,” Newsweekk (April
18, 1966): 44.
21. ”Some Policemen Are Found to Be Sleeping on Duty,” New York Times
(December 16, 1968): 1, 54.
22. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of
Justice, Task Force Report: The Policee (Washington, DC: US Government
Printing Office, 1967): 106–113.
23. ”Qualified Personnel,” Spring 3100 0 (October, 1961): 1.
Not es 233
24. Robet M. Fogelson, Big City Policee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press: 1977): 228. Likewise, Arthur Niederhoffer’s pioneering sociological
study of New York City police officers found that those recruited in the late
1960s were less committed to the department than their predecessors. Fewer
men came from families of police officers and, therefore, had little sense of
duty or service. See Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, the Police in
Urban Societyy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967): 36; US Department
of Justice, Police Training and Performance Studyy (Washington, DC: US
Government Printing Office); Segrave, Policewomen, 98.
25. Schulz, From Social Worker to Crime Fighter, 135. Less than 1 percent
of all women employees were uniformed in the Departments of
Correction, Fire, Police or Sanitation. Most women employees of New
York City worked in traditional women’s occupations: 15 percent in
teaching, 13 percent in clerical work, 10 percent typists, 4 percent social
workers. Maureen F. Heneghan, The Status of Women in New York City
Governmentt (New York: Office of the Mayor, 1971).
26. Rochelle Gatlin, American Women since 1945 5 (Jackson, MS: University
Press of Mississippi, 1987): 210–211.
27. Virginia B. Ermer, “Recruitment of Female Police Officers in New York
City,” Journal of Criminal Justicee (Fall, 1978): 324
28. Segrave, Policewomen, 98–99; “Police Mentality: IQ Levels,” Newsweek
(August 3, 1970): 45.
29. ”Walinsky Lays a ‘Serious Decline’ in Police Quality to the Mayor,”
New York Timess (September 7, 1970): 13.
30. The same “experts,” quick to preempt any arguments about racial
minorities lowering standards, pointed out that there were “no signifi-
cant differences between the IQ scores of various ethnic groups” (ibid.,
45). Another problem, according to Commissioner Howard Leary, was
the requirement that a candidate for appointment to the position of
Probationary Patrolman be 21 years of age, which deprived the depart-
ment of qualified men who were unable to leave or desirous of pursu-
ing college careers. In turn, Leary helped to establish a joint program
with Baruch College and John Jay College of the City University of
New York so that prospective candidates could balance police train-
ing with pursuit of a college degree. See Howard R. Leary, “Report
on Police Training Program,” Memo (May 6, 1968), New York City
Municipal Archives, Lindsay Collection, Box #87, Folder #1623; “John
Jay: College for Cops,” Nation n (November 30, 1970): 555–558. In the
early 1970s, NYPD officers began recruiting at Ivy League schools as
a means of attracting the “best and the brightest” to police work. See
“Why Don’t You Guys Become Cops?” Lifee (March 20, 1970): 38.
31. Alice Mulcahey Fleming, New on the Beat: Woman Power in the Police
Forcee (New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1975): 35.
32. Segrave, Policewomen, 98–99.
33. Niederhoffer also noted that the “cop as social scientist” met unex-
pected resistance from rank-and-file officers who saw the stripping of
234 No t es
patrol work of its macho qualities as an attack from outsiders. According

to Niederhoffer, the upper class seemed to look down on them, the
middle class ignored them, and the lower class feared them while the
courts were stacked against them. In turn, most cops thought of them-
selves as a minorities and sought to fight back. Niederhoffer, Behind the
Shield, the Police in Urban Society, 8.
34. New York City Police Department, “Recruitment Flyer” [1973]. New
York Municipal Archives, Lindsay Collection, Box #86, Folder #1622.
35. “Cop as Social Scientist,” New York Times Magazinee (August 23, 1969):
46–47.
36. In part, an acknowledgment of the widespread need for women personnel
in all police functions, the NYPD disbanded the Bureau of Policewomen
in 1968. A small policewomen’s section was established to coordinate
the activities of policewomen, but most policewomen themselves were
assigned to precincts throughout the city. See Catherine Milton, Women
in Policingg (Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1972): 27
37. Theresa Melchionne, “The Current Status and Problems of Women
Police,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Sciencee (June,
1967): 257–260.
38. Theresa Melchionne, The Police Chieff (December, 1966): 52.
39. Ibid.
40. ”Policewomen,” Spring 3100 0 (November, 1968): 36.
41. Women’s undercover work was not, however, exclusively a female
domain. In the early 1960s, the department began experimenting with
men officers as decoys to trap pocketbook snatchers, muggers, and
rapists. In what was dubbed “Operation Decoy,” the men made sev-
eral arrests serving in roles that were normally occupied by women.
Melchionne, while applauding the program, was quick to note that “in
close-range operations, in apartment house elevators, or on train plat-
forms, there would probably be no substitute.” Theresa Melchionne,
“Using Good Police Sense,” Law and Orderr (September, 1963): 8.
42. Schulz contends that women who became police officers before the
1960s had a “social worker’s frame of reference.” They tended to come
from more privileged backgrounds and, therefore, had alliances with
feminists, social workers, and club women rather than male police offi-
cers or chiefs. She sees their value system as being grounded in female
moral superiority and notions of sisterhood. In contrast, women enter-
ing the force in the 1960s were more likely to be “middle-class career-
ists,” rather than middle-class feminists or “child savers.” In Schulz’s
estimation, these modern women rejected the constraints of women’s
sphere and sought equality with male peers. They became police officers
for tangible rewards of pay, promotion, and pension and thus shared
common attitudes and goals with men police officers. While it may be
true that the background, outlook, and goals of women seeking police
work changed during the late 1960s, these women did not shed entirely
their feminine identity. Part of their goal, as had been the case with their
Not e s 235
predecessors, was to incorporate feminine qualities into new areas of

police work. See Schulz, 136.
43. The policewoman sergeant’s uniform mixed both masculine and femi-
nine styles—a navy skirt, a lighter blue blouse, a black necktie, a golden
badge, a Smith and Wesson .32 caliber revolver packed in holders at side,
and black pumps for shoes. “Desk Sergeant at 24th Precinct Doesn’t Fit
the Stereotype,” New York Timess (August 27, 1971): 13.
44. “Black Woman and a Sergeant—City’s First,” Sunday Newss (November 7,
1971): 12.
45. Kathy Burke, Interview with the author, New York, August 12, 1997.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Bryna Taubman, “The Lady Cops Shape Up for Precinct Duty,” New
York Postt (August 5, 1967).
49. Ibid.
50. Police executives claimed that attractive women were not coveted sim-
ply for the viewing pleasure of men police officers, but because they
could better serve in the Degenerate Squad, which sought to catch men
who harass women in public places. Marie Cirile, Memoirs of a Police
Officerr (New York: Doubleday, 1975): 20.
51. ”Male Officers Scorn Bill on Policewomen,” New York Timess (February
21, 1967): 41.
52. Ibid.
53. ”Lady Police Captain Packs Quiet Punch,” Long Island Presss (November
15, 1971): 8.
54. Ibid.
55. This measure did nothing to guarantee that men and women would be
paid equally. It only ensured that women and men who performed the
same job under the same exact title would receive equal pay. As long as
men and women worked under separate titles, such as policeman and
policewoman, their pay rates need not be the same. Many companies sim-
ply changed the numbers signifying grades of work and pay so that men
became the higher numbers. See Gatlin, American Women since 1945, 45;
Patricia Zelman, Women, Work and National Policy: The Kennedy-Johnson
Yearss (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980): 61.
56. Allan T. Duffin, History in Blue: 160 Years of Women Police, Sheriffs,
Detectives and Trooperss (New York: Kaplan, 2010): 156.
57. Moses Schulz, From Social Worker to Crimefighterr 133–134. Moses
Schulz goes on to note that this expansion of civil rights activity coalesced
at a time when the women who had entered policing in the 1950s and
1960s were slowly moving up the ranks and changing the nature of wom-
en’s participation in policing. Thus, when women went out on patrol,
Moses Schulz contends, it was part of a continuum that led them out of a
specialized, gender-based role into genderless, general assignment polic-
ing. While it is true that women were dismantling their traditional roles
in policing, it was not necessarily a linear path that led to a “genderless”
236 No t e s
station house. Women indeed took on new roles, but gender was still very
much a part of the department and, in fact, justified new women’s roles.
58. Executive Order #11478 was an amended version of an executive order
passed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965, which prohibited firms that did
business with the government from discriminating in employment. The
amended version required most federal contractors and agencies to take
“affirmative action” to correct such practices and overcome special bar-
riers to employment for minorities and women. See Gatlin, American
Women since 1945, 210–11.
59. Duffin, ix.
60. “Women Widening Roles on Police,” New York Timess (October 21,
1973): 88.
61. The Ford Foundation became a key player in conducting research
and shaping perceptions about policing. In July of 1970 President
McGeorge Bundy held a press conference in New York to announce the
establishment of a Police Department Fund to foster improvement and
innovation in American policing. Duffin, 157.
62. Indianapolis became the first major city to employ women on general
patrol in 1968, while most other cities, including New York, did not
place women on patrol until 1972. Washington, DC, hired women
patrol officers shortly after Indianapolis, which engendered a lively
debate in the nation’s capitol over women in police work.
63. They studied the 60 largest police departments in the country.
64. “No Longer Men or Women, Just Police Officers,” U.S. News & World
Reportt (August 19, 1974): 45–56.
65. Milton, 25.
66. Alice Fleming confirmed the scientific expertise of the Police
Foundation in evaluating police work (see Fleming, New on the Beat,
208). Likewise, Societyy found that the decision was made to evaluate
the women as objectively as possible. See “Policewomen as Policemen,”
Societyy (January, 1974): 7.
67. Fleming, New on the Beat, t 28.
68. Milton, 38.
69. “Policewomen in Action,” Saturday Evening Postt (July, 1975): 48–49.
70. “More Women Join Ranks of Nation’s Police Forces,” New York Times
(February 2, 1972): 1.
71. “Women in Blue,” Timee (May 1, 1972): 60.
72. In a similar move that questioned the benefits of aggressive patrolling,
Ronald G. Talney of the Portland Civil Service Commission argued in
Police Chieff that men officers often were assaulted because they repre-
sented the male authority figure within the value system of criminals.
In most instances, he argued, a properly trained woman officer could
avoid such assaults merely on the grounds that criminals perceived it
cowardly to attack a woman, even if she is a police officer. See Ronald,
G. Talney, “Women in Law Enforcement, an Expanded Role,” Police
Chieff (November–December, 1969): 49–51.
Not es 237
73. Patrick V. Murphy, Press Release, May 1, 1972. New York City
Municipal Archives, Vertical File—Policewomen.
74. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. “Some Newly Equipped Radio Cars,” New York Postt (August 19, 1972).
78. Ibid. In referring to “things men can’t do,” Sergeant Ambrose meant
working with sex crimes against women in addition to defusing violent
situations with femininity. By early 1973, the NYPD set up a special unit
for women who wanted to report an assault but were reluctant to talk to
male police officers. The squad was made up of women detectives cho-
sen for their sensitivity and ability to deal with rape victims. The reason-
ing was that women would be more comfortable discussing such crimes
with other women who naturally had a more sympathetic ear. See “New
Effort to Make Reporting Sex Crimes Easier and Less Humiliating for
Women,” New York Timess (March 22, 1973): 47.
79. “More Women Join Ranks of Nation’s Police Forces,” New York Times
(June 6, 1972): 1.
80. Duffin, 84
81. “On Some Beats, the Long Arm of the Law Has a Feminine Touch,”
New York Timess (November 15, 1972): 52.
82. Ibid.
83. Duffin, 187.
84. “Women Widening Roles on Police,” New York Timess (October 21,
1973): 88.
85. Ibid.
86. “Women Officers Tested on Patrol,” New York Timess (August 12,
1973): 53.
87. “Female Fuzz,” Newsweekk (October 23, 1972): 117.
88. “No Longer Men or Women, Just Police Officers,” U.S. News & World
Reportt (August 19, 1974): 45–56.
89. Horne, Women in Law Enforcement, 198.
90. “Women Widening Roles in Police,” New York Timess (October 21,
1973): 88.
91. Anthony Vastola, “Women in Policing: An Alternative Ideology,” Police
Chieff (January, 1977): 64.
92. “Women Make Good Cops,” New York Times Magazinee (November 3,
1974): 20.
93. “Thirty-Six Cops Become Nurses,” Spring 3100 0 (December, 1975): 4.
94. “84 Men in Blue Graduating as Nurses,” New York Timess (February 4,
1973): 35.
95. Policemen who observed women in their uniforms mocked gender
transgression as a means of illustrating the buffoonery of women in
men’s roles. Rather than admit that women disrupted their neat gender
order, policemen joked about their presence as a means of shoring up
their own masculinity through patrol work. On the playful interchange
238 No t es
of transgression, see Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and
n (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986):
Poetics of Transgression
1–26.
96. Mary Glatzle and Evlyn Fiore, Muggable Maryy (Englewood, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1980): 7.
97. Kathy Burke, Interview with the author, New York, August 12, 1997.
98. Pearl Jacobs, ““Women in Police Work: A Study in Role Conflict,” PhD
diss., Fordham University, 1976.
99. Fleming, New on the Beat, 208.
100. Horne, Women in Law Enforcementt 122.
101. Ibid.
102. Bruce L. Berg and Kimberly Budnick, “Defeminization of Women in
Law Enforcement: A New Twist in the Traditional Police Personality,”
Journal of Police Science and Administration n (December, 1986): 317.
103. ”Equal Guardians of the Law,” Societyy (September, 1974): 8
104. Judith Greenwald, “Aggression as a Component of Police-Citizen
Transactions: Differences Between Male and Female Police Officers,”
PhD diss., City University of New York, 1976, 186–191. This kind
of social science research continued through the 1970s as a means of
proving that women belonged on patrol. A study initiated by NYPD
commissioner Michael Codd and conducted by the National Institute
of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice came to exactly the same con-
clusion in evaluating the performance of 41 men and women rookies in
1976. While they found that their performance was the same, women
officers were judged by civilians to be more “pleasant, respectful, and
competent than their male counterparts,” despite being “less likely to
engage in control seeking behavior and assert themselves in patrol deci-
sion making.” See Joyce L. Friedman, Lucy N. Quint, and Janet C.
Smith, Women on Patrol: A Pilot Study of Police Performance in New
York Cityy (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978).
105. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, created by the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, inherited age-old notions about the need for protec-
tion of women in the workplace. The protective laws were an attempt to
reconcile the fact of women’s labor force participation with the idea that
women’s primary responsibilities were to home and family. The philoso-
phy of equal rights, however, came into conflict with this idea because
it argued that protectionism perpetuated women’s status as second-class
citizens. Supporters of equal rights for women contended that only by
receiving identical treatment in the workplace could women begin to
move toward equality with men. Viewed in this context, any legal con-
strains on women’s economic advancement appeared unfair to individual
women. See Zelman, Women, Work and National Policy, 71–91.
106. “The Police Department as an Equal Opportunity Employer,” Spring
3100 0 (December, 1975): 4.
107. In addition to being limited to certain roles in the department, women
were restricted by a quota system that limited them to 1 percent of the
Not es 239
force. At the time of the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots in 1964,

