Abstract
Police 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 protestors 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, sensitivity, 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.
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
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Roger Abel, The Black Shields (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006): 97.
President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: The Police (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1967): 120–143.
Nicholas Alex, Black in Blue: A Study of the Negro Policeman (New York: Meredith, 1969): 17–19.
Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1965);
John Cooper, The Police and the Ghetto (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1980): 12–17.
Herbert George Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976).
Lee Rainwater and William Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967); Leanor Boulin Johnson, “Perspectives on Black Family Empirical Reserach,” in Harriette Pipes McAdoo, ed., Black Families (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 198): 91–106.
John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961–1974 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991): 253–254.
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 (New York: Notre Dame University, 1968): 99–101.
John Cooper, The Police and the Ghetto (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1980): 17.
James I. Alexander, Blue Coats, Black Skin: The Black Experience in the New York City Police Department (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1978): 68.
Harlan Hahn and Joe Feagin, “Riot-Precipitating Police Practices: Attitudes in Urban Ghettos,” Phylon (Summer, 1970): 183–193.
Otto Kerner, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968): 1.
Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 217.
W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), xvii.
Robert M. Fogelson, Violence as Protest: A Study of Riots and Ghettos (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970): 179–181.
David W. Abbot, Police, Politics, and Race: The New York City Referendum on Civilian Review (New York: American Jewish Committee, and the Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, 1969).
Michael Lipsky and David J. Olson, Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1977): ix.
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.
Jay S. Berman, Police Administration and Progressive Reform: Theodore Roosevelt as Police Commissioner of New York (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987).
Cherly G. Swanson and Charles Hale, “A Question of Height Revisited,” Police Chief (June, 1975): 183–186.
John A. Culley, “Height Standards and Policing: Rationale or Rationalization?” PhD Thesis Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, 1987, 15.
Jan M. Chaiken and Bernard Cohen, Police Civil Service Selection Procedures in New York City: Comparison of Ethnic Groups (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;
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).
Frank Zullo, “The Effect of the Civil Rights Movement onAdministration in the New York City Police Department.” Masters Thesis, City University of New York, Department of Public Administration, 1968, 3, 22.
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 Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1990);
Kuwasi Balagoon, Meet Me in the Whirlwind: Oral Histories of Members of the New York Black Panther Party (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.
Nicholas Alex, New York Cops Talk Back: A Study of a Beleaguered Minority (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976): 2.
Charles A. Bryant, “The Buffalo Committee,” in Guardians Newsletter, September, 1971. Chicago Historical Society, National Black Policemen’s Association, Box #194, Folder #10.
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.
Carol Morton, “Black Cops: Black and Blue Ain’t White,” Ramparts (May, 1972): 32.
Edward Palmer, “Black Police in America,” Black Scholar (October, 1973): 19–27.
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004): 178–80.
Ulysses Williams, “Open Letter to Every Black Man in the New York City Police Department,” Guardians Newsletter (October 2, 1974). Chicago Historical Society, National Black Policeman’s Association, Box #194, Folder #10.
Leonard Weir to [Fellow Members], [January, 1967], Chicago Historical Society, National Black Policemen’s Association, Box #194, Folder #19.
Roger Tannenbaum and Philip Rosenberg, Badge of the Assassin (New York: Penguin Books, 1979).
Albert Steedman and Peter Hellman, Chief! (New York: Avon, 1975): 442
Robert Daley, Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D. (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971): 77.
Copyright information
© 2013 Andrew T. Darien
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Darien, A.T. (2013). Soul Brother or Policeman?. In: Becoming New York’s Finest. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321947_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321947_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45817-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-32194-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)