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

by Matthew Guariglia

During the years between the Civil War and World War II, police in New York City struggled with how to control a diverse metropolis. In Police and the Empire City Matthew Guariglia tells the history of the New York Police Department to show how its origins were built upon and inseparably entwined with the history of race, ethnicity, and whiteness in the United States. Guariglia explores the New York City Police Department through its periods of experimentation and violence as police experts imported tactics from the US occupation of the Philippines and Cuba, devised modern bureaucratic techniques to better suppress Black communities, and infiltrated supposedly unknowable immigrant neighborhoods. Innovations ranging from recruiting Chinese, Italian, and German police to form “ethnic squads” to the use of deportation and federal immigration restrictions to control local crime—even the introduction of fingerprinting—were motivated by attempts to govern a multiracial city. Campaigns to remake the police department created an urban landscape where power, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, crime, and bodies collided and provided a foundation for the supposedly color-blind, technocratic, federally backed, and surveillance-based policing of today.

Genres: History, Anthropology, New York, Politics

280 pages, Hardcover

Published November 17, 2023

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I know I read too much about the NYPD because every page I was omg that man is a celebrity to me, hazards of my dissertation

[queen carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for part of my literature review for my statement of purpose/grad apps. definitely well researched and also one of the first examples i’ve seen that can connect the progress of current 21st century surveillance back to policing (specifically relating to the use of techniques that were deployed to infiltrate these communities; on a larger scale, they’ve been modeled through our technology). deserves way more detailed thoughts from me but as a surveillance scholar, i thought this was really great

[Catfish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-researched, well-told, it’s a brief history of the NYPD and its methods of “ethnic policing,” regular abuses, ties to international and colonial policing, etc. An insightful look into what comprises the NYPD today.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shows how assimilation is often not a natural process but one cultivated though both police violence and hiring policies. It also shows the limits of such a process as it is completely unable to assimilate black americans into whiteness the way it was able to for germans, the irish, and the italians in nyc.

[Allison Horrocks · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important book on the history of policing.

[jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

thoughtful & well-researched