there were 247 women in the department, fulfilling the department’s
1 percent quota. They were distributed as follows: 103 in the Bureau
of Policewomen; 76 in the Juvenile Aid Bureau; 48 in the Detective
Division; and 20 in the Bureau Patrol Headquarters and Divisional
commands. See “Policewomen,” Spring 3100 0 (July/August, 1964):,
34. In limiting the number of positions open to women, New York
was not dissimilar from other police municipal police departments. The
average police department quota for policewomen in 1970 was 2 per-
cent. See Milton, Women in Policing, 27.
108. “Cawley Holds Rap Sessions with His Men, and Policewomen Are
Topic A,” New York Timess (December 5, 1973): 99.
109. “Policemen Troubled by Women Officers,” New York Timess (November
10, 1973): 1.
110. “On Mixed Police Patrol in Midtown,” New York Timess (November 21,
1973): 78.
111. Ibid.
112. “Equal Guardians of the Law,” Societyy (September, 1974): 8. The study
also found that women were less likely than men to think there were
significant differences between the sexes. Before the experiment, police-
men expressed considerable opposition to the idea of women as patrol
officers. They did not want women as patrol partners and expected
them to make their jobs more difficult. Working with women seemed
to have had little effect on men’s attitudes, although the negative feel-
ings were less pronounced among younger officers and black officers.
See “Policewomen as Policemen,” Societyy (January, 1974): 7.
113. Fleming, New on the Beat, 19.
114. “On Mixed Police Patrol in Midtown,” New York Timess (November 21,
1973): 78.
115. “Women Make Good Cops,” New York Timess (November 3, 1974): 18.
5 Soul Brother or Policeman?

1. James Hargrove, Interview with the Author, February 5, 1997; Roger
Abel, Interview with the Author, January 24, 1997; Sylvia Smith,
Interview with the Author, April 22, 1998; Olga Ford, Interview with
the author, March 19, 1998.
2. Roger Abel, The Black Shieldss (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006):
97.
3. Roger Abel, Interview with the Author, January 24, 1997.
4. “Gestapo or Elite? The Tactical Patrol Force,” New York Timess (July 21,
1968): SM6.
5. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of
Justice, Task Force Report: The Policee (Washington, DC: US Government
Printing Office, 1967): 120–143.
240 No t es
6. Some historians of blacks in police work have likened the role of the
minority officer to that of the Kapo in the Jewish concentration camp,
who was employed to control his own population. While the analogy
understates the differences between democratic and fascist govern-
ments, there are significant connections between the two. In each case,
the authorized officer was viewed by friends, relatives, and acquain-
tances as doing the oppressor’s dirty work and as a traitor to his race.
At the same time, the officer was viewed as a symbol of accomplish-
ment to those who were from his community. Both the Kapo and the
black officer were entrusted as overseers of the “inmate” population,
but, while executing considerable power, did not make policy and could
not receive the rewards of promotion. See, for example, Nicholas Alex,
Black in Blue: A Study of the Negro Policeman n (New York: Meredith,
1969): 17–19.
7. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of
Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Societyy (Washington, DC: US
Government Printing Office): 6.
8. See “Booth Assails ‘Dumping’ of Policemen,” New York Timess (March
7, 1966): 17. Stephen Leinen also notes that many black policemen
engaged in serious forms of misconduct including the accepting of illicit
payoffs from narcotics’ dealers, gamblers, number’s operators, and local
businessmen. See Black Police, White Societyy (New York: New York
9. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 155. The Crime
Commission was the work of 19 police commissioners, 63 staff mem-
bers, 175 consultants, and hundreds of advisors. In addition to the par-
ticipation of police personnel, there was a strong social science stamp
on the commission – psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, statisti-
cians, technological experts, and criminologists. These groups called for
a “revolution in the way America thinks about crime.” Nevertheless,
while the recognition of the historical misdeeds of police officers was
often a radical departure from past commissions, its prescription was a
lukewarm and vague call for greater democracy within the police sta-
tion. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, v.
10. Ibid., 144.
11. Ibid., 6.
12. The pathology argument gained currency among, and in fact was initi-
ated by, liberals like New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and
sociologist Kenneth Clark. Likewise, the studies of criminal justice aca-
demics, who were for the most part liberal, constituted an affirmation
of the ghetto as a community of institutionalized deviancy. Academic
researchers tended to underscore what they saw as the volatile nature
of the ghetto that served as a reminder of the urban riots and the
uncontrolled nature of blacks. Yet each of these authors coupled their
Not es 241
criticisms of black family life and the ghetto community with an equally
strong indictment of the conditions that created those circumstances.
Conservatives, on the other hand, ignored the environmental condi-
tions and simply blamed the victims themselves. See Kenneth Clark,
Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Powerr (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 1965); John Cooper, The Police and the Ghettoo (Port
Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1980): 12–17.
13. The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime, 13–14.
14. Historian Herbert Gutman has illustrated fallacy with Moynihan’s prem-
ise that the American black family had been in disarray since slave times.
His work identifies a stable black family from slave times through World
War I, at which time new social and economic forces worked to undo
the nuclear family. See Herbert George Gutman, The Black Family in
Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 5 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976).
On the uses and misuses of the Moynihan Report and other social sci-
ence policymakers in the 1960s, see Lee Rainwater and William Yancey,
The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversyy (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1967); Leanor Boulin Johnson, “Perspectives on Black
Family Empirical Reserach,” in Harriette Pipes McAdoo, ed., Black
Familiess (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 198): 91–106.
15. John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society,
1961–1974 4 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991): 253–254.
16. Joseph O’Meara, “Riots,” in Leonard W. Levy, ed., The Challenge
of Crime in a Free Society: Perspectives on the Report of the President’s
Commission n (New York: Notre Dame University, 1968): 99–101.
17. Ibid., 101.
18. Criminal justice academics came from a wide spectrum of disciplines,
and were for the most part liberal in their personal aptitudes and politi-
cal outlooks. Nevertheless, their studies and research constituted in
large measure an ongoing reaffirmation of the ghetto as a community
of institutionalized deviancy. Academic researchers tended to under-
score what they see as the volatile nature of the ghetto that served as a
reminder of the urban riots of the 1960s and the uncontrolled nature of
blacks. See John Cooper, The Police and the Ghettoo (Port Washington,
NY: Kennikat Press, 1980): 17.
19. The Ford Foundation agreed to pay for the training of such veterans to
prepare them for civil service examinations. See “Ford Fund May Help
Police to Recruit Minority Members,” New York Timess (February 22,
1968): 28.
20. “Disorders Erupt in East Harlem,” New York Timess (July 24, 1967): 1.
21. Quoted in Blum, Years of Discord, 261. See also Larry D. Stokes and
James F. Scott, “Affirmative Action Policy Standards and Employment
of African Americans in Police Departments,” Western Journal of Black
Studiess (1993): 135–142; James I. Alexander, Blue Coats, Black Skin:
The Black Experience in the New York City Police Departmentt (Hicksville,
242 No t es
NY: Exposition Press, 1978): 68. A case study of Harlem and South
Central Los Angeles found that many ghetto residents identified dis-
turbing encounters with patrolmen who were searching for suspects
in major crimes, such as homicides, serious assaults, and large thefts,
many of which had taken place in other areas of the city; or who, at the
behest of white authorities, were attempting to suppress ghetto vices
such as gambling, narcotics, and prostitution. Aggressive preventative
patrolling of this nature, with its frequent field interrogations and vice
raids, led to alienation of ghetto residents and complaints of harassment
and brutality. That aggressive patrol was countered by an equally weak
enforcement of law when ghetto residents were the victims of crime.
More often than not, black and Puerto Rican complaints against the
police had to do with inadequate protection. See Harlan Hahn and
Joe Feagin, “Riot-Precipitating Police Practices: Attitudes in Urban
Ghettos,” Phylon n (Summer, 1970): 183–193.
22. Otto Kerner, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorderss (New York: Bantam Books, 1968): 1.
23. Despite the Kerner Commision’s radical explanation for the riots, it
authorized certain voices while quashing others. Experts with antiwar
records were eliminated from consideration for spots on commission
staff. Such individuals were considered security risks. See Ellen Herman,
The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of
Expertss (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 217.
University Press, 1996), xvii.
25. Robert M. Fogelson makes such a case in his study of riots and the com-
missions. See Robert M. Fogelson, Violence as Protest: A Study of Riots
and Ghettoss (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970): 179–181. On the
Civilian Review Board issue, see David W. Abbot, Police, Politics, and
Race: The New York City Referendum on Civilian Review w (New York:
American Jewish Committee, and the Joint Center for Urban Studies
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University,
1969).
26. Kenneth B. Clark, in testimony before the National Advisory Commission
on Civil Disorders, quoted by the commission in its Report. See Michael
Lipsky and David J. Olson, Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial
Crisis in America a (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1977): ix.
27. The Housing and Transit Police had been active since the 1950s in cre-
ating an integrated force, while the NYPD remained relatively impervi-
ous to integration. Basil Patterson, Harlem state senator and head of
the New York Branch of the NAACP, pointed to such differences in
challenging the hiring practices of the NYPD. In particular, he noted
that there were virtually no differences in entrance requirements among
the departments. “Finest Could be Finer,” New York Times Magazine
(April 3, 1966): 28–29; “State Senator Says City Police Lag in Putting
Negroes in Ranks,” New York Timess (February 22, 1966): 20.
Not e s 243
28. “Puerto Rican and Negro Patrol Assigned to Slum Areas for the
Weekend,” New York Timess (August 6, 1966): 47. Even as late as 1968
the department was still hiring blacks for clerical work, as a means of
freeing other police officers for work in the streets while bolstering its
number of minority employees. See “Police Get First 50 Clerks to Free
Cops for Patrol,” New York Postt (January 2, 1968): 1.
29. The program was instituted on May 9, 1966. See Alexander, Blue Coats,
Black Skin, 78–80.
30. “Police Cadet—Chance for the Underprivileged,” New York Herald
Tribunee (April 17, 1966): 29
31. “The Police Trainee Program: Policemen of Tomorrow,” Spring 3100
(June, 1968): 21.
32. “Black Cops Vow Changes,” New York Amsterdam Newss (June 19,
1971): 1, 11.
33. “Brownsville Demands a Black Police Captain,” New York Times
(December 7, 1968): 27.
34. “25 Youths to Be Trained by Police Department for Patrol in Brooklyn
Bedford-Stuyvesant Area,” New York Timess (January 25, 1970): 72. See
also “City Plans to Hire Youths in Slums as Police Cadets,” New York
Timess (February 24, 1969): 1.
35. The Guardians called for the restoration of a law requiring New York
City policemen to live in the city. “Guardians Association President
Howard Sheffey Speaks at a Council on Police Societies,” New York
Timess (June 12, 1971): 30.
in the New York City Police Department.” Masters Thesis, City Univer-
sity of New York, Department of Public Administration, 1968, 41.
37. “Police Cadet Plan for Minorities Shrinks to Fifth or Original Size,”
New York Timess (May 12, 1968): 63.
38. Jay S. Berman, Police Administration and Progressive Reform: Theodore
Roosevelt as Police Commissioner of New Yorkk (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1987).
39. For example, see Shpritzer v. Lang, g Supreme Court of New York,
December 8, 1961. 32 Misc. 2d 693; 224 N.Y.S.2d 105.
40. John J. Cassese, Edward J. Kiernan, Louis Coronato, Edward P. Fehling,
and Robet McKiernan on behalf of themselves and all other members
of the Police Department of the City of New York, similarly situated,
Police Commissioner of the City of New York, Defendant. Supreme
Court of New York, June 23, 1966; “No! Says the PBA,” New York
Times Magazinee (October 16, 1966): 36–37.
41. For a counterargument, see Cherly G. Swanson and Charles Hale, “A
Question of Height Revisited,” Police Chieff (June, 1975): 183–186.
42. In 1973 the height requirement of 68 inches precluded 97.5 percent of
women and 45 percent of the nation’s men. John A. Culley, “Height
Standards and Policing: Rationale or Rationalization?” PhD Thesis
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, 1987, 15.
244 No t es
43. Although the height requirement significantly reduced the numbers of

available Italian and Jewish men, they had less difficulty making inroads
into the department after the 1950s. It is possible that the PBA’s luke-
warm opposition to the lowering of height requirements was because
Puerto Ricans were not the only ones who could potentially benefit.
The fraternal organizations for Jewish and Italian officers, the Shomrin
Society and Columbia Association, knew that they could increase their
numbers if such a platform was passed.
44. “Con 5’7” Usted Puede Ser Policia,” El Diario La Prensa a (August 31,
1967): 4; “Height Requirement for Trainees Cut to 5’7”,” New York
Timess (October 12, 1967): 25.
45. Letter from Police Commissioner Howard Leary to Solomon Hoberman,
Chairman City Civil Service Commission, August 29, 1967. New York
Municipal Archives, Lindsay Collection, Box #86, Folder #1620. See
also “Police Cut Height to Add Puerto Ricans,” New York Timess,
August 31, 1967.
46. “Height Requirements Cut to 5’7’,” New York Timess (October 12,
1967): 25.
47. “100,000 Apply to Take a Police Test after Minority-Group Recruiting
Drive,” New York Timess (November 30, 1973)
48. Ibid.
49. “Ex-Cop Recalls Days in Elite Harlem Unit,” New York Daily News
(March 27, 2012), http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012–03–27/news
/31246311_1_hispanic-cops-gold-shield-minorityy, Accessed May 22,
2012.
50. “Harlem Gets Slum-Grown Police Unit,” New York Timess (October
26, 1969): 70.
51. Abel, The Black Shieldss, 655.
52. “New Police Patrol: A Hit in the Slums,” New York Timess (November
19, 1969): 57.
53. Ibid.
54. “Bribe Trial Starts for City Patrolman,” New York Timess (December 24,
1970); “Knapp Commission Witness Decries Missed Chances to Be an
Honest Policeman,” New York Timess (October 27, 1971); “Elite Police
Patrol Here Is Stunned by Accusation,” New York Timess (October 27,
1971): 54; “Knapp Unit Hears of Police Deals in Harlem,” New York
Timess (October 27, 1971): 1.
55. “Community Relations of Minority Police Discussed,” New York Times
(January 15, 1972): 62.
56. After the Guardians and Hispanic Society initiated a suit against the
city, the Rand Institute was asked to conduct an independent impartial
analysis of the 1968 and 1970 civil service examination scores of white
and minority group applicants for the position of patrolman. The study
found that black and Hispanics performed worse than their white coun-
terparts, but that there was a good deal of uncertainty about the ways
in which such exams were job related. See Jan M. Chaiken and Bernard
Not es 245
Cohen, Police Civil Service Selection Procedures in New York City:

