NYPD: A City and its Police

NYPD is great storytelling and a great read of the history of thehow the NYPD evolved from 1830 to the present. While the book does spend more time recounting scandals and villains than heroes,the scandals do make entertaining reading. What makesit great history is how the writers show how politics, economics,events and men (both great and small) shaped and molded the profession. Despite its breezy, entertaining anecdotal style, I found the book had considerable insight into the events that shaped and molded the police department as it has evolved today. Unfortunately, given the size of the NYPD, and the times they lived in , there have been a history of headline scandals followed by "reforms", that leaves you with the feeling "the more things change the more they remain the same" . . . . I did not feel NYPD was negative about the department-I felt the focus of the book was to show the evolution of the profession- which like every other profession has its villains, heroes, smart guys and dopes, much like the politicians who ruled them and the people they served -- finally - to be fair to the writers, sometimes scandals are a helluva lot more entertaining, funny and complicated than everyday good works --- my only critique perhaps is that the book seems to rush through the events of the last 30 years--(but most of these events were more familiar to most readers anyway)

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.

This book is an excellent review of the history of the NYPD for both amateur and professional historians. It is written in an easy readable style that provides "the facts" in a well-rounded social context. As a professional historian, having read many historical texts on a variety of subjects, I was very impressed with the depth of understanding exhibited by the authors of the social forces and issues surrounding the police throughout each period touched upon in the book.

A remarkably complete and concise history of New York City and it's remarkable police department. It is full of facts that are facinating for police officers, police buffs, & interested citizens alike.

Review on Business Week said it is a good book, so I am going to buy one.