Law and Disorder: The Chaotic Birth of the NYPD

    Brice Chadwick’s is less about the NYPD and more about what a mess New York City was in the 1800’s. The author prefaces the book by telling us that crime levels in pre-Civil War NYC were six times what they are today, even more at the time than London and Paris (not sure I agree with that one.) Regardless, the city was known for bad behavior, and the chance of getting robbed and murdered was high. There wasn’t much in the way of law & order, and the police were never much help.

    Chadwick’s first chapter discusses the constant rioting in downtown New York (well there wasn’t much of an “uptown” yet) and the Black churches, schools, and homes were a favorite target. The first great riot of the city was not the famous Draft Riot of the Civil War, but the Summer Riot of 1834 (seems like the trouble in this city is always worse in the summer) where the abolitionist meetings were attacked. The few police available did try to stop the riots, but with no results. There wasn’t much that ten cops (with limited armament) could do against 300 violent men, especially when those men had no qualms about killing the police. Maybe those cops just weren’t willing to risk their lives for the miniscule pay they got.

    Riots in New York City happened every time the poor got mad, whether it was the use of unclaimed bodies in medical schools (the Doctor’s Riot) or the high price of flour, or the killing of stray dogs, or the impounding of stray pigs. In one forgotten 1833 incident, stonemasons stormed a workshop and smashed the place, because the contractor was using cheap marble from Sing-Sing. Apparently, NYU couldn’t afford the craftsmen’s price, so they opted to use cheaper stonework made by convict labor (NYU always seems to piss everyone off when they build a new wing.) As for the police, they were driven away by the stonemasons (leave it to your imagination who was physically stronger) and the militia had to be called in. That alone almost caused another riot; ever since the American Revolution 50 years earlier, nobody wanted to see armed troops in the city.

   I will hand it to Bruce Chadwick for mining some unbelievable resources for this book. In the chapter on the Hellen Jewett murder, he brings to light some old first-person accounts of the city in the 1830’s, most of which I’d never heard of. Some were written by professional writers who toured the city, others are scholarly academic studies on crime. According to the sources, prostitution was rampant (not surprising, as the respectable classes did not engage in casual sex) and some women found it more respectable than being a domestic servant.

    Chadwick credits Fernando Wood with improving things. He was trusted and respected by the police captains, and he appointed the ones who could gain the trust of the rank-and-file. As long as there was no dissent within the ranks, the police would at least be unified. Unfortunately, there was no way for patrolmen to communicate with HQ (radios not invented yet) and few would risk their lives by going into certain areas (no way to call for backup.) When the old Metropolitan Police were scrapped and reorganized, the city had the Police Riot, where the old cops and new cops battled each other in the street.

    The anti-crime reformers clashed with the police as well as the crowds, because the reformers all came from the same class and school as the abolitionists. Lydia Child, for instance, was a Conservative educated Bostoner, and John McDowall was a divinity student from Princeton. They both criticized the police for the prostitution problem, since the madams were paying off the police captains for every brothel they opened (a fact that the Lexow Committee would concur 60 years later.) Lydia Child found the perfect cause when Amelia Norma murdered a client. The reason – he reneged on a promise to marry her – was used by Child to prove her point; men could do whatever they wanted to the women and face no consequence.

    The author does find one positive thing about the early NYPD, and that is the use of the photograph. When cameras first became available, the NYPD seized the opportunity, creating the world’s first “rogue’s gallery” with detailed descriptions. Other departments followed suit, as did the FBI and the CIA. Reorganizing the police didn’t help that much, and things would still be unsafe in the city. Conflict between the abolitionists and pro-slavery New Yorkers continued, leading to the Draft Riots of the Civil War then the labor union riots, then conflict between the Irish and Italians, and so on.

    Tearing down the Five Points slum and the old Gotham Court may have helped. It’s harder to attack a cop in a dark alley if there are no alleys anymore.

Hillbilly Elegy

    Hillbilly Elegy shares a few things in common with Townie by Andre Dubus III. Both grew up in lousy communities; both had parents who were incompetent; both rose above their circumstances. The difference is that while Dubus had to contend with a bad town, Vance’s worst enemy was his own family, and it followed him wherever he went.

    I wasn’t shocked or surprised by anything in the story, I’m very familiar with poor Caucasian families ruined by drugs (or their own bad ways) and whole neighborhoods full of neglected kids. What’s new to me here is the way the author discusses how the economy effected his family. They started out as uneducated, violent people from Kentucky, then they migrated to Ohio for factory work, but it didn’t cure their bad habits. Whether it was the nice home, or the good paycheck, or the middle-class neighbors, nothing changed them. They were still combative, took the work “no” as an insult, and failed to raise their children properly. Finally the factories closed, the jobs dried up, and all they had left was their aggressive behavior. That alone doesn’t pay the bills.