Comparison of Ethnic Groupss (New York: Rand Institute, 1973); Donald
Joseph Shroeder, “A Study of the Validity of the Entrance Examination
for the Position of Patrolman,” Masters Thesis, John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, June, 1973; “Black and Hispanic Units Fight Present
Tests for Police Job,” New York Timess (March 22, 1973): 29.
57. Richard G. Kohlan and Gerald W. Bracey, Procedures Used in New York
City for Promoting Police Officers to Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain
(Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 1970).
in the New York City Police Department.” Masters Thesis, City Univer-
sity of New York, Department of Public Administration, 1968, 3, 22.
59. On the NYPD infiltration, entrapment and indictment of the New York
Black Panther Party through the use of black spies, see Paul Chevigny,
Cops and Rebels: A Study of Provocation. (New York: Pantheon Books,
1972); Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The
FBI’s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party & the American Indian
Movementt (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Kuwasi Balagoon, Meet
Me in the Whirlwind: Oral Histories of Members of the New York Black
Panther Partyy (New York: Random House, 1971); Stephen George
Choberski, “The Strategy Defense in a Political Trial: The Trial of the
‘Panther 21,’” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1975.
60. Sofia Cirino, Petitioner, versus John Walsh as Acting Police Commissioner
and Elmer C. Cone as Assistant Chief Inspector of Personnel in the New
York City Police Department. Supreme Court, Special Term, New York
County, April 30, 1971.
61. Ibid.
62. Alex, Black in Blue, 177.
Minorityy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976): 2.
64. “Police for the 70s: Cities Search for Supercops,” U.S. News & World
Reportt (December 3, 1973): 38–40.
65. See “Policemen to Sue for Writ Barring Civilian Review,” New York
Timess (May 9, 1966): 1; “Cassese says PBA will sue Lindsay and
Leary,” New York Timess (May 9, 1966): 1. Even Lloyd Sealy, the black
pioneer who became the department’s first precinct station house cap-
tain in Harlem, was accused of being an Uncle Tom by Harlemites.
See “Assistant Chief Inspector Sealy Resigns,” New York Times
(September 14, 1969): 74.
66. Ibid.
67. “Dilemma of the Black Policeman,” Ebonyy (May, 1971): 122–124.
68. “Lonely Struggle of the Black Cop,” Reader’s Digestt (March, 1971):
123–127.
69. “Black Police Assail ‘Station Brutality,’” New York Timess (June 21,
1970): 69.
70. Ibid.
246 No t e s
71. “Tragic Mistakes,” Guardians Association Newsletter, December 5,

1973, Chicago Historical Society, National Black Policemen’s
Association, Box #194, Folder #10.
72. “Black Police Assail Shooting of Officer,” New York Timess (December
6, 1973): 51.
73. Ibid.
74. See, for example, Charles A. Bryant, “The Buffalo Committee,” in
Guardians Newsletter, September, 1971. Chicago Historical Society,
National Black Policemen’s Association, Box #194, Folder #10.
75. “Patrolman Mistaken for Criminal Is Buried,” New York Timess (March
9, 1973): 41; “Slain Policeman Will Get Inspector’s Funeral Today,”
New York Timess (March 9, 1973); “Grand Jury Refuses to Charge
2 Policemen in Shooting of a Third,” New York Timess (March 10,
1973).
76. “Black Police Assail Shooting of Officer,” New York Timess (December 6,
1973): 51.
77. “Detective Upheld in Shooting Case,” New York Timess (January 26,
1974): 35.
78. “Jury Clears Shea in Killing of Boy,” New York Timess (June 13, 1974): 1.
79. “Shea Trial Hears Ballistics Expert,” New York Timess (June 1, 1974):
58.
81. “Jury Clears Shea in Killing of Boy,” New York Timess (June 13, 1974): 1.
82. Kenneth Clark, letter to Mayor [Abraham D. Beame], [October, 1974]
Chicago Historical Society, National Black Policemen’s Association,
Box #194, Folder #10.
83. “3 of 5 Slain by Police Here Are Black, Same as the Arrest Rate,” New
84. “Why Cops Kill Blacks,” New Amsterdam Newss (December 17, 1977): 1.
85. Alex, Blacks in Blue, xviii–xix.
86. Ibid., 107.
87. Ibid., 6.
88. “Black Cop: A Man Caught in the Middle,” Newsweekk (August 16,
1971): 19–20.
89. “Lonely Struggle of the Black Cop,” Reader’s Digestt (March, 1971):
123–127.
90. “Black and Puerto Rican Police Meet to Discuss Community Leaks,”
New York Timess (January 7, 1971): 39.
91. Richard Bolden, “A Study of the Black Guardian Organization in
the New York City Police Department from 1943–1978,” PhD diss.,
Columbia University, 1980, 65–66.
92. “Black Policemen Ask for a Loud and Equal Voice,” New York Times
(June 13, 1969): 28.
93. All of the demands were met except for the residency requirement, which
remained a point of contention well through the 1980s and 1990s. See
the Guardians Association of the New York City Police Department and
Not es 247
the Hispanic Society of the New York City Police Department v. The Civil
Service Commission of the City of New York, Department of Personnel
and Patrick V. Murphy, Commissioner of the New York City Police
Department. Civilian Action #72–928. Chicago Historical Society,
National Black Policemen’s Association, Box #191, Folder #16. See also
“Black and Hispanic Units Fight Present Tests for Police Jobs,” New
York Timess (March 22, 1973): 47.
94. Carol Morton, “Black Cops: Black and Blue Ain’t White,” Ramparts
(May, 1972): 32.
95. “Black and Puerto Rican Police Meet to Discuss Community Links,”
New York Timess (January 7, 1971): 39.
96. Abel, The Black Shieldss, Kindle Location 6815–6818.
97. Ibid., 124
98. Ibid., 125
99. “Black Cop,” Newsweekk (August 4, 1969): 54.
100. “Anguish of Blacks in Blue,” Timee (November 23, 1970): 13–14; “Black
Cops Probe Panther Killings,” New York Amsterdam Newss (December
27, 1969): 1.
101. “Black Cops Probe Panther Killing,” New York Amsterdam News
(December 27, 1969); Edward Palmer, “Black Police in America,”
Black Scholarr (October, 1973): 19–27.
102. Abel, The Black Shields, Kindle Locations 5591–5594; “About the
National Black Police Association,” National Black Police Association,
http://www.blackpolice.org/about.html, Accessed May 22, 2012.
103. Abel, Black Shieldss, Kindle Locations 6543–6547.
104. Ibid.
105. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identityy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004): 178–80.
106. Morton, “Black Cops,” 31.
107. Roger Abel notes that as late as 1977 there were 365 delegates rep-
resenting the police ranks of the department, of which only 2 were
black. To win a seat as a delegate or executive board member, a person
must acquire the majority of votes, but almost no black officers were
in a majority throughout all the precincts and special commands in the
Police Department. Therefore, a black officer could almost never win
without the assistance of white voters. Abel, The Black Shields, Kindle
Locations 2777–2783.
108. Ibid., Kindle Location 5509.
109. Ulysses Williams, “Open Letter to Every Black Man in the New York
City Police Department,” Guardians Newsletterr (October 2, 1974).
Chicago Historical Society, National Black Policeman’s Association,
Box #194, Folder #10.
110. “The Policeman: The Black Cops,” New York Postt (November 13,
1968): 4.
111. “Race Friction Rising among Policemen” (September 13, 1970): 86.
112. Abel, Black Shields, Kindle Locations 6333–6342.
248 No t es
113. Morton, “Black Cops,” 31.

114. “Policeman Asserts Criticism of Force Led to His Transfer,” New York
Timess (November 19, 1974).
115. Leonard Weir to [Fellow Members], [January, 1967], Chicago Historical
Society, National Black Policemen’s Association, Box #194, Folder #19.
116. Leonard Weir, Annual Address of the Afro-American Patrolmen’s
League [May 9, 1971], Chicago Historical Society, National Black
Policemen’s Association, Box #194, Folder #20.
117. “Negro Policemen Laud Black Muslims and Give Award to Elijah
Muhammad,” New York Timess (June 16, 1969).
118. Ibid.
119. “Anguish of the Blacks in Blue,” Timee (November 23, 1970): 13–14.
120. Ibid.
121. Ogbar., Black Power, 85–86.
122. “Justice Murtagh’s Home Target of 3 Fire Bombs,” New York Times
(February 25, 1970).
123. Roger Tannenbaum and Philip Rosenberg, Badge of the Assassin n (New
York: Penguin Books, 1979).
124. Ibid., 21.
125. Albert Steedman and Peter Hellman, Chief!! (New York: Avon, 1975):
442
126. “Slain Officers Buried,” New York Amsterdam Newss (May 29, 1971): 1.
127. “Panther Draws Life in Attack on Police,” New York Timess (April 27,
1973): 1; Robert Daley, Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D.
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1971): 77.
128. “Thomas Curry, 74, Officer, Hit in Infamous Shooting, Dies,” New
York Timess (May 16, 2007): 23; “Panther Convicted of Attack on
Police,” New York Timess (March 8, 1973): 81.
129. “Rally Held at 116th Street and Lennox Avenue,” New York Amsterdam
Newss (May 29, 1971): 1.
130. Ibid.
131. Herman Bell, Albert Washington, and Anthony Bottom would eventu-
ally be convicted for the murders. “3 Guilty in Death of 2 Policemen,”
New York Timess (April 11, 1975): 55.
132. Olga Ford, Interview with the author, March 19, 1998.
133. Abel, The Black Shields,
s Kindle Locations 2961–2975.
134. Olga Ford, Interview with the Author, March 19, 1998.
135. Leonard Levitt, NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the
Country’s Greatest Police Forcee (New York: Thomas Dunne Books,
2009): 11; “9 in Black ‘Army’ Are Hunted in Police Assassinations,”
New York Timess (February 9, 1972): 1.
136. “Mad Killers of the Law,” New York Timess (January 29, 1972).
137. “Patrolman is Shot Dead on the Lower East Side,” New York Times
(January 28, 1972): 1.
138. “Thousands of Police Honor Two Slain Officers,” New York Times
(February 2, 1972): 1.
Not e s 249
139. “Brown Acquitted in Police Slayings,” New York Timess (March 22,
1974): 13.
140. Levitt, NYPD Confidential, l 12.
141. “Invasion of Mosque No. 7,” New York Amsterdam Newss (April 22,
1972): 1.
142. Levitt, NYPD Confidential, 12.
143. Ibid., 13.
144. Abel, The Black Shields, Kindle Locations 2355–2366. The seminal
player in negotiating the peace between the Nation of Islam and the
police was the white Chief of Detectives Albert Seedman. See Levitt,
NYPD Confidential, 14.
145. “Inside Mosque Killing,” New York Amsterdam Newss (April 29, 1972): 3.
146. “Black Group Scores Slaying of Capers,” New York Timess (April 20,
1972).
147. “5 Policemen Hurt in Harlem Melee,” New York Timess (May 15, 1972): 1.
148. “Fatality Arouses Black Policemen,” New York Timess (April 14, 1972):
40; Levitt, NYPD Confidential, 13.
149. “Cops: Angry, Tense!” New York Amsterdam Newss (April 29, 1972): 1.
150. “Inspector Quiting over Mosque Killing” (April 25, 1972): 1.
151. Ibid., 3.
152. “Police Are Urged to Shift Whites,” New York Timess (May 1, 1972): 23.
153. “Invasion of Mosque No. 7,” Amsterdam Newss (April 22, 1973).
154. “Muslims Purge Police Members,” New York Timess (October 29,
1972): 20.
6 The Silent Majority Strikes Back

1. Murray Friedman, Overcoming Middle Class Ragee (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1971): 15.
2. On the ascendance of the American right in the late 1960s, see James
McEvoy III, Radicals or Conservatives? The Contemporary Rightt (New
York: Rand McNally, 1971); Paul Gottfried and Thomas Fleming, The
Conservative Momentt (Boston: Twayne, 1988). On the intellectual
roots of the conservative movement, see George Nash, The Conservative
Intellectual Movement in the Untied States Since 1945 5 (New York:
Basic Books, 1976). Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A
History of Liberalism in the 1960ss (New York: Harper & Row, 1984):
424–438.
3. Although Nixon was less explicitly racist than Goldwater and Wallace,
some historians have suggested that his calls for law and order were sim-
ply coded appeals for racism, directed toward working-class whites and
members of middle-income groups to construct a party of the white
underdog. See, for example, Stanley Aronowitz, The Politics of Identity,
Class, Culture, and Social Movementss (New York: Routledge, 1992):
214–225; John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and
Society, 1961–19744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991): 313.
250 No t es
4. Thomas R. Brooks, “New York’s Finest,” Commentaryy (August, 1965):

