In March 1836, the Louisiana state legislature divided New Orleans along the borders of its ethnic neighborhoods, creating three distinct municipalities and preventing the just-settled police reforms from taking effect. Motivated by ethnic and economic rivalries, the plan maintained a common mayor and Grand Council, but divided the administration of services—including the police. The city stayed so divided until 1852.168
Each department adopted a new, non-military approach, and retained some features of the old City Guard—namely, its public character, its authority to use force, its general law-enforcement duties, twenty-four-hour patrols, the goal of organizational continuity, its specialized police function, and its preventive orientation. However, none of the three could be counted as the chief law enforcement agency in the city because none had citywide jurisdiction. Furthermore, while in theory each police force was accountable to the General Council, in practice they were solely controlled by the district government and little effort was made to coordinate among them.169
The General Council met only once each year, leaving the practical management of the city’s affairs to municipal councils.170 This arrangement actually exacerbated the ethnic tensions that led to the city’s division in the first place, and neighborhood rivalries now found official expression in the structure of government.171 In effect, the two sets of changes—fragmentation of the city government and re-structuring of the police—laid the groundwork for the development of neighborhood-based and ethnocentric political machines, with the police taking a central role.172 Even after formal consolidation in 1852, the police functioned as separate, district-based organizations, controlled more by local political bosses than the general city government.173
The machines’ influence was palpable. For example, when the American Party (the “Know-Nothings”) gained control of the city in March 1855, they immediately removed all immigrants from the police force, reducing it from 450 to 265 members. After that, the police stood aside while Know-Nothings prevented immigrants from voting, and sometimes aided in the effort. Opposition parties likewise fought for control of the polls. In the election of June 1858, a Vigilance Committee seized the state arsenal and police headquarters, with the stated purpose of ensuring a fair election.174 Similar actions were taken in 1888 by the Young Men’s Democratic Club, who—armed with rifles—surrounded the polls to prevent Know-Nothings and police from interfering with Democratic party voters.175
Corruption didn’t end at the polls. Less politically driven misconduct was also common. Naturally, vice laws created opportunities for corruption at all levels, and throughout the nineteenth century scandals were common. In 1854, a new chief, William James, began a vigorous campaign to enforce the laws against gambling, liquor, and other vice crimes. As his reward, the Board of Police fired him and eliminated his office.176
Meanwhile, though state law forbade carrying concealed weapons and made no exception for police, many cops did begin carrying guns, especially revolvers, illicitly. This practice was condoned and sometimes advocated by supervisors, and eventually gained the mayor’s approval as well. Predictably, a lack of training led to numerous accidents, often with police casualties.177
Brutality and violence were also common, and during the 1850s several New Orleans cops were tried for murder. Most of these cases involved personal disputes, and the victims were frequently cops themselves.178 “Less severe episodes of violence were legion,” Dennis Rousey notes:
In a sample of cases covering a twenty-one-month period during 1854–1856, the Board of Police adjudicated forty-three cases of assault, assault and battery, or brutality by policemen, dismissing thirteen of the accused from the force and penalizing nine others with fines or loss of rank.179
Of course it is still worth noting that, of the 672 cases adjudicated by the Board of Police during this same period, the majority of them—59.2 percent—dealt with the dereliction of duty. Abuses of authority came at a distant second, comprising 17.4 percent of the cases.180
Ironically, both sorts of complaints may have resulted from the same features of the job. Lack of discipline was certainly a factor of each. But the complaints may also reflect public disagreement about what it was the police were supposed to be doing. Respectable middle-class Protestants and temperance crusaders were eager to have the cops enforce laws regulating gambling, prostitution, drinking, and other vice and public order offenses. The lower-class and immigrant communities were on the whole more tolerant of disorder and thus apt to feel that the police were intruding where they weren’t wanted or needed. The poor complained that they were treated unfairly or with unnecessary force; the respectable classes felt that the police weren’t doing their jobs so long as such vice persisted. This dispute directly reflects the struggle for control over the municipal government, and in a different sense, the debate about the nature of democracy—neither of which was resolved in the nineteenth century.
New Orleans, in a sense, made the transition from Southern plantation politics to Northern machine politics, with the police occupying a central role in the process. Indeed, this transition was in many respects aided by the simultaneous shift from a distinctly Southern model of policing (based on the slave patrol) to a Northern style (resembling the watch).181 This shift was significant, but not absolute; as a result, New Orleans foreshadowed many of the qualities of the modern police—qualities that finally crystallized in New York.
New York: “Almost Every Conceivable Crime”
In New York, as in New Orleans, the move toward modern policing was closely tied to the reconstitution of city government. In 1830 the state legislature divided the city’s common council into a board of aldermen and a board of assistant aldermen, each elected annually by ward. Distinct executive departments were formed, and the mayor was assigned the responsibility to see that the laws were enforced. A year later, the council gave him some of the authority he needed to meet that demand, putting him at the head of the watch.182
In the spring of 1843, Mayor Richard H. Morris proposed another round of reforms designed to reorganize the city government and consolidate the police. The state legislature authorized the city to create and manage a single, centralized police department—specifically a “Day and Night Police” consisting of 800 officers. Under this plan, each ward would have its own patrol, and the officers had to live in the wards where they worked. The councilors would nominate officers from their ward, and the mayor would appoint them. This plan was finally accepted in May 1845.183
The new police ranked as extremely modern by the criteria listed earlier: a single organization was entrusted with the exclusive responsibility for law enforcement, served a specialized police function, patrolled twenty-four hours a day, and employed salaried personnel.184 In fact, New York City is often credited with having the first modern department in the United States. As we’ve seen, its claim to this title is debatable. The Day and Night Police marked a step forward in a nationwide progression, drawing from and solidifying ideas already in circulation elsewhere. But if New York’s police did not invent the model, they set the standard for the rest of the country. At the same time, they also set a new standard for political interference.
The mayor’s power to appoint officers of all ranks made it clear that the new police force would be politically driven. An officer’s job came as a reward for his political loyalty, and to keep the job he needed to support the officials who appointed him.185 Even if the politicians themselves did not demand such support, it was nevertheless built into the system. Since any incoming councilman would be likely to replace the present police with those of his own choosing, the cops understood that to keep their jobs they had to keep their patrons in power. Thus the police came to represent not only a means of securing political support through patronage, but also of ensuring influence through more direct means. In 1894, the Lexow Commission concluded that
in a very large number of the election districts in the city of New York, almost every conceivable crime against the elective franchise was either committed or permitted by the police, invariably in the interest of the dominant