    What makes Hillbilly Elegy stand out from other similar memoirs (The Glass Castle, Burn Down the Ground, Townie, Breaking Midnight) is that Vance turns the story into an exploration of history. He explains how his community began, and describes the locations so well that you can almost smell the filth (and the trees) in Middletown, Ohio, (where his grandparents went for factory work) and Kentucky (where they returned.) He describes his grandparents as too tough for their own good, and they raise their daughter to have no self-control. By the time they realize the error in their ways, it’s too late; she’s gotten into drugs, neglects and abuses her kids, and can’t hold down a job. She does actually have a career – she gets a nursing license – but keeps loosing her job because of her behavior. Grandma’s money keeps her going, and the lifelong enabling of this addict doesn’t help.

   At least the story has a happy ending; Vance joins the USMC, goes to Ohio U on the G.I. Bill, graduates early, gets a scholarship to Yale Law School, gets in with the rights crowd. But he doesn’t “luck out” in his fortune – it’s all due to his own motivation – and that sets him apart from others in his hometown. Take for instance the first chapter of the book; he’s working a summer job in his hometown and the boss can’t find reliable people. There’s a young man working there, with a wife and kid to support, and the guy is always in the bathroom or missing workdays. This man has absolutely no understanding of what it means to have a job, and you can’t blame the rich guy who owns the factory. After all, isn’t he doing a service by offering the young man a job? As for Vance’s mother, she never gets herself off drugs, and that’s no surprise; her mother always bailed her out.

    I might add here that every single character in this book is White. The good, the bad, the wise, the foolish, the rich and poor, they’re all White people here. The media makes poverty look “Black,” but it ruins all races. In fact, the media plays a part later, when an Ohio U classmate, liberal and educated, calls the US troops in Iraq “murderers” and “babykillers.” Unknown to this college liberal (but well known to the author) is that a lot of US Marines were very liberal, and many of them detested President George W. Bush. It goes to show that people base their opinions on what they see on TV, hear from their parents, or both. Wherever Vance’s family lived – be it Ohio or Kentucky – there were families that had nice houses and stable lives, in contrast to his. It wasn’t through luck, but through responsibility and showing up to work on time. Everything boils down to what you learn at home. If your folks set the wrong example, you end up losing. Vance pulled himself up from it, but most do not.

    There’s a humorous anecdote in this book, with regard to “bible-thumping.” According to the author, it’s nothing but a stereotype – church attendance is not common in Kentucky – and it has a major effect on the people. The ones that go to church every Sunday end up happier and healthier, with a better support network and a clergyperson they can talk to. They make better decisions, and are less prone to being rash. Churchgoing effected the outcome of the 2016 election; the churchgoers wanted Paul Ryan, Rand Paul and Ben Carson, but the majority (who don’t go to church) wanted – you guessed it – Donald Trump!

A Bintel Brief

    This is a wonderful book on the advice column of the Yiddish paper The Forward (now English language) where New York’s Jews could piss and moan about everything. The author uses simple drawings to illustrate the problems people wrote about, along with the events of the times. Keep in mind that Bintel Brief was from a time when the Jews of New York lived in poverty and couldn’t afford therapy; writing to the advice columnist was the only way to talk about your problems. The Forward had its own building on the Lower East Side, but the neighborhood that is now hip and expensive used to be a dirty slum. It was a terrible neighborhood, crowded, polluted, and filthy. Families were very large, so the mothers were worn out from repeated pregnancies, and of course they had to work to feed all those kids. There was no public welfare at the time; you worked, or you went hungry. Therapy was unaffordable to most families, so this was the only alternative to talking to your clergyperson. The writers of this column were usually better educated than most Rabbis, so the advice would be a little more practical.

    A lot of the problems written about in Bintel Brief had to do with marriage. There wasn’t any casual dating in those days, and a lot of Jewish New Yorkers had arranged marriages. Some of the letters were from women whose husbands were not as wealthy as they claimed; some were from women whose children were in love with non-Jews. You can learn a lot about how people lived in those days, before the safety net of food stamps and social security.

    There have been other books on the Bintel Brief column, which ended in the 1970’s, but I think the last book was published in 1990. This fresh and vibrant comic about the column will keep the memory alive for years, in an era when few Jews still speak Yiddish. As for The Forward, it’s also a bit of an irony that the building is now high class apartments; by the 1930’s, the Jews had fled the Lower East Side in droves, and by the 1950’s it was not safe at night. My mother used to visit the building in the early 60’s, when they had a renowned kosher cafeteria in the basement, and she has fond memories of the place. But you couldn’t be there at night, even in the 50’s, because of all the junkies that came out of the woodwork. The paper itself is now in English, but not as much fun to read. It no longer celebrates Jewish life the way it used to, now relying on stories about Israel’s bombings, or who’s donating the most money to UJA. Perhaps when people have real problems in their lives, they’re more concerned with reading about good things? The Jewish community weren’t always financially successful in this country; there was a time when a lot of us lived in the “low income” area.