29–36.
5. Richard Lemmon, The Troubled American n (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1969): 18.
6. Leonard W. Levy, Against the Law: The Nixon Court and Criminal
Justicee (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); Herbert Parmet, Richard
Nixon and His America a (Boston: Little, Brown, c.1990); Stephen E.
Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972 2 (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1987); Bruce Mazlish, In Search of Nixon: A
Psychohistorical Inquiryy (New York: Basic Books, 1972).
7. “Stamp of Approval,” Spring 3100 0 (June, 1968): 3.
8. William F. Buckley, “Harvard and the Police,” National Review w (May 6,
1969): 21.
9. Samuel Walker, Popular Justice: A History of Criminal Justicee (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1980): 230–231; John Morton Blum,
Years of Discord: American Politics and Society 1961–1974 4 (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1991): 207–215.
10. “Man and Woman of the Year: The Middle Americans,” Time Magazine
(January 5, 1970): 16.
11. Officers, both in New York and nationally, understood their status
as somewhere between middle and working class. Despite their rela-
tively high incomes, police work was often physical, dirty, has irregular
hours, and brought officers into contact with “undesirable” elements
of society. This made them uneasy about whether they belonged to the
prestigious middle class or the lower-ranking working class. For many
police there had been a discrepancy between actual and desired status.
David H. Bayley and Harold Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police:
Confrontation in America a (New York: Free Press, 1969): 8, 13–14, 38;
“Summer ‘66: Cops on the Spot,” Newsweekk (June 27, 1966): 22–26.
12. John Cooper, The Police and the Ghettoo (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat
Press, 1980): 6–7.
13. “The Way to Cool the Police Problem,” Fortunee (December, 1968): 51.
14. “Policemen Defend Right to Live Outside City,” New York Times
(February 3, 1971): 1.
15. David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to Historyy (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1994): 254–255; “Summer’s a
Bummer When the Heat Is On,” Village Voicee (June 20, 1968): 25.
16. David Pozetta and George Colbun, “Race, Ethnicity, and the Evolution
of Political Legitimacy,” in Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to
History, 126–139.
17. Alex Nicholas, Black in Blue: A Study of the Negro Policeman n (New
York: Meredith, 1969): xviii.
18. Richard Y. Funston, Constitutional Counterrevolution? The Warren
Court and the Burger Court: Judicial Policy Making in Modern America
(New York : Schenkman, 1977); Archibald Cox, The Warren Court:
Constitutional Decision as an Instrument of Reform, (Cambridge, MA:
Not e s 251
Harvard University Press, 1968); Alexander M. Bickel, Politics and the

Warren Courtt (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Mark Tushnet, ed.,
The Warren Court in Historical and Political Perspectivee (Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 1993).
19. “Who Will Police the Police?” National Review w (April 5, 1966): 311.
20. Editor, “The Thin Blue Line,” Spring 3100 0 (June, 1968): 4.
21. Robert M. Fogelson, Big City Policee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
22. Charles R. Morris, The Cost of Good Intentionss (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1980): 94.
24. Ibid., 35.
25. Ibid., 48.
26. Ibid., 130.
27. Thomas R. Brooks, “New York’s Finest,” Commentaryy (August, 1965):
30.
28. New York Cops Talk Back, 131.
29. “The Thin Blue Line,” 4.
30. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Ragee (New York: Bantam
Books, 1987): 334–336.
31. Joseph F. Ujazdowski to Mayor [John Lindsay], December 11, 1967,
New York Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers, Box 86, Folder 1614.
32. Richard Lemmon, The Troubled American n (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1969): 19.
33. Christian Appy, Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers in
Vietnam m (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993): 6–7.
34. See Peter B. Levy, The New Left and Labor in the 1960ss (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1994): 102;
35. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties, Years of Hope, Days of Ragee (New York: Bantam
Books, 1987): 335; Peter B. Levy, The New Left and Labor in the 1960s
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994): 102. Levy reports that a
majority of Americans felt that Mayor Daley had nott used excessive force:
75 percent of the public rated the protestors negatively, even those who
saw the Vietnam War as a mistake. It was the use of the word “pig” that
was an affront especially to the working class who were derided as living
in filth, eating slop, and being overweight. Not only did the term pig
provoke police violence, but it antagonized millions of American who,
even if they felt that the police response was excessive, considered it an
understandable reaction to the protesters’ elitist taunting.
36. David Farber, Chicago ‘68 8 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1988): xii.
37. Ibid., xiv.
38. Stefan Bradley, “‘Gym Crow Must Go!’ Black Student Activism at
Columbia University, 1967–68,” Journal of African American History
(Spring, 2003): 163.
252 No t e s
39. Ibid., 164.

40. Donadio, “Black Power at Columbia,” Commentaryy (September,
1968): 67–68.
41. The consensus was that black students conducted themselves with
greater dignity than their white peers. Unlike many of the white strike
leaders, the black students avoided extremely revolutionary rhetoric.
This made it harder for the press, and for those hostile to the demon-
stration to identify the blacks as young hoodlums and rebels against
all authority who desired nothing less than the violent overthrow of
the government. Stephen Donadio, “Black Power at Columbia,”
Commentaryy (September, 1968): 71.
42. Archibald Cox, Crisis at Columbia: Report of the Fact-Finding
Commission Appointed to Investigate the Disturbances at Columbia
University in April and May 1968 8 (New York: Vintage Books): 157.
43. Michael A. Baker, Bradley, R. Brewer, Raymond DeBuse, Sally T.
Hillsman, Murray Milner, and David V. Soeiro, Police on Campus: The
Mass Police Action at Columbia a (New York: New York Civil Liberties
Union, 1968): 74–77.
44. One explanation for the large number of complaints was the sensitiv-
ity and organization of the students. The point is not that this was the
most egregious police action—it most certainly was not—but that it
was a critical moment in which middle-class white kids got a first-per-
son glimpse into the world of police brutality. See Jeffrey L. Avorn,
Up Against the Ivy Wall: A History of the Columbia Crisiss (New York:
Atheneum, 1969): 196.
45. Ibid., 187.
46. Ibid.
47. Roger Kahn, The Battle for Morningside Heights: Why Students Rebel
(New York: William Morrow, 1970): 195.
48. Ibid., 195–196.
49. “The Cop Took Insults in Silence at Columbia,” New York Amsterdam
Newss (May 4, 1968): 1.
50. Baker, Police on Campus, 5–7.
51. Quoted from Gerald Astor, New York Cops: An Informal Historyy (New
York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1971): 196.
52. Avorn, Up Against the Ivy Wall, 196.
53. Kahn, The Battle for Morningside Heights, 204.
54. Robert Fogelson,” “From Resentment to Confrontation: The Police,
the Negroes, and the Outbreak of 1960s Riots,” Political Science
Quarterlyy (June, 1968): 224–225.
55. “Leary Says Police Reflect Community in a Swing to the Right,” New
York Timess (September 13, 1968): 1.
56. “3 Panthers Cited in Police Ambush,” New York Timess (April 19, 1969):
42.
57. “Law Enforcement Group is Creation of Protest,” New York Times
(September 7, 1968): 38.
Not e s 253
58. “Militant Cops Say LEG Thrives,” New York Postt (February 2, 1969).
59. “Leary to Act in Panther Attack,” New York Postt (September 5, 1968);
“Off-Duty Police Join in Beating Black Panthers,” New York Times
(September 5, 1968): 1.
60. Barry Gottehrer, The Mayor’s Man n (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1975): 221–223.
61. “Law Enforcement Group is Creation of Protest,” New York Times
(September 7, 1968): 38.
62. Ibid.
63. “New Police Group Maintains Its Stand,” New York Times, s September
14, 1968, 16.
64. William W. Turner, Power on the Rightt (Berkeley, CA: Ramparts, 1971):
222–23.
65. Ibid, 226.
66. “5,000 Police Sign Protest Petition,” New York Timess (August 20,
1968): 38.
67. Ibid, 38.
68. William C. Kronholm, “Blue Power: The Threat of the Militant
Policeman,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science
63.2 (June, 1972): 295.
69. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Why Cops Hate Liberals and Vice Versa,” in
William Bopp, The Police Rebellions: A Quest for Blue Powerr (Springfield,
IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1971).
70. “Police Birchites: The Blue Backlash,” Nation n (December 7, 1964):
425; “Leary to Allow Birchers in Force,” New York Timess (February
23, 1966): 1; “Mayor Denounces the Birch Society,” New York Times
(February 25, 1966): 1; “Leary Assails Birchers; Seeks Advice on
Legality,” New York Timess (March 12, 1966): 1; “Bircher Charges
Police Harassing,” New York Timess (March 19, 1966): 1. On the John
Birch Society and civil rights, see Benjamin R. Epstein and Arnold
Foster, The Radical Right: Report on the John Birch Society and Its Allies
(New York: Random House, 1966): 95–106; Gerald Schomp, Birchism
Was My Business. (New York: Macmillan, 1970): 104–108, 166–174.
71. “Militant Cops Say LEG Thrives,” New York Postt (February 20,
1969).
72. “Leary Says Police Reflect Community: Reflects a Swing to the Right,”
73. “PBA Condemns News Police Group,” New York Timess (September 13,
1968): 1.
74. “The Politics of Blue Power,” Nation n (April 24, 1969): 493–496.
75. Ibid., 495.
76. Cassese’s sentiments stemmed from a particular incident during July of
that year in which 1,500 youths demonstrated at City Hall in protest
against a cutback in summer job programs and smashed six automobiles.
Nine people were arrested, but police stood by while some of the cars
were smashed. Lindsay and Leary, sensitive to the protests, and aware
254 No t e s
that they were the product of Lindsay’s budget cuts, urged officers to
use prudence and restraint in dealing with protestors. See “PBA Head
Tells Police to Enforce Laws 100% Here,” New York Timess (August 13,
1968).
77. Max Gunther, “Cops in Politics: A Threat to Democracy,” in Bopp, The
s 65.
Police Rebellions,
78. “PBA Directives Held to Right,” New York Timess (August 16, 1968).
79. For example, the PBA voted in 1967 to order its 24,000 members to
picket City Hall in order to reject a new contract. See “Police Turn
Down Wage Offer; Pickets Planned,” New York Timess (March 22,
1967): 1.
80. John H. Boupa, The Police Labor Movementt (Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas, 1971).
81. Letter from David Lederman to Mayor [John] Lindsay, New York
Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers, General Correspondence, LEC
#350.
82. Ibid.
83. As criminologist Samuel Walker illustrates, this was a nation-wide phe-
nomenon. Police unionism returned with a vengeance in 1966. In some
of America’s largest cities, proposed reforms in the area of police commu-
nity relations galvanized the rank-and-file into action. Strikes by police
officers became an increasingly common feature of city life. Police chiefs
accustomed to exercising virtually unlimited power suddenly found that
almost every administrative decision was subject to negotiation. Samuel
Walker, Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justicee (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1980): 240–243.
84. The PBA maintained that a contract negotiated in 1968 and early 1969
provided that the parity of patrolmen should be maintained at a ratio of
3:3.5 with police sergeants. It filed a claim for $100 a month in retroac-
tive increases after the sergeants received an age increase that changed
the ratio. Patrolmen said that they were guaranteed a pay raise due to
the legally binding agreement of January 29, 1969. The city countered
that this agreement was simply a preliminary step in negotiations lead-
ing to a formal written contract that never materialized. See Robert M.
Fogelson, Big City Policee (Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press,
1977): 217–218; “Hundred of Police Out: Leave Beats to Protest
Ruling in Parity Case,” New York Timess (January 15, 1971): 1. “Police
‘Job Action’ Is Due Tomorrow in Wage Dispute,” New York Times
(April 28, 1970): 36.
85. “Policemen Delay a Work Stoppage Until Saturday,” New York Times
(April 29, 1970): 1.
86. “Hundreds of Police Out,” New York Timess (January 15, 1971): 1.
87. “Nobody Could Have Stopped It,” New York Timess (January 18,
1971): 1.
88. “New York Police End 6-Day Job Action,” Wall Street Journall (January
20, 1971): 1.
Not es 255
89. Ibid., 1.
90. Ibid., 19.
91. Ibid., 18.
92. “Above the Law: Bitter New York Cops Are Angry over More than Just
Their Wages,” Wall Street Journall (January 19, 1971).
93. Edward Shufro, an office worker from the brokerage firm of Shuffor,
Rose, and Ehrman watched through binoculars as two men in gray suits
with gray hats seemed to direct the workers, giving instructions through
hand signals. One of the construction workers said that not only were
the workmen organized but that also in at least one case they were
offered a monetary bonus by their contractor if they took off time to
“break some heads.” The attack on the peace demonstrators was so well
organized, this worker claimed, that at least on two occasions during
the day “I turned around and happened to see men in business suits
with color patches in their lapels was the same on both men, and they
were shouting orders to the workers.” See “War Foes Here Attacked
by Construction Workers,” New York Timess (May 9, 1970). Another
testified in secrecy to the Wall Street Journall that the attack had been
organized by shop stewards with the support of some contractors. He
said one contractor even offered his men cash bonuses to join the fray.
“After ‘Bloody Friday,’ New York Wonders If Wall Street Is Becoming a
Battleground,” Wall Street Journall (May 11, 1970).
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid.
96. “War Foes Here Attacked by Construction Workers,” New York Times
(May 9, 1970): 1.
97. “Why the Construction Workers Holler U.S.A. All the Way!” New York
Timess (June 28, 1970): 179.
98. Ibid. Near City Hall, Michael Berknap, a 29-year-old Wall Street Lawyer
and Democratic candidate for the State Senate was beaten and kicked
by a group of construction workers who yelled, “Kill the commie bas-
tards.” He was treated at Beekman Downtown Hospital with his right
eye completely closed, a large welt on his head, and five boot marks
on his back. Berknap, among others, reported that the police made no
attempt to stop the assault. Another protestor, Drew Lynch, a teacher
from Brooklyn, testified that after four workers pummeled him, black-
ening both his eyes and drawing blood from his mouth, the nearest
policeman’s response was to drag him by the collar, drag him away, and
tell him to leave.
99. “War Foes Here Attacked by Construction Workers,” New York Times
(May 9, 1970): 1. Interestingly, the official police report would confirm
that at least five officers were caught on film removing their helmets
during this episode. The report, however, excused the officers who
explained that it seemed to be the appropriate action given the “render-
ing of the national anthem.” New York City Police Department, Report
Relating to the Role of the Police in Connection with Disorders Which
256 No t e s
Occurred in Lower Manhattan on May 8, 1970. New York Municipal

