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

The origins of the New York Police Department are closely linked to the history of race, ethnicity, and whiteness in the United States, as explored in Matthew Guariglia's book "Police and the Empire City." The department experimented with tactics such as recruiting ethnic squads and using deportation and federal immigration restrictions to control crime, driven by attempts to govern a multiracial city. These campaigns shaped the modern policing landscape, which is now based on surveillance and purportedly color-blind, technocratic, and federally backed practices.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 17 November 2023
Publisher: Duke University Press

The New York Police Department (NYPD) faced significant challenges in controlling the diverse metropolis of New York City during the years between the Civil War and World War II. In his book, Police and the Empire City, Matthew Guariglia delves into the history of the NYPD to illustrate how its origins were deeply intertwined with the history of race, ethnicity, and whiteness in the United States. Guariglia explores the NYPD through various periods, including experimentation, violence, and the adoption of tactics from the US occupation of the Philippines and Cuba. He also examines how the police developed modern bureaucratic techniques to suppress Black communities and infiltrated supposedly unknown immigrant neighborhoods.

The NYPD introduced innovative measures to govern a multiracial city, such as recruiting Chinese, Italian, and German police to form "ethnic squads." They also utilized deportation and federal immigration restrictions to control local crime. The introduction of fingerprinting was another significant innovation aimed at identifying and apprehending criminals. These efforts were driven by the desire to establish a color-blind, technocratic, federally backed, and surveillance-based policing system.

However, the campaigns to remake the NYPD created an urban landscape where power, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, crime, and bodies collided. This collision led to the establishment of a foundation for the policing practices that we see today, which are often characterized as color-blind, technocratic, federally backed, and surveillance-based. The book provides a valuable insight into the complex history of the NYPD and its role in shaping the urban landscape of New York City.

Weight: 544g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478020622