Policing the Big Apple: The Story of the NYPD [Hardcover]

As debates about defunding US police forces continue, this book offers an enlightening historical overview of one of the largest metropolitan contingents: the New York City Police Department.
 
The NYPD is America’s largest and most celebrated law enforcement agency. This book examines the history of policing in New York City, from colonial days and the formation of the NYPD at the turn of the twentieth century, through 1930s battles with the Mafia to the Zero Tolerance of the 1990s. Jules Stewart explores political influence, corruption, reform, and community relations through stories of the NYPD’s commissioners and the visions they had for the force and the city, as well as at the level of cops on the beat.

This book is an indispensable chronicle for anyone interested in policing and the history of New York.Jules Stewartis a New York–born, London–based writer. Among his many books, he is coauthor ofMadrid: Midnight City, also published by Reaktion Books, and the author ofGotham Rising: New York in the 1930s.A glorious New York autumn morning sparkled before me as I gazed out the picture window of my room at The Wagner Hotel in Battery Park. I stood enthralled by the view of the Statue of Liberty and marveled at the ceaseless toeing and froing of water traffic in the broad spread of the harbor. Tugs with barges in tow, sailing yachts, low-riding cargo vessels, passenger liners and ferries, all manner of ships plying their way cross-harbor from the row of terminal rail and marine docks on the New Jersey Shore.
 
It was the morning of 11 September, the ominous 9/11 that marks the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks that obliterated the Twin Towers and took the lives of more than 2,600 people. The commemorations being observed that day were encircled by a massive security cordon – after all, the 104-storey tower that in 2014 replaced the World Trade Center was onlylƒy