NYPD: A City and Its Police (Paperback)

~ (Author), Thomas Reppetto (Author) "Catching criminals and preventing crime on the streets of early-nineteenth-century New York was the work of a night watch of ordinary, moonlighting citizens and a..." (more)
Key Phrases: annual police parade, confidential squad, little lieutenant, New York, City Hall, East Side (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A comprehensive and elegant history of the New York Police Department, this book, written by a journalist (Lardner) and a former cop (Reppetto), charts the department's development, from its origins as a collection of unorganized watchmen in the 1820s to its recent past. In crisp, anecdote-rich prose, Lardner (a New Yorker contributor) and Reppetto (now president of New York's Citizens Crime Commission) take readers on a chronological tourDthrough the years when the department reluctantly adopted firearms and uniforms and when police applicants depended on patronage, through wave after wave of anti-corruption ferment, and through years of controversy. Drawing on sources ranging from the memoir of George Washington Walling, a 19th-century officer who saw action during most of the era's flashpoints (including the 1849 Opera House Riot and the 1863 Draft Riots), to newspaper accounts and legislative committee reports, Lardner and Reppetto assess the potential for good and bad in the city and on its police force. Along the way, they recount colorful stories about early gangs like the Dead Rabbits and Five Pointers; they examine the conflict between the Metropolitan Police and the Municipals, an early rogue offshoot; and they address the department's pendulum-like swings between corruption and reform (which, they note, gets activated every 20 years by a major scandal). They also depict the Giuliani administration's 1990s' "Rediscovery of Crime" and recent controversies like the deaths of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond, both unarmed black men gunned to death by police officers. Arguing that the cop's lot has barely changed since the 1800s, the two authors assessDin a fair-minded wayDthe enduring relationship between a police force and their city. Their account is at once entertaining, historical and engaged with hard questions about the nature and politics of police workDa true accomplishment. 30 b&w illus. Author tour. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Given the seemingly endless number of books about the NYPD, police brutality, and corruption, one might think it difficult to find a refreshingly new and in-depth approach to the nation's oldest police force. But this history accomplishes such a feat. Lardner, who has written on the NYPD for The New York Times Magazine, and Repetto, president of New York's Citizens Crime Commission, examine the long history of New York's police from the 1820s, before the city organized them into a formal department, until the near present. In 1820, there were no housing projects, violent gangs, gun-toting drug dealers, or media scrutiny. As time passed, the department mirrored the waves of immigrants that moved to the city, beginning with the Irish in the 1840s, the Italians and Jews in the 1890s, African Americans from the Southern states after World War I, and, most recently, the Puerto Ricans. People who criticize some of the NYPD's controversial actions today might be equally shocked by past actions, which included the common practice of accepting graft, brutality against criminals (with media support), bribery, riots, and competing city police forces, manipulated by politicians. Both entertaining and insightful, this excellent book is highly recommended for all libraries.
Tim Delaney, Canisius Coll., Buffalo
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; 1st edition (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080506737X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805067378
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #503,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Terrific Read, October 26, 2000

By	"timcrouse" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NYPD: A City and Its Police (Hardcover)

Cops are cops the world over, but New York's complex and turbulent development has given a unique shape to the force that the city created one hundred and fifty-five years ago to control its own manifold aggressions. It is the feat of James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto to have surveyed the multitude of trends and personalities operating inside this much-examined yet oddly cloistered institution, and to have synthesized them into a constantly engaging narrative. Here we find innovators such as Thomas Byrnes, the Gashouse kid and Civil War veteran who, as a precinct captain, virtually invented modern American detective methods; reformers like Teddy Roosevelt, who tramped the streets at night in search of derelict patrolmen; forgotten heroes like Joe Petrosino, assassinated on a Mission Impossible in Sicily; rogues like Inspector Alexander "Clubber" Williams, who, when queried about a personal fortune that included a Connecticut estate and a steam-powered yacht, claimed to have made a lucky killing in Japanese real estate (this being 1894); and sundry exemplars of the rank and file, with their special talents (spotting from his gait alone a man wearing a gun), their folk wisdom (to stay alert, keep the windows of the squad car open in any weather), and their lore and lingo (dido means a reprimand; Goatsville is an outlying, graftless precinct). Into the mix has also gone a high incidence of uninspiring commissioners, a chronic strain of corruption that gets rediscovered and prosecuted roughly every two decades, and a long record of racism (in 1916 there were just fifteen blacks on the force; Chicago, then half the size of New York, had one hundred and thirty-one blacks in its department). A huge amount of fascinating history has been skillfully packed into a few more than three hundred fast-flowing pages.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars You REALLY Can't Judge a Book by It's Cover, August 10, 2001

By	Frederick S. Goethel "wildcatcreekbooks" (Central Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: NYPD: A City and Its Police (Hardcover)

By reading the title and information on the dust jacket, I believed this was a history of the New York Police Dept. And, to an extent, it was.

If you can believe that prehaps 3 dozen men founded, organized, operated and developed the policies of the Department over the last 155 years, and that they were crooked, inept, stupid,and brutal, then you will find this to be a good read.

What I found was the stories of about 3 dozen men who had the qualities I mentioned above and whose exploits were detailed at length. And, no matter how these people behaved, the authors had to find something wrong with it. In fact, in several places they seem to contradict themselves as to what should have been the appropriate handling of a situation. And, there really never is any thesis to the book or follow up as to what the authors believed happened. It seems more to be a detailing of fact; little beyond that.

This would be a good book if it were titled, "NYPD: A History of Graft, Corruption and Stupidity" and it was used as a text book for a class at John Jay College in that subject area, but it is a book that is far from a representative of the history of the men in blue in New York.

In addition to those faults, I found the book difficult to read. One moment they are following a chronilogical sequence, then they are following a different line. It made it tough to keep track of the people detailed.

If you want a good book about the New York Police Department history, find it elsewhere. If you are a historian and wish to add one small peice of the story to your collection then maybe this book would be a good buy.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Axe to Grind? Ommisionist History? You decide., October 13, 2000

By	S. N. Gaines - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: NYPD: A City and Its Police (Hardcover)

It would appear that the two authors have some kind of axe to grind against the NYPD. If one is to believe this book, all New York City cops are corrupt, or inept, or just lucky bumblers who when they do solve a crime, do so by sheer luck. This is omissionist history at its worst. As an insider in the NYPD I feel I know what I am speaking about. These two authors seem to be the type of person who, once having been denied entrance to the police department, set about tearing it down. It is a one-sided look at the police department, with absolutely no in-depth look at how the "job" actually works. Don't waste your money on this tripe.