Archives, Call #P75.95spdr, 43.
100. “Why the Construction Workers Holler U.S.A. All the Way!” New York
Timess (June 28, 1970): 179.
101. See New York City Police Department, Report Relating to the Role of the
Police in Connection with Disorders Which Occurred in Lower Manhattan
on May 8, 1970.
102. Fred Cook, “Hard Hats: The Rampaging Patriots,” Nation n (June 15,
1970): 712–719.
103. Ibid., 14.
104. Individual letter to Dr. Edward J. Mortola, President Pace, from Joan
G. Roland, May 11, 1970, of Faculty Council of Pace, New York
Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers, Box 86, Folder 1614.
105. R. F. Spinelli, Office of Executive Vice President to Dr. Mortola, both
of Pace, May 11, 1970, New York Municipal Archives, Lindsay Papers,
Box 86, Folder 1614.
106. Letter from Mrs J. Sobon to President Mortola. New York Municipal
Archives, Lindsay Papers, Box 86, Folder 1614.
107. Cook, “Hard-Hats,” 712.
108. “PBA Blames City in Reply to Mayor on Laxity Charges,” New York
Timess (May 11, 1970): 1.
109. Ibid., 1.
110. “5 Police Groups Rebut Critical Mayor,” New York Timess (May 12,
1970): 1.
111. Peter Levy’s introduction to his study of the relationship between the
New Left and Labor demonstrates the misrepresentation of this event
as a blue-collar betrayal of the Democratic Party and its late 1960s ide-
als. He demonstrates the complicated ways in which different members
of the blue-collar trades and unions positioned themselves relative to
this event and the New Left in general. See Peter B. Levy, The New Left
and Labor in the 1960ss (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994).
Likewise, Barbara Ehrenriech points out that the attack, which quickly
became emblematic of blue-collar sentiments, was neither spontaneous
nor representative of union men. At the time of the incident, some of the
nation’s largest unions, including the Teamsters, United Auto Workers,
and Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, had taken official stands against
the war in Vietnam. See Barbara Ehrenriech, Fear of Falling: The Inner
Life of the Middle Classs (New York: Harper Perennial, 1987): 107.
112. Ehrenriech, Fear of Falling, 107.
113. Ibid., 121–122.
114. Historian Christopher Lasch suggests that Ehrenriech stereotypes one
image of the worker for another, replacing the image of Archie Bunker
with a working-class revolutionary. Lasch reminds of white working-class
opposition to affirmative action, abortion, abolition of the death penalty,
and other liberal causes. See Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven,
Progress and Its Criticss (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991): 524–527.
Not es 257
115. Unlike construction workers who tolerated long haired youths among
their ranks, police officers were almost always exceptionally well groomed
with short hair. Police regulations stipulated that hair had to be “neatly
trimmed on top.” Jon Bal, a patrolman who refused to cut his hair, faced
harassment form his fellow officers in a famous case involving groom-
ing in the department. See “A Policeman’s Tale Hangs By Hair,” New
York Timess (June 15, 1970): 23; “Long-Haired Policeman’s Removal
Is Urged by His Colleagues,” New York Timess (August 9, 190): 35.
More generally on police regulations regarding dress and grooming,
see Nicholas Alex, New York Cops Talk Back: A Study of a Beleaguered
Minority. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976).
116. Joshua Freeman, “Construction Workers, Manliness, and the 1970
Pro-war Demonstrations,” Journal of Social Historyy (Summer, 1993):
725–744.
117. “Women Make Good Cops,” New York Times Magazinee (November 3,
1974): 18–19.
118. “Police Divided over Assignment of Women to Street Patrol Here,”
119. “The Recruits Are Different and so is the Police Academy,” New York
Timess (July 6, 1973).
120. Ibid.
121. Bruce L. Berg and Kimberly Budnick, “Defeminization of Women in
Law Enforcement: A New Twist in the Traditional Police Personality,”
Journal of Police Science and Administration n (December, 1986): 317.
122. Kate Wenner, “What Ever Happened to the Lady Cops?” Soho Weekly
Newss (April 16, 1976): 10–12.
123. These rumors seem largely unsubstantiated, as then commissioner
Michael Codd argued to counter the claims of his journalists looking
for a juicy story. See “Police Divided over Assignment of Women to
Street Patrol Here,” 27.
124. “The Intimacy of the Radio Patrol Car,” Police Chieff (January 1974): 55.
125. Just as feminism began as a reaction to the traditionalism of the 1950s,
the very success of the feminist movement spawned another movement:
the profamily sector of the New Right. This sector initially mobilized
against abortion rights and ERA but by the late 1970s would expand to
other women’s issues and a larger profamily label. See Pamela Johnston
Conover and Virginia Gray, Feminism and the New Right: Conflict
over the American Familyy (New York: Praeger, 1983): 51–53. Jane J.
Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA A (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986).
126. Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women n (New York: Coward-McCann,
1978): 21–22; Dworkin explains the ways in which the political right
makes appeals and promises to women that both exploit and quiet their
deepest fears. She argues that these fears originate in the perception
that male violence against women is uncontrollable and unpredictable;
because women are dependent upon, and subservient to men, they are
258 No t es
always subject to this violence. The right promises to put enforceable

restrains on male aggression—thus simplifying survival for women—
to make the world slightly more habitable. The right offers women a
simple, fixed, predetermined concept of love based on order and stabil-
ity with formal areas and mutual accountability. It is easy to understand
how this perspective can explain the stake both men and women have in
preventing women from taking on law enforcement roles.
127. “Police Wives Fight Use of Women in Car Teams,” New York Times
(December 1, 1973): 22.
128. “Wives of Police Protest Women in Patrol Cars; Action Endorsed,”
New York Timess (June 21, 1974): 12.
129. Ibid.
130. Ibid.
131. “Police Divided over Assignment of Women to Street Patrol Here,” 27.
132. Alice Mulcahey Fleming, New on the Beat: Woman Power in the Police
Forcee (New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1975): 24–25.
133. “Police Divided over Assignment of Women to Street Patrol Here,”
27.
134. “Women Police Officers and Their Husbands: Both Wed to the Force,”
New York Timess (November 2, 1974): 34.
7 Welcome to Fear City:

Last Hired, First Fired
1. Joan Weitzman, City Workers and Fiscal Crisis: Cutbacks, Givebacks, and
Survivall (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979): 1.
2. “Lessons to Be Learned: The New York City Municipal Unions, the
1970s Fiscal Crisis, and New York City at a Crossroads after September
11,” International Labor and Working Class Historyy (Fall, 2002): 91.
3. Ibid., 89–95.
4. “Oil, Money, and Recession,” Foreign Affairss (Winter, 1979):
217–230.
5. Ibid., 2.
6. “Presidential Decision Making during the 1975 New York Financial
Crisis: A Conceptual Analysis,” Presidential Studies Quarterlyy (Spring,
1991): 251.
7. “Actual City Layoffs in Economy Drive Now Put at 13,966,” New York
Timess (July 27, 1975): 1.
8. James I. Alexander, Blue Coats, Black Skin: The Black Experience in the
New York City Police Department since 1891 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition
Press, 1978): 95; Maureen Kempton, “All We Want for Christmas Is
Our Jobs Back,” Ms. (May, 1975): 68.
9. W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in Americaa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
10. Kerry Segrave, Policewomen: A Historyy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland,
1995): 137–138.
Not e s 259
11. “PBA Leaders Vote against Formal Job Action while Dismissing 5,000
Officers,” New York Timess (July 3, 1975): “Layoffs of 40,000 Ordered as
City Ends Fiscal Year,” New York Timess (July 1, 1975): 1. “Police Given
a Plant to Trim Budget by $100 Million,” New York Timess (June 13,
1975): 18; “Laid-Off Policemen Black Brooklyn Bridge Traffic,” New
York Timess (July, 2, 1975): 1.
12. “Layoffs Ordered as City Ends Fiscal Year,” 1.
13. “Police Given a Plan to Trim Budget by $100 Million,” New York Times
(June 13, 1975): 18.
14. Nicholas Alex, New York Cops Talk Bach: A Study of a Beleaguered
15. Roger Abel, Interview with the author, January 24, 1997. In 1983,
black and Hispanic members of city police department brought a Title
VI suit challenging city police department’s “last hired, first fired” pol-
icy; Guardians Association et al., Petitioners vs Civil Service Commission
of the City of New York et al., United States Supreme Court, 463 U.S.
582, 77 L.Ed.2d 866, July 1, 1983.
16. Joan Weitzman, City Workers and Fiscal Crisis: Cutbacks, Givebacks, and
Survivall (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979): 74–75.
17. “Union Guide to ‘Fear City’ Is Banned by a Court Order,” New York
Timess (June 13, 1975): 1.
18. “Black Cops Lash PBA’s ‘Fear Campaign,’” New York Amsterdam News
(June 26, 1975): 1.
19. “What Makes Police Morale Good,” New York Amsterdam News
(December 1, 1975): 1.
20. “New York City Police End 6-Day Job Action,” New Yorkk Times
(January 20, 1971): 1; “Police to Start ‘Job Action’ in 48 Hours in Pay
Dispute,” New York Timess (October 16, 1968): 1.
21. “Laid-Off Policemen Block Brooklyn Bridge Traffic,” 1.
22. Andy Loga, “Around City Hall,” New Yorkerr (November 11, 1976): 164.
23. Ibid.
24. Kempton, “All We Want for Christmas Is Our Jobs Back,” 68.
25. “Laid-Off Women Police Officers Decide to Fight for Their Jobs,” New
26. Ibid.
27. “Laid-Off Women Police Officers Embittered,” New York Timess (July 3,
1975): 11.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., 19.
30. “Laid-Off Women Police Officers Decide to Fight for Their Jobs,” 19
31. “Laid-Off Women Police Officers Embittered,” 11.
32. “Policewomen Upheld in Attack on Seniority Layoffs,” New York Times
(February 20, 1976): 72.
33. Acha v. Beame, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 531
F.2d 648 (1976).
34. Ibid.
260 No t e s
35. “Rights Group Cites Beame for Bias in Failing to Rehire Policewomen,”
36. Guardians Association et al. v. Civil Service Commission of the City of
New York, United States Supreme Court, 46 U.S. 582, 77 L.Ed.2d 866
(1983).
37. Guardians Association of the New York City Police Department and
Hispanic Society of the New York City Police Department v. Civil Service
Commission of the City of New York, 539 F. Supp 627 (1982).
38. Guardians Association of the New York City Police Department v. Civil
Service Commission of the City of New York, 431 F. Supp 526 (1977).
39. The Hispanic Society of the New York City Police Department v. The New
York City Police Departmentt 466 F.Supp. 1273 (1979).
40. Guardians Association and the Hispanic Society of the New York City
Police Department v. Civil Service Commission of the City of New York,
484 F.Supp. 786 (1980).
41. Guardians Association of the New York City Police Department and
Hispanic Society of the New York City Police Department v. Civil Service
Commission of the City of New York; “Request for Stay Rejected,” New
York Timess (February 22, 1980): B3; “Court Overturns Minority Quota
for Hiring Police,” New York Timess (August 1, 1980): B1.
42. “Blacks, Women Find Police Union Discriminates,” New York
Amsterdam Newss (August 13, 1977): A-5.
Index
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
Abel, Roger, 98–99 Ambrose, William (sergeant), 118,

Acerra, Lucy (lieutenant), 126 119, 237n78
Acha, Dina, 196–197 American Civil Liberties Union
Acha v. Beame, 197–198 (ACLU), 198
Adams, Francis W. H. American Female Guardian Society,
(commissioner), 84, 215n60 44
Affirmative action, 191–192, 200, Anderson, Deborah, Policewomen on
209n72, 225n99, 236n58 Patroll (1974), 124
perceived by whites, 136–137, Andy Sipowicz, 3
162, 165 Annual Reports, NYPD, 4
police leaders and, 138 Anticommunism, 37, 40
unintended effects of, 135–136 Antiwar protests, protesters
AFL-CIO, 39 backlash against, 164, 168, 180
African American officers. Seee Black at Columbia University, 170
officers; Black policewomen police clash with, 105
African American policewomen. See working class and, 168–169
Black policewomen Appy, Christian, Working Class War
African Americans. Seee Black (1993), 168
officers; Black policewomen; Archie Bunker, 256n114
Blacks; Black women Armstrong, Wallace, slain by police,
Afro-American Patrolman’s League 19
(AAPL), 147, 148, 150 Arson, during Harlem Riot of 1935,
Afro-American Society, at Columbia 18
University, 171 Asians on postwar NYPD force, 2
Afro-Americans Police Officers
League, 229n148 Balarezo, Eduaordo, 56
Alex, Nicholas, Black in Blue Bandy, Robert, and Harlem Riot of
(1969), 5, 144–145 1943, 20
New York Cops Talk Backk (1976), Barney Miller, 3
6, 166 Battle, Samuel (lieutenant), 205n7
Alexander, James, Blue Coats, Black Beame, Abraham (mayor), 193
n (1978), 5
Skin austerity plan of, 190–191, 196
Allen, Calvin, 148 reactions of, 194
262 Index
Becker, Arlene (policewoman), 120 Black Police Association, 229n148

Bedford-Stuyvesant Black policewomen, 43, 44, 111, 129
black cops in, 17, 133, 136 Blacks, 22, 23
black population of, 16, 205n5 in clerical roles, 243n28
cops from, 139 civil service exam scores of,
riots in, 73, 78, 105, 150 244n56
Biddle, Francis, 23 as criminals, 1, 132
Binetti, Nicholas, 151–152 disrespect for, 20
Black cops. Seee Black officers family life of, 241n12, 241n14
Black Liberation Army, 148 hiring of, 34
PBA vs., 10 negative stereotypes of, 164, 192,
violence by, 151–155 240n12
Black Muslims, 18n12 occupationally ghettoized, 34, 144
Black nationalism oppression of, 144
backlash against, 164 rioting by, 105
rise of, 130, 148, 150 as soldiers, 16 ,26, 207n39
Black officers, 1, 9, 16–18, 26, 29, as student protesters, 252n41
31, 34, 70, 147, 247n107 surveillance of, 1
“acting white,” 2, 150 views of police by, 136, 156, 166,
advocates for, 156 242n21
attrition rates of, 11 World War II and, 159
black nationalism and, 148 Black women, 54. . See alsoo Black
brutality of, 131–132, 136 policewomen; Blacks
as communists, 40 disrespect for, 20–21
criticisms by, 144–145 Harlem riots and, 18, 19–20
criticisms of, 8, 130 in WAC, 53
hiring of, 5, 103, 135, 129–130 Bloch, Peter, Policewomen on Patrol
identity conflict of, 5, 142, 145, (1974), 124
157 Blue-collar virtues, of NYPD
Kerner and Crime Commission officers, 1
reports and, 10 Blue wall of silence, 2, 4, 194
layoffs of, 191–194, 199–200 black cops and, 10, 11, 99, 130,
organizations of, 147–148 148
patrol work and, 33 Bopp, William J., The Police
PEP and, 139 Rebellionn (1971), 6
NYPD sued by, 259n15 Braddock Hotel, and Harlem Riot
questioning of police practices of 1943, 19–20
by, 35 Bratton, William, 3
recruitment of, 6–7, 140–142, 146 Bribery, bribes,139–140
scholarship on, 5–7 Broderick, Vincent (commissioner),
as Uncle Toms, 99, 142, 245n65 91, 92
Black Panthers, 148 Bronx, 179
infiltration of, 150–151 as Fort Apache, 193
PBA vs., 10 minority cops in, 133
trials of, 174–175 rioting in, 105
violence of, 152 Bronze Shields, 147, 148
Index 263
Brooklyn Character
cops attack courthouse in, 175, 180 as Civil Service hiring criterion,
work stoppage by cops in, 179 141
Brown, Claude, Manchild in the of women, 44
Promised Land d (1965), 89, 90 Chevigny, Paul, Police Powerr (1972),
Brown, Henry S., 154 6, 232n19
Brutality, police, 30, 35, 43, 78, 80, Chicago
147, 212n6, 218n12, 224n84, black cops in, 147
228n131 police violence against student
against blacks, 18–19, 20, 242n21 protesters in, 169–70
by black cops, 131–132, 136 Christian Front, 36–37
Civilian Review Board and, 9, Churns, Michael, 175
94, 96 Cirile, Mary (officer), 103–104
during Columbia University Memoirs of a Police Officer
protests, 172–174, 252n44 (1975), 114
cover-up of, 40 Cirino, Sofia, 141
culture of, in NYPD, 7, 83 Citizenship, citizens
protests against, 77, 145–146, 168 police brutality and, 9, 18–19
Buckley, William F., 162 race and gender and, 6
Budion, Mildred, 162–163 City Employees Local 237, 39–40
Bureau of Policewomen, 234n36, Civilian Complaint Review Board,
239n107 172
Burke, Kathy (detective), 103, 111 opposition to, 174, 176
Burpo, John H., The Police Labor Civilian Review Board, 9, 75, 79,
Movementt (1971), 6 80, 81–82, 91, 92, 96
Burrascano, Lucille (officer), 119–20 rejection of, 134
Buwalda, Irma (officer), 55 Civil rights
activism for, 23, 148
Campbell, John (captain), hires first advocates for, 5, 25, 29, 43, 131,
black NYPD officer, 17–18 136
Cardillo, Philip, 154–155 black police officers and advocacy
Carter, Robert L., 200 for, 11, 17, 33
Carton, John E. (PBA president), black woman demonstrating for, 74
37, 68 minority cops and, 103, 129–130
Cassese, John (PBA president), 41, movement for, 2, 3, 6, 230n157
82, 92, 95, 96, 101 nationalism and, 15
on affirmative action, 137 resistance to, 187
LEG and, 175–177 white support for, 21
on racial minorities, 192, 194 World War II and, 24. See also
Cawley, Donald F. (commissioner), Civil rights movement
and patrolwomen, 125–126 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 91, 115,
Ceremony, ceremonies, 24, 150 197–198, 200
Chain of command, 24 Civil Rights Commission, 227n126
Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, Civil rights movement
The, federal Crime Commission backlash against, 161, 164, 165
report (1967), 105–106 black nationalism and, 148
264 Index
Civil rights movement—Continued Compitello, Frank (patrolman), 114

