called Tammany Hall.
The Committee’s report goes on to document police involvement in the
Arrest and brutal treatment of Republican voters, watchers, and workers; open violations of the election laws; canvassing for Tammany Hall candidates; invasion of election booths; forcing of Tammany Hall pasters upon Republican voters; general intimidation of the voters by the police directly and by Tammany Hall election district captains in the presence and with the concurrence of the police; colonization of voters; illegal registration and repeating, aided and knowingly permitted by the police; denial of Republican voters and election district officers of their legal rights and privileges … and on and on.186
Political corruption was not new to the city, and law enforcement had always had a role in it. But the political use of the Day and Night Police extended the established pattern and reached a new level of malfeasance. The watch had previously been used as a source of patronage, as political parties filled its ranks with their supporters.187 But the watch offered only a hint of the political uses to which the police could be put; a more developed example was provided by the marshals. Marshals, who operated more or less like constables, were created in the early nineteenth century to enforce laws that had previously been left to the attention of civilian informants.188 While the watch was a resource for rewarding supporters with jobs, the marshals were becoming an active force in local politics—a force that Tammany Hall would harness and direct for its own ends. Placed under the mayor’s command, the marshals provided one means of controlling the city council. As James Richardson writes:
There were only one hundred marshals, but this force could exert great influence upon the primary meetings at which candidates for the general election were chosen. The marshals often had enough political influence in the wards to block the nomination of a candidate for alderman or assistant alderman, and sometimes they had sufficient power to ensure the nomination of their favorites.189
The new Day and Night Police replaced the watch and the marshals, concentrating police power (and its political potential) in a single agency.190 Predictably, the police expanded their political role in new directions, becoming a tool for ambitious politicians to increase their influence. The career of Fernando Wood gives some idea of the uses to which police could be put.
Wood, a Democrat, ran for mayor on a reform platform and was elected in 1854. He began his term by launching an ambitious campaign against vice crimes, but quickly turned the effort to his own advantage. Saloons, gambling houses, and brothels were shut down—unless their owners supported the mayor’s political machine.191 While declaring, “I know no party and recognize no political obligation,”192 Wood disciplined police along strictly partisan lines and was willing to impose all sorts of political obligations on the officers under his command. Police were required to make financial contributions to the mayor’s re-election campaign, and many were ordered to canvass for him as well.193 Those on duty ignored irregularities in polling, and two officers—Petty and Hanley—inspected all the ballots in the first ward, beating anyone who voted against the mayor. When Wood was reelected, the Tribune estimated the police had been worth 10,000 votes.194
But while the Democrats retained the mayoralty and controlled both boards of the council, the Republicans held the governor’s mansion and the state assembly, sharing the senate with the Know-Nothings. In 1857 the state legislature passed the Metropolitan Police Bill, creating a new police force with jurisdiction over Kings, Westchester, Richmond, and New York counties, and dissolving the existing municipal police. A five-member board was established to oversee the new department, and no Democrats were appointed to it.195 Harper’s Weekly noted: “Of this change the practical effect will be to transfer the patronage of our city police to Albany.”196
Wood refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Metropolitan Police Law and ordered the police to obey only his authority. Eight hundred officers and fifteen captains sided with Wood, and about half as many joined the Metropolitans. For two months the city had two competing police forces, resulting in occasional street fights and brawls in the station houses. The conflict reached its peak when fifty Metropolitans tried to arrest Wood; 500 municipal police came to his defense, attacking the Metropolitans with their clubs and forcing a retreat. Finally, in July, after an appeals court ruled in favor of the Metropolitans, Wood dissolved the municipal police.197
The Metropolitan Police Department lasted until 1870, when another series of power struggles led to its reorganization. In the 1869 election the Democrats won control of the mayor’s office, the governorship, and the majority of the legislature. William M. Tweed proposed a new city charter and invested $600,000 in its passage. Under the new charter, the mayor appointed the police board, and the police controlled the board of elections, they selected all inspectors and clerks, guarded the polls, and supervised the counting of the ballots.198
In this, too, New York set the standard for the rest of the country. Political machines arose throughout the East, and in a more subdued fashion, in the West as well. In every case, the police department served as the strong arm of the machine—regardless of which party held power, or whether the department answered to the city or state government.
The police, as we know them, came into maturity at about the same time as the urban political machine. And while the machine’s growth depended crucially on the police, their relationship was not that of equals. The cops were the tools of the machine. As tools they were used, as tools they were refined, and as very important tools they were fought over. Neither the political machines nor any part of them invented the police for this purpose, but they were well adapted to it, and—without submitting to teleological reasoning—we should consider the implications of this fact for policing, and for political authority.
3: The Genesis of a Policed Society
In the context of nineteenth-century municipal government, New York’s Tammany Hall was exceptional only in the level of its success. Similar machines emerged in nearly every American city. Powerful neighborhood bosses arose and affiliated, gaining control through a system of patronage and protection, keeping it through increased application of the same means, and administering civil affairs along lines that were not merely partisan, but personalistic as well. Favoritism became the central principle of local government.1
Under the machines, the resources of the government were the spoils of victory, belonging less to the public than to the reigning faction. Thus, quite removed from the ideal of deliberative democracy, elections were neither contests of principle nor gauges of the public will, but battles between rival cliques—battles fought as often in the streets as at the polls. And these battles determined the distribution of jobs, services, and graft. Elections decided who made the law, who supplied public services, and who controlled the city treasury. And more importantly, they decided whose friends would fill public jobs, which neighborhoods would receive attention or suffer neglect, which illicit businesses would continue operation, and whose palm would be greased in the process.
Political Machines: The Gang and the Government
The gang and the government are no different.
—Jane’s Addiction2
Corruption was the foundation and the defining characteristic of the political machine. Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson offer a formal definition: “A political ‘machine’ is a party organization that depends crucially upon inducements that are both specific and material.”3 Put more simply, “Machine government is, essentially, a system of organized bribery.”4 But perhaps even that puts too pleasant a face on it, for machines did not use only bribery to get what they wanted; they used whatever means were available to them, including threats, fraud, blackmail, and actual violence. Machines were concerned about power and resources, not principles—and certainly not democracy.5 Principles were espoused, of course, as justification for their actions, to differentiate one party from another, and to gain and maintain the allegiance