deterioration of public perception Condon-Wadlin law (1947), 39
of officers, 70 Congress for Racial Equality, 77,
minority cops and, 145 218n12
working class and, 168–169 Conservatism, conservatives, 11
Civil service on ghetto, 241n12
exams for, 65, 125, 140–141, postwar, 211n1
241n19, 244n56 of white rank-and-file, 6
jobs in, 34 Cooper, John, 163
Civil Service Commission, 69, 140 The Police and the Ghetto, 241n18
Clark, Kenneth Cooping, 107
as liberal, 240n12 Construction workers, rioting by,
as sociologist, 134, 144 180–183
Class, 5, 6, 183, 250n11. See also Cops, NYPD, 163, 173. See
Middle class; Working class alsoo Black officers; black
Codd, Michael (commissioner), policewomen; patrolman,
186, 196, 238n104, 257n123 patrolmen, NYPD; police
Code of silence. Seee Blue wall of officers; rank-and-file, NYPD;
silence women police officers
Cohen, Bernard, 199 in popular culture, 3–4
Cohen, Leonard, 181 retired, 4
Collins, James (officer), and Harlem CORE (Congress of Racial
Riot of 1943, 20 Equality), 90
Color blindness, 16, 204n4 Corruption, 18, 77, 179
Columbia Association, 33, 244n43 culture of, in NYPD, 7
Columbia University, 252n41 in PEP, 139–140
1968 protests at, 11, 170–174, reforming of, 147
187, 252n44 Council of Police Societies, 148
Commissioners of NYPD, 16, 18, Crime, crimes
36. See also names of individual blacks and, 17, 132
commissioners causes of, 131
Commission on Law Enforcement women and, 57
and Administration of Justice rates of, 2
(1967), 105–107, 165 victims of, 242n21
on minority cops, 130–133 Crime Commission, 231n11, 240n9
policewomen in, 115 report of, and African American
recommendations of, 116 police officers, 10.
Committee of Female Police See also Commission on
Officers, 196 Law Enforcement and
Committee of Women on National Administration of Justice
Defense, 46 Criminal Investigation Bureau, 153
Communism, communists, 37 Criminal justice, 8, 37, 107, 109,
police officers and, 40 133, 241n18
Communist Party, 36, 40, 228n131 Criminology, criminologists, 4, 5,
Community Service Officers 254n83
(CSOs), 10, 130, 136, 137 Crossing guards, 110, 141
Index 265
Crowd control, 226n106 Double V Campaign, 8

Cunningham, David, 83 hopes of blacks and, 15
Curry, Thomas, 151–152 Dougherty, George Samuel
(commissioner), 46
Daley, Richard, 169, 251n35 Drug crimes, 56, 57, 66, 139, 153
Davis, Benjamin (city councilman), Duffy, Kevin, 198
40, 41, 211n104 Dulaney, W. Marvin, Black Police in
Degenerate Squad, 235n50 Americaa (1996), 6–7
Delinquency, delinquents
arrest of, 11 East Harlem Youth Council, 138
of females, during World War II, 9 Economic mobility, 34. See also
juvenile, 57 Social mobility
Democracy Educational Testing Service, study
creed, 25 on promotional testing by, 140
meaning of, 17 Ehrenriech, Barbara, 183, 256n111,
wartime ideology of, 19 256n114
Demonstrations, demonstrators. Ehrlich, Susan Martin, Breaking and
See alsoo Protests, protesters Enteringg (1980), 7
antiwar, 255n93 Emerald Society, 34, 138, 228n140
during Harlem Riot of 1935, 18 Emergency Civil Liberties
during Harlem Riot of 1943, 20 Committee, 176
by police, 11 Enright, Richard (commissioner),
against police harassment, 16 47–49, 50
Derning, Don R., 142 Equal Employment Opportunity
DeSanto, Joseph A., 185 Commission, 115, 238n105
de Suvero, Henry, 176 Equality of women, 10, 65
Detectives Equal opportunity, 11, 28, 80
female, 57 lip service to, 2
Isabella Goodwin as, 45 Equal Pay Act, 115
minority cops as, 129 Ethnic groups, ethnicity, 5
promotion of women as, 65 excluded from patrol work, 138
Detective’s Bureau, advancement in, 17 fraternal groups based on, 41
Detroit identity and, 6
black cops in, 147 represented in NYPD, 1
riots in, 21, 23, 105, 206n26 shared, between officers and
Discrimination, gender, 197–198 community, 18
Discrimination, racial Ewbanks, Winston, 136
against minority cops, 146–147, Executive Orders
199–200 No. 8802, 25
in employment, 18, 115, 142 No. 9981, 25
in housing, 16 No. 11478, 115
opposition to, 40
in postwar military, 25 Fair play, 10, 11, 80, 162, 164, 189,
viewed as southern problem, 26 191
Distefano, Paul (patrolman), 118 Farber, David, Chicago ’688 (1988),
Dominicans, as cops, 147, 199 169–170
266 Index
Farrakhan, Louis, 136, 154, 156 Ford, Olga, 153–154

Farmer, James, 81, 90, 93, Foster, Gregory, 154
226n105 Fox, Thomas (sergeant), 138
Farrell, Thomas R., 225n103 Francis, Sergeant, 26
Fascism, fascists, 36, 37 Frank, Norman, 95, 96
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), Fraternal Order of Police, 176
35, 40, 54, 85, 97 Fraternal organizations
Fear City campaign, 11, 193–195 ethnic associations of, 33, 136, 138
Feinberg, Wilfred, 198 rejected titles to women officers, 65
Feinstein, Howard (City Employees Frazier, James, on World War II, 15
Local 237 president), 39–40 Freedom Now, 227n123
Femininity Furey, John F., 174
as asset for policewomen, 10,
103–104, 110, 116, 120, 126 Gammage, Allen Z., and Stanley L.
campaign, 44. 66 Sachs, Police Unionss (1972), 6
ideals of, 8, 110 Garelik, Sanford (chief inspector),
as learned, 121 93, 107
of patrol work, 184 Gender
relevance of, 9 conflict between, 43
of women officers, 2, 7, 55–56, defining job title by, 65
61, 62–64, 111, 185, 124–125 inequities of, 11, 103–104, 111,
Feminism, feminist movement, 2, 3, 114, 125
257n125 police department replicated
backlash against, 161, 164 order of nuclear family, 67
beliefs of, 67 race and, 6, 44
cops and, 183 relevance of to police work, 120,
growth of, 6 183
Horne as, 124 roles of, 7, 8 , 44, 63, 121, 124,
Policemen’s Wives Association vs., 187
11 system of, 5
policewomen and, 116 women soldiers subverted order
working class and, 168–169 of, 53
during World War I, 46 Gender identity, 7, 8, 211–212n1
Financial rewards of police service, Gender politics, 185
24, 36 Harlem Riot of 1943 and, 19
Fink, Joseph (deputy inspector), 109 NYPD and, 6
Firefighters, 38 Ghetto, ghettoes
layoffs of, 191 assignments to, 11, 24, 81
Fleming, Alice Mulcahey, New on the commission to study, 18
Beatt (1975), 7, 236n66 as community of institutionalized
Fletcher, Connie, Martin, Breaking deviancy, 132, 163, 240n12,
and Enteringg (1995), 7 241n14
Fogelson, Robert, 36, 174 minority officers in, 2, 136, 144
Ford Foundation, 4, 236n61, NYPD and, 134,141, 242n21
241n19 riots in, 133
Ford, Gerald, 190 Gillam, Charles (sergeant), 139
Index 267
Gilligan, Thomas R. (lieutenant), Harlem Progressive Labor

76–77, 79, 96 Movement, 18n16
Gitlin, Todd, 169 Harlem Riot of 1935, 18, 76, 134
Glatzle, Mary (detective), 123 Harlem Riot of 1943, 19–24, 76, 134
Glover, Clifford, shooting of, Harlem Riot of 1964, 9, 73, 75–76,
143–144 78, 105, 150
Goldwater, Barry, 90, 161, 249n3 Harrington, John, 176
Goodwin, Isabella (matron), 45–46 Harris, Archie, 175
Great Depression, race riots during, 16 Haugh, John, 156
Greeks as NYPD officers, 1 Hayes, Winifred (police detective), 56
Green, Helen (PEA president), 52 Higgins, Lois (IAWP president),
Greenwald, Judith, 124 66–68, 214n51, 215n65
Grievance system, 41 Hispanics, 259n15
Guardians Association, 34, 147–148, as civil service examinees, 244n56
220n30, 228n140 Hispanic Society, 34, 147, 244n56
city sued by, 140, 244n56 city sued by, 140
civil rights and, 146 civil rights and, 146
civilian review and, 98, 99–100 layoffs and, 199–200
Fear City campaign and, 194 opposition to height requirement
layoffs and, 199–200 by, 138
organization of, 33 History, historians, and NYPD, 4
on residency requirement, 243n35 Hoffa, Jimmy, 38, 39–40
PBA and, 148–149 Hogan, Frank, 151
seen to violate officer neutrality, 33 Holmes, Marguerite C., 121
Weir on, 150 Hoover, J. Edgar, 54, 85, 97
Horne, Peter, Women in Law
Haitians as cops, 147 Enforcementt (1972), 7,
Hamilton, Jervey C., 211n104, 120–121, 123–124
211n106 Housing, discrimination in, 16
case of, 40–41 Housing and Transit Police, 242n27
Hamilton, Mary (precinct director), minorities in, 135
48–49 Housing Authority Patrolman’s
Harassment, 7, 16, 77, 242n21 Union, 136
Hard Hat Riots, 180–183, 187 Howell, C. B., on Harlem Riot of
Hargrove, James (sergeant), 148, 194 1943, 21
Harlem, 16, 40 Hunter College, student protests
black policemen in, 17–18, 80, at, 180
133, 144–145, 219n17, 245n65 Hunter College-Bellevue School of
Columbia University and, 170–171 Nursing, 121
crime in, 22, 138–139, 242n21 Hutzel, Eleanor (deputy
drugs in, 56 commissioner), 55
police corruption in, 139–140 Hylan, John (mayor), 46
riots in, 8, 9, 18–24, 29, 105,
207n26, 217n1, 239n107 Identity
as “Siberia” of NYPD, 32 categories of, 7
violence in, 152, 154–156 conflict of, for blacks, 2, 5–6
268 Index
Identity—Continued Johnson, William, 98, 99, 146, 153,

conflict of, for women, 2, 7 228n140
ethnic, 5 Jones, Waverly, 152
gender, 8 Journal of Criminal Law,
of Irish, 34 Criminology, and Police Science,
politics of, 5, 8 64
racial, 8 Juvenile Aid Bureau, 239n107
Ideology
of neutrality, 37 Kelly, Joe, 180
of white rank-and-file, 6 Kempton, Maureen (officer),
of World War II, 8, 19 196–197
Impellitteri, Vincent (mayor), 35, 39 Kempton, Murray, 218n8
Inequality, economic, Kennedy, Robert F., 9, 94, 100,
demonstrations against, 16 226n104
Institute for Defense Analyses Kennedy, Stephen (commissioner),
(IDA), 170–171 39–40, 41, 80
Integration Kenney, Robert, 156
of Housing and Transit Police, Kent State University, students killed
242n27 at, 180
impediments to, 189 Kerner Commission report, 135,
of military, 25 242n23
resistance to, 166, 176, 201 black police officers and, 10
Integration of NYPD, 5, 29 on patrol work, 106, 115
black cops and, 7 perceptions of, 165
brutality and, 29 on racial division, 133–134, 149
gender, 10 Kerner, Otto, 135
identity conflict and, 2 Kessner, Thomas, 30
resistance to, 3 Kiernan, Edward (PBA president),
women and, 43 151–156
International Association of Chiefs Hard Hat Riots and, 182
of Police (IACP), 107, 109, LEG and, 175, 178–179
142 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 90, 165
International Association of Kirk, Grayson, 171–172
Policewomen (IAP), 261n79 Knapp Commission (1972), 139
International Association of Women Knowles, Adelaide (Policewomen’s
Police (IAWP), 66, 214n51, Endowment Association
215n65 president), 65
Irish, 1, 17, 33, 34, 138 Kruszekski, Casimir (inspector), 83
Italians, 138, 244n43
Labor actions of NYPD rank-
Javits, Jacob, 9, 85, 94, 100, and-file, 3, 36–39, 178–179,
218n14, 226n104 194–195. See alsoo Unionization,
Jews, 1, 138, 208n61, 244n43 unions
John Birch Society, 82, 176–177 Labor movement, 38, 41, 256n111
Johnson, Lyndon B., 105, 130, communists and, 37. See also
165, 236n58 Unionization, unions
Index 269
La Guardia, Fiorello (mayor), 27, Lewis, Leona (sergeant), 111

29, 36, 37 Lindsay, John (mayor), 91–93,
failure of, to address shortage of 151, 178, 190, 225n92,
black cops, 30, 31 253n76
Harlem Riot of 1935 and, 18, 19 black crime and, 154
on Harlem Riot of 1943, 21 Civilian Review Board and, 9, 75,
Laino, Leon, 175–176 91, 96
Latinos on NYPD force, 2 Hard Hat Riots and, 180, 182
Laurie, Rocco, 154 Kerner Commission and, 135
Law and Order, 64, 97 LEG and, 175–177
Law and order middle-class and, 165, 168
Nixon and, 249n3 policewomen and, 114
police as guardians of, 41 Logan, Waverly (officer), 139–40
Law Enforcement Assistance Lowensteinth, Allard K., 182
Administration, 232n16 Lynch, Patrick, 76
Law Enforcement Group (LEG), Lynton, Edith, 195–196
174–177, 179, 187
as right wing, 11 Magazines. Seee Newspapers and
Layoffs, 11, 190–193, 201 magazines
Fear City campaign and, 193–194 Malcolm X, 152
of minority cops, 199–200 Management, managers, of NYPD,
of women cops, 194–198 3. See alsoo Leadership of NYPD
Leadership of NYPD attitude of, toward black officers, 32
assignment of black officers by, 11 intrusion of, into officers’ political
hires of blacks by, 1, 5, 16 lives, 36–37
hires of females by, 1 Irish in, 17
postwar problems facing, 3 racial politicking and, 8
as white, 6. See also rank-and-file vs., 16–17, 38, 41
Commissioners of NYPD views of, on women, 9
management, managers, of NYPD as white, 6.
Leary, Howard R. (police Mangum, Robert, 33
commissioner), 3, 92, 135, March on Washington Movement
138, 219n30, 233n30, (1941), 25
253–254n76 Markowitz, Jacob, 70
Civilian Review Board and, 9 Masculinity
Hard Hat riots and, 181 changing definitions of, 7, 8
LEG and, 175–177 as learned, 121
Lebron, Roberto, 88 manhood and, 5
Lederman, David, 178 police work and, 123, 124–125,
Leibowitz, Sam (judge), 85 164, 201
Leinen, Stephen, Black Police, White removal of, 184, 234n33
Societyy (1983), 5, 6, 240n8 white rank-and-file view of, 6
Lemann, Nicholas, 209n72 Matrons, 9, 44–46, 48, 49–50, 119,
Lenny Briscoe, 3 192
Lesbian, as pejorative term, 123–124, Maxwell, Harold (detective), 143
185 McCarron, Marjorie, 65–66
270 Index
McFeeley, Joseph K. (PBA as clerks, 243n28

president), 186 as cops, 103, 138, 145, 191
Fear City campaign by, 193 neighborhoods of, 11, 129–130,
McFeeley, Ken, 126 142
McGee, Willie, case of, 40 police violence against, 143–144
McGranery, James P. (attorney recruitment of, 9, 11, 134
general), 35 working class and, 168–169
McKissick, Floyd, 82 youths hired as CSOs, 131, 136
Medals, 24 Mobility. Seee Economic mobility
Melchionne, Theresa (NY social mobility
Policewomen’s Bureau head), Modugno, Joseph, 100
64, 88, 109–110 Monaghan, George (commissioner),
Melnick, Harold, 75, 114–115, 165 35, 38–39
Men’s Prison Association, 45 Monserrat, Joseph, 85, 88
Mercer Street Station, 45 Mooney, Kathleen (officer), 126
Meritocracy Moore, Cecil, 93
ideal and principle of, 3, 8 Moore, Richard, 152
military as, 16 Morale, 39
of NYPD, 1 Morality in World War II, 9
Meter maids, 110 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 132,
Meyers, Patricia, 197 208n71, 240n12, 241n14
Michalek, Anthony (officer), 126 Mullin, Thomas (captain), 184
Middle class, 168, 183, 250n11 Municipal employees, policemen
blacks in, 22, 23, 77 as, 38
in Brooklyn, 153 Municipal Service Commission, 40–41
in Queens, 100 Murders of policemen, 248n131
whites in, 80, 161, 163 Murphy, Michael J. (commissioner),
women in, 53, 234n42 79, 81, 82, 91, 220n34,
Military, 24 224n83
compared with police Murphy, Patrick V. (commissioner),
organization, 26, 38 117–119, 125, 154, 178, 200
desegregation in, 8 neutrality of, 166–167
Hard Hat Riots and, 183 Murtagh, John M., 151
as means to quell protest, 29 Muslims, as cops, 149
as meritocracy, 16 white cops and, 154–157
service of blacks in, 15 Myrdal, Gunnar, An American
transition from, to police work, 28 Dilemma a (1944), 24
Vietnam and, 167
women in, 52, 54 NAACP (National Association for
Milton, Catherine, Women in Policing the Advancement of Colored
(1980), 7, 116–117, 124 People), 21, 88, 218n12,
Minorities, racial 242n27
antagonism between police and, National Association for Puerto
132 Rican Civil Rights, 87–88
communities of, 105, 134, 145, National Black Police Association
147, 194 (NBPA), 147–148
Index 271
National Guard, 105, 179 New York City Council, 211n104

National identity, 206n37 New York City Police Department.
Nationalism and civil rights, 15 Seee NYPD
National League of Women Voters, 44 New York Civil Liberties Union,
National security agenda, 25 173, 218n14
Nation of Islam, 10, 148, 150, “New York’s Finest”
249n144 defined, 1
PBA vs., 10 Harlem Riot of 1943 and, 23
white cops and, 154–157 character of, 107
Navarra, Vito, 154–155 New York Society for Ethical
Nazism, Nazis Culture, 225n103
NYPD officers compared to, 19 New York State Labor Relations
racism of, 15, 16 Board, 38
Neutrality New York Supreme Court, and
breakdown of, 11, 29 Jervey C. Hamilton case, 40–41
of NYPD, 3, 17, 36, 37 New York Times, s 17, 21, 22, 50
political, 36 brutality cover-up exposed by, 40
race, 8 cooping exposed by, 107
New Deal, 2, 36 on NYPD policewomen, 49, 65
New Left, 256n111 New York University, student
New Right, 257n125 protests at, 180
Newspapers and magazines. See also Niederhoffer, Arthur
New York Times Behind the Shieldd (1967), 6
Amsterdam News, s 21, 29, 79, 83, on police work, 109, 233n24,
86 233–234n33
s 22
Colliers, Nixon, Richard M.
Life, 22 calls for law and order by, 249n3
Nation, 84 Executive Order No. 11478 and,
Newsweek, 22 115
New York Sun, 35 as right wing, 161–162, 169
Saturday Evening Post, t 55, 56 NYPD
Sunday Mirror, 55, 56 civil service and, 48
This Week Magazine, 68. college campuses and, 171–172
New York City discipline in, 35
black population of, 205n5, 218n12 gender-specific roles in, 70
film depictions of, 190 grooming in, 257n115
intense racial climate of late 1960s Harlem riots and, 17–24
and early 1970s of, 11 identity of, 1, 107
mayors of, 9 illegal searches by, 31
as media saturated, 3 Irish patronage of, 208n61
1975 fiscal crisis of, 11, 189–190, Justice Department and, 35
195–196 layoffs in, 11, 191–193
politics of, 1, 5 national reputation of, 8
race riots in, 105 1958 recruitment leaflet of, 69
referenda in, 9. See also names of in popular culture, 3–4
boroughs postwar problems of, 2
272 Index
NYPD—Continued fitness of, 61

public image of, 108 pay raises of, 254n84
racial composition of, 9, 133–134 in popular culture, 3–4
racism and, 31, 35 as Teamsters, 39
reform of, 35 wives of, 185–187, 197
Rules and Regulations of, 39 Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association,
sources of history of, 4, 5 146, 147
as thin blue line, 163–164, 167, Patrol officer, title of, 184
193 Patrol work, 61
women in, 43, 47. See also feminization of, 110, 162, 184,
Leadership of NYPD; 192–193
Management, Managers, of methods of, 105
NYPD; Rank-and-file, NYPD minorities in, 135
women in, 57, 118–119
Objectivity, defined, 17 PBA. Seee Policemen’s Benevolent
O’Brien, William (commissioner), Association
33, 34 Pensions, 24, 36, 39, 95, 234n42
O’Dwyer, William (mayor), 27, 35, Perry, William, Jr., 149, 150–151
37 Philadelphia
Office of War Information, 20–21, black cops in, 147
23, 31, 32 riots in, 105
Officers for Justice in San Francisco, Physical fitness
147, 148 exams for, 67, 69, 137, 205n7
O’Grady, Ellen (deputy of officers, 62, 69
commissioner), 47 patrol duty and, 106, 115, 125,
O’Meara, Joseph, 133 186–187
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe of policewomen, 2, 45, 66, 104,
Streets Act of 1968, 115 126, 174–175
O’Ryan, John F., 26 Piagentini, Joseph, 152
Organization of NYPD based on “Pig,” as term, 152, 174, 251n35
military, 24, 26, 27, 29 Poles as NYPD officers, 1
Overton, Wiley, as first black NYPD Police academy, 86, 135
officer, 17–18 women at, 184
f 26, 54, 185
Police Chief,
Pace University, student protests at, Police Department Fund, 236n61
180, 181 Police Foundation, 4, 236n66
Page, Wallace, 179 studies by, 116–117, 124
Patriotism, patriots, 30, 41, 36 Police Headquarters, opportunities
national anthem and, 255n99 for advancement in, 17
wartime ideology of, 19 Policeman, as term, 106
Patrolman, patrolmen, NYPD. Police Matrons Association, 48
See alsoo Black officers; Black Policemen’s Benevolent Association
policewomen; Cops, NYPD; (PBA), 41
Police officers; Rank-and-file, affirmative action and, 137
NYPD; Women police officers anti-integration campaign of, 3
exams for, 40 black cops and, 148–149
Index 273
Christian Front and, 37 against minorities, 143–146

criticism of, 155–156 against Muslims, 154–157
criticism of NYPD by, 16–17 pressure on black cops to conform
Fear City campaign by, 193–195 to, 30
Glover killing and, 144 against student protesters,
Hard Hat Riots and, 182 169–170, 172–174
height requirements and, 244n43 used to enforce order, 10,
LEG and, 177 255n93, 255n98
managerial interference of, 35 Policewomen. Seee Black
minorities in, 200–201 policewomen; Women police
negotiations by, 254n84 officers
opposition of, to Civilian Review Policewomen’s Bureau, 9, 46–51, 64
Board, 9, 99–100 Policewomen’s Endowment
opposition of, to patrolwomen, 126 Association, 52, 115, 200
picketing of City Hall and, 254n79 Policewomen’s Handbook, The, 55
radical black groups vs., 10 Policing, police work, 7
Section 80 and, 191–192 enforcement of state policy and, 37
silent majority and, 11 history of, 4
strikes and, 39, 178–79 nature of, 250n11
Policemen’s Wives Association, 11, qualifications for, 5
185–187 Polite, Marjorie, and Harlem Riot of
Police officers, 68, 105, 106, 167 1943, 19–20
appearance of, 257n115 Politics, 11
activism by, 177–179 class, 41
classes of, 130 identity, 5, 8
fraternity of, 33 of Harlem Riot of 1943, 24
as genderless, 120–121 NYPD and, 3
height requirement for, 137–138, of patronage, 34
243n42, 244n43 Popular culture, NYPD in, 3–4
as icons, 161–162 Pouissant, Alvin, 144
intelligence of, 70, 108 Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr., 80,
killed by other police, 142–144 218n14, 219n17
minority communities and, 147 agitated for more black hiring, 35
misuse of power by, 45 as congressman from Harlem,
neutrality of, 174, 177–178 19, 33
Spanish language skills of, 87 on Harlem Riot of 1943, 21,
residency requirements for, 23–24
243n35, 246n93 Powell, James, 75–77, 223n70, fatal
sexual misconduct accusations shooting of, 77,
7 79
against, 48 Powell v. Gilligan, 75–80
as term, 125 Powers, Anne, 200–201
wives of, 197 Powers, Margaret (sergeant),
Police Reserves, 46 110–111, 112
Police violence, 151, 164, 251n35 Power structures
against black cops, 142–144 invisible white, 5, 6
against blacks, 19, 31 of New York City, 24
274 Index
Precincts recruitment of, 138

28th (Harlem), 17, 20 rioting by, 105
32nd (Harlem), 17 Pulaski Society, 34
79th (Bedford-Stuyvesant), 17
Preventive Enforcement Patrol Queens
(PEP), 10, 138–140 middle and working classes in, 100
Prison workers, 45 work stoppage by cops in, 179
Professionalism of NYPD, 1, 16, Quill, Mike (TWU president), 38,
17, 28 39, 40
Promotions and advancement
black cops and, 17 Race, 6, 11, 29
opportunities for, 24, 29 conflicts of, 135, 162
tests for, 140 ethnicity and, 18
of women officers, 9, 58, 114, 116 gender and, 6
Property Harlem Riot of 1943 and, 21–24
destruction of, during Harlem inequities of, 131, 134, 144
riots, 18, 23 Gunnar Myrdal on, 24
middle-class blacks and, 22 identity of, 8
Prostitution, 19, 55, 214n51, 242n21 neutrality of, 8
policewomen and, 57 NYPD and, 129–130
Victory Girl and, 54 opportunity and, 8
Protests, protesters politics of, 19, 43
antiwar, 105 Racism
in Chicago, 251n35 challenges to, 16, 141, 149
at City Hall, 253–254n76 military hierarchy and, 25
as coddled, 182 of Nazis, 15, 16
in Harlem, 18, 19, 20, 73, 77 in NYPD, 37, 142, 166
Hard Hat Riots as reaction to, of presidential candidates, 249n3
180–183 reverse, 204n4
by police, 194–195 right wing and, 161
punishment of, 10, 164 Raggi, Robert, 174
Psychology Rand Institute study on civil service
NYPD and, 4 exam scores, 140, 244n56
psychological rewards of police Randolph, A. Philip, 90
service and, 24 March on Washington Movement
Puerto Ricans, 242n41 and, 25
community of, 141 Rank-and-file, NYPD, 11, 41
height requirement and, 138 esprit de corps of, 3
in Hispanic Society, 199 labor action by, 38, 254n83
Lino Rivera as, 18 perceived threats to, 3
nationalist groups of, 148 political allegiances of, 36–37
negative stereotypes of, 164, 192 white men in, 2, 3, 6
as NYPD cops, 9, 11, 84–88, working conditions of, 8
103, 129–130, 135, 147, Recruitment, recruiters, 2
191–193, 244n43 of blacks, 3, 6–7, 21, 35
as potential criminals, 23 challenges to, 107
Index 275
of Hispanics, 138 Safir, Howard, 3

of racial minorities, 9, 11, 130–131, Salaries. See alsoo Wages
134, 140–142, 147, 192 declining, 3
of women, 3, 44, 108–109, 192 of women, 107–108
Redbaiting, 37 Salzano, Kathleen (officer), 119–120
Red Scare (1950s), 40 Sanitation workers, layoffs of, 191
Report of the National Advisory Savalas, Telly, 195
Commission on Civil Disorders Schechter, Joseph (Civil Service
(1968), 106 Commission chairman), 67
Retirement, retirees, 4, 15, 49, 103, Schimmel, Gertrude (sergeant), 43,
121, 129 69, 70, 115, 119, 125
Rewards for police service, 24 Schlafly, Phyllis, 185
Rioting, riots, 105 Schlossberg, Harvey, 186
of construction workers in 1970, Schulz, Dorothy Moses
11, 180–183, 255n93, 255n98 From Social Worker to Crime
of 1964, 97, 150, 217n1 Fighterr (1995), 7–8, 110,
prevention and control of, 29, 31 234n42, 235n57
race, 24, 105 on Kerner Commission, 106
response to, 131–34 Screvane, Paul R., 97, 220n33
urban, 2, 105, 206n26, Sealy, Lloyd, (captain), 156,
228n136, 240n12. See also 220n34, 220n42
Demonstrations, Demonstrators; as first black precinct station
Harlem; Riots in; Protests, house captain, 82–83, 93,
Protesters; Urban unrest 245n65
Rivera, Lino, 205n7 Nation of Islam and, 150
Harlem Riot of 1935 and, 18 Section 80, 191
Roberts, Florine, and Harlem Riot Seedman, Albert (chief of
of 1943, 20 detectives), 249n144
Robinson, Hamilton (lieutenant), 139 Segregation
Robinson, Renault, 147 in armed forces, 25
Rockefeller, Nelson A., 94, 100, in NYPD, 24
226n104 residential, 217n1
Rodriguez, Joseph, 146 of work by sex, 52, 57, 58
Rodriguez, Victor, 86 Segrave, Kerry, Policewomen n (1995), 7
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 29, 30 Selective Service Training Act
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 23, 25. (1940), 53
See alsoo New Deal Seniority system, 11, 191–192,
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, Jr., on 195–196, 198, 199
police brutality commission, 35 Sensitivity
Roosevelt, Theodore of black officers, 139, 153
(commissioner), 3, 137 over-, of Puerto Ricans, 86, 87
Rustin, Bayard, 90 of police, 2, 70, 105, 129
of women, 2, 9, 11, 44, 66–67,
Sachs, Stanley L., and Allen Z. 104, 117, 124, 153, 189
Gammage, Police Unions Sergeant’s Benevolent Association,
(1972), 6 75, 165
276 Index
Serpico, Frank, 3 cartoons of police officers in, 32,

Serpico and, 190 59, 59, 60, 61, 62, 62, 113
Sex, sexism. See alsoo Gender columns in, 62
challenges to, 141 on thin blue line, 167
discrimination by, 69, 232n16 Sprowal, Chris, 90
identity by, 7 Steuben Association, 34
politics of, 11 Strictly for the Girlss (Spring 3100
segregation of, in employment, column), 62–63
52, 57, 58, 213n31 Strikes. Seee Labor actions
Sexual abuse of female detainees, 45 unionization, unions
Shea, Thomas J., 143–144 Student activism, activists, 164
Sheffey, Howard (sergeant), 139, at Columbia, 170–174
142, 148 violence against, 169–170, 180–183
PBA and, 155–156, 200 Students for a Democratic Society
Sherman, Lewis J., 117 (SDS), 170–172
Sherry, Mike, In the Shadow of War Superior Officers Association, 114
(1997), 25 Surveillance, police, 19, 148
Shirutis, Charlotte, 115
Shomrin Society, 33, 244n43 Tactical Patrol Force, 131
Shpritzer, Felicia (lieutenant), Tannenbaum, Robert, Badge of the
69–70, 116, 121 n (1979), 153–154
Assassin
Sichel, Joyce L., Women on Patrol Taylor Law (Public Employees Fair
(1978), 7 Employment Act, 1967), police
Silent majority, 10, 11 strikes forbidden by, 178
Smear campaigns, 211n109 Taylor, James M., 192
Smith, Jackson, and Harlem Riot of Teamsters Union, 38, 39
1935, 18 Techniques of Law Enforcement in the
Smith, Lou, 26 Use of Policewomen with Special
Smith, Walter D. (patrolman), 142 Reference to Social Protection
Smith Act (1940), 211n104 (U.S. Government, 1945),
Social mobility, 34, 36, 41. See also 57–58
Economic mobility Tenney, Evabel, 64
of blacks, 54, 103, 135, 144 Theo Kojak, 3, 195
Social movements of 1960s, Thompson, Oswald (officer), 136
backlash against, 11–12, Thorton, Patricia (patrol officer), 120
161–162 Traffic duty, 59, 61, 215n60
Society of Afro-American Policemen Transportation Workers Union
(SAAP), 149–150 (TWU), 38, 39
Society for the Prevention of Truman, Harry, 25
Niggers Getting Everything
(SPONGE), 82 Uniforms, police
Sociology, sociologists, and NYPD, of men and women, 121, 122
4, 5–8 as symbol, 142–143
Spinelli, R. F., 181 Unionization, unions, 254n83.
Spring 3110, 23, 27, 31, 95, 96, 97, See alsoo Labor actions of NYPD
110, 111, 215n61 rank-and-file; Labor movement
Index 277
of municipal employees, 38–39 improvement in, 17, 39, 147,

of patrolmen, 38, 41 191, 201
police barred from, 36 private sector, 107
rank-and-file vs. management unionization and, 39.
over, 8. Wagner, Robert F. (mayor), 40, 79,
and names of specific unions 85, 88, 90, 190
United Fire Association, 194 commissioners and, 91, 92
Unity Council of Harlem Waithe, Eldridge (chief inspector),
Organizations, 79 139, 151, 172
Urban unrest, 6, 21, 105, 106, Walinsky, Adam, 108
206n26. See alsoo Rioting, riots Wallace, George, 161, 175, 176
U.S. District Court of New York, racism of, 249n3
211n104 Wallander, Arthur, 27–28
Wanamaker, Rodman (special
Valentin, Gilberto Gerena, 81, 86–87 deputy commissioner), 46–47
Valentine, Lewis J. (commissioner), Wansler, Jane, 186
3 18–19, 29–31, 36, 37 Ward, Benjamin (officer), 155–156
Vastola, Anthony (chief of Ward, William (Guardians
operations), 121 president), 200
Veterans Warren, Earl, 165, 176
military, 441n19 Weir, Leonard (Humza Al-Habeez:
preferred status of, 40, 196–197 Leonard 12X), 149–150,
of World War II, 41, 211n109 156–157, 219n30
Vietnam War, 89, 161, 227n129 Weiss, Theodore (city councilman),
blacks in, 163 80, 225n101
as military failure, 167–168, 180, White, John (officer), shooting of, 143
190 White, Sherrie (Policemen’s Wives
opposition to, 2, 170, 180, Association president), 185, 187
251n35 White, Walter (NAACP secretary),
unions against, 256n11 on Harlem Riot of 1943, 21
veterans of, 133, 136, 154 Whites, whiteness
Viking Society, 34 of ethnics, 1, 41, 164–165, 168
Violence invisible power structure of, 5
antiwar, 2 NYPD leadership as, 6
at Columbia University protests in privilege of, 22
1968, 11 rank-and-file men as, 2, 6, 201
during Harlem Riot of 1943, reputation of, 195
20, 23 response of, to 1960s social
political, 36. See alsoo Police movements, 161–162, 164, 183
violence silent majority and, 11
Volunteers, 119, 139, 175 treatment of blacks by, 20–21
black civilians to patrol Harlem, 31 working-class, 183, 249n3
Wilkins, Roy, 90–91
Wages. See alsoo Salaries Williams, Robbie (detective), 129
battles over, 8 Williams, Ulysses (officer), 149
falling, 41 Wilson, Cicero, 171
278 Index
Wilson, Jerry, 120 Policemen’s Wives Association vs.,

Women. . See alsoo Black women 185–187
activists for, 125 on postwar NYPD force, 2, 9–10,
as distractions, 59, 60 215n60
equality of, 10, 105, 110, 115 promotion and, 65, 69
excluded from police work, 137 prostitutes and, 47, 48
family priorities of, 51 as protective officers, 46, 47
Harlem Riot of 1935 and, 18 public image of, 67
inherent traits of, 9–10, 117 qualifying exams for, 55, 56
in labor market, 52, 115 race and, 44
liberation movement of, 111, 116 recruitment of, 108–109
in military, 213n36 resistance to, 7, 122–124–126,
as models of virtue and morality, 162, 183–187
45, 68 roles of, 116, 118, 123
1950s culture of domesticity and, 9 salaries of, 107–108, 235n55
political right and, 257–258n126 sexualization of, 111–112, 113,
as sexual objects and victims, 55, 61 114, 122
sexual promiscuity of, 214n48 as social workers, 110
as soldiers, 53, 54, 55 studies of, 7
suffrage movement of, 46 as supervisors, 111–116
vulnerability of, 1 as traffic cops, 59, 60, 61
World War II and, 51 undercover work of, 57, 110,
Women police officers, 46, 55, 57, 234n41
64, 67, 103–105, 126–127, violence and, 120, 124, 126
214n48, 237n78 weapons and, 50, 50
advantages of, 119–120, 197 World War II and, 43, 48, 54,
advocates of, 44, 65, 108–110, 124 55, 61
as alter ego of patrolman, 9, 43 Women’s Army Corps (WAC),
aspirations of, 70 52–53, 55
attrition rates of, 11 Women’s Bureau, 119. See also
Crime Commission and, 105–107 Policewomen’s Bureau
in early 1900s, 1 promotions within, 65
femininity of, 48, 55–57, 61, Women’s Christian Temperance
66–67 Union, 44
feminism and, 116 Women’s Police Reserve, 48
gender division of labor and, 44 Women’s Precinct, 48, 49
as ideal officer, 66 Women’s Prison Association, 44
layoffs of, 191–192, 194, 196–198 Women’s rights movement, 51, 127,
male officers’ views of, 58–59, 117 183. See alsoo Feminism,
marriage and, 50, 63 feminist movement
as masculinized, 104 suffrage and, 56
as moral guardians, 47, 63 Working class, 251n35
in 1960s, 70 affirmative action and, 256n114
patrol work and, 48, 114–115, antiwar protests and, 168–169,
118–119, 125–126, 236n62, 182, 183
239n112 perceptions of, 5, 6
Index 279
police as, 250n11 World War II, 8, 30, 51, 52, 53

Queens families as, 100 democratic promise of, 2, 15–16,
racism of, 249n3 24
Working conditions, 8, 36, 41, 107, policewomen during, 43, 48, 54,
147, 178 55, 61
grievances over, 42 race riots during, 16, 73
unionization and, 39 veterans of, 41, 211n109
World War I, 46
women’s roles in NYPD during, 45 Young Lords, 148, 151

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Becoming New York’s Finest

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R ac e, Gen de r, a n d t h e I n t egr at ion

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

List of Illustrationss vii

Part I Desegregation and Domesticity, 1935–1963

Part II Civil Rights and Feminism, 1964–1972

Part III Blue-Collar Backlash, 1968–1980

1.1 Welcome Home 28

represented a formidable institution that guarded its reputation with

dwarfed by a larger exhibit that barraged visitors with valiant images

a similar list for policewomen when rummaging through the Police

with his long-term project to write a history of the Guardians. His

the researcher, historian, and interviewer, but Abel’s experience, age,

A ny writer who has taken decades to complete a single work of his-

T he New York City Police Department (NYPD) takes great pride

noteworthy, but equally remarkable is how African Americans and

and popular culture.2 Academics in sociology, psychology, and crimi-

The prominence, function, and image of police officers provide

Becomingg New York’s Finestt investigates identity conflict from the

restructuring the police station or its culture only engendered new

women’s participation in police work within multiple historical

Chapter 2, “The Alter Ego of the Patrolman,” provides a brief

chapter outlines four critical episodes in which police demonstrated an

Desegregation and Domesticity,

Meritocracy and the Illusion o f

I remember as a kid in grammar school I would never pledge allegiance

J ames Frazier’s bitter memory of lost opportunity stands in stark

had revered the military as a model meritocracy that promoted indi-

Benevolent Association (PBA), NYPD management employed a strat-

The Harlem Riots of 1935 and 1943

there? If I had an Italian policeman, wouldn’t I naturally assign him

hotel’s unsatisfactory accommodations. The hotel clerk claimed that

noted the symbolic importance of such a confrontation: “Showing

Not a Race Riot!

and order.28 It is also likely that many well-connected, middle-class

In the following months, uneasy white politicians and police offi-

The NYPD and the Military Model

Many historians celebrate as heroic President Harry Truman’s

officers raised questions about fighting, infiltrating, and controlling

White northerners, who later would be shocked to see civil rights

It’s practically the same, but somehow entirely different—that’s what

Police management might, as a recruiting tool, publicly support

therefore, unprofessional. In terms of race, this meant that racial advo-

Working Together in Harmony

their further participation: “We need colored men. We welcome them.

police considered Harlem the “Siberia” of the department—a place

presented a new threat to whiteness in general and Irish identity in

The PBA, Unionization, and Communism

department’s ethic of neutrality. In the 1940s and 1950s, rank-and-

The intrusion into officers’ private lives instigated a revolt by

did little to keep the department from meddling in their efforts to

fire department deals with physical fact.”90 Mayor Impellitteri agreed.

Feinstein organized a picket line around police headquarters in an

ominous political proclivities: “We must be mindful of today’s acute

The Alter Ego o f the Patrolman

gendered conceptions of race put black and white women in differ-

serve as matrons to care for female prisoners detained in police pre-

woman she could go undetected while investigating certain criminal

The Policewomen’s Bureau