Blue on Blue: An Insider's Story of Good Cops Catching Bad Cops

    Charles Camisi sounds like he had a great time as the head of the NYPD internal affairs. His career spanned almost 40 years and 4 police commissioners, starting at the worst time for New York, and ending in one of our best times. The Internal Affairs division, where he worked for most of his career, investigates police corruption, so basically he was policing other cops. As for the corrupt police that he busted, they range from Sergeants who sexually harass female subordinates to Inspectors who steal huge loads of cash.

   There aren’t a lot of surprises in this book; police officers start feeling invincible, and they take greater and greater risks, then they start robbing drug dealers (happens a lot in this book) and their crimes get so bold that they become visible to the authorities. Some of them have sex with female drug addicts who they use for informers, which opens them up to blackmail. The drug robberies are usually in collusion with small-time dealers that they know. Sometimes the police will simply do a drug raid, confiscate five figures in cash, and not voucher a few thousands. It ranges from pennies to hundred dollar bills.

    Some of Campisi’s cases involve peace officers using their badges to extort money, and they’re the easiest ones to deal with. Few cases involve brutality or excessive force, because that’s harder to prove in court thanks to “sovereign immunity.” Financial crimes, however, are easier to prove, and Campisi prefers when corrupt cops agree to be informants. If one bent cop is caught stealing a thousand dollars, he’s likely to know some that are taking even more, and that increases the chance that they’ll all end up implicating each other. The best chance of a conviction always rests on the witness testifying in court.

    One of the main obstacles covered in this book is the concept of “compelled statements.” If a police officer is told “give a sworn statement or face dismissal,” then any admission of guilt can’t be used against him in court. That makes the Internal Affairs detectives reluctant to question rogue cops. Aside from the basic report of events, Campisi couldn’t ask outright if they’d planted a gun, robbed a drug dealer, or dealt drugs. Instead, there would be a lot of work involved, watching the officer’s movements, finding out how many houses and cars he owned, watching what he did in his leisure time, and more. The advantage, however, is that some cops are apt to work for Internal Affairs if they want to move up. If you do a certain amount of full-time undercover work, then you get a detective’s shield.

    One of the most entertaining cases was that of Jose Ramos, which began when someone (probably a jealous ex-girlfriend) phoned and said “he has barbershops that are fronts for drug dealing.” Sure enough, Officer Ramos owned several barbershops that he hadn’t told the NYPD about (strike one) and rented space in the store to pirate CD vendors (strike two) and hadn’t reported the income on his tax return (strike three.) It would’ve been enough to fire him, but why not go for something bigger? He spent a lot of time with a known drug dealer, let the guy drive his car, and let him live in an apartment that he rented. Eventually the NYPD arrested the dealers her worked with, and they all gave evidence. After ending up in Rikers, Ramos tried to hire another prisoner to assassinate an informant, and got extra time on his sentence. It was the Ramos case that led to the ticket-fixing scandal.

    I’m going to give this book top marks. The author doesn’t try to make himself look like a big hero, and he doesn’t have any great prejudice against anyone. He makes things clear from the beginning, if you’re a cop with ten years on the force and you decide to ruin it by stealing, then you deserve your misery. I knew of some of his cases before this book came out, and I admit that they didn’t look like a big deal to me. But after reading this book, I see exactly how bad some of these cops really were. 

The Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, The History if an Idea

   

In the USA, the word “ghetto” has become commonplace among Black youth, applied to everything from music to clothes to food. As an educator, I saw few who understood the origin of the term, and a history lesson went in one ear and out the other. Long before Ghetto became an adjective, W.E.B. Du Boise encountered the Ghetto in Europe, and studied the aspects of a city having a restricted quarter. Some people, he found, lived there because they’d been forced to, while others lived there out of choice. Of the Jews that lived there by choice, he wondered if it was for defense. If not, was it to appease the Christians into leaving them alone? Or was it because it was the only place they knew?

    Duneier divides his book into four parts; Harlem and Chicago, 1940’s and present day. He devoted chapters to Horace Clayton, who fought to end racially restrictive rules that kept Blacks out of White areas. While there was no legal segregation in Chicago, it was still unsafe for Black Chicagoans to buy houses outside of the old neighborhood. The case of Virginia Dobbins is one example; she purchased a house, then found White neighbors openly vandalizing it, then White mobs surrounded the house, and the police harassed her constantly. The South Side of Chicago was crowded and dirty, but even with all the crime it was safer than a white area. Another problem with Chicago was the practice of Redlining, where the banks refused to lend money in area deemed “poor” by the Feds. Then came the Contract Buyer scam, which didn’t end until activists of both races fought to end it. Unfortunately, the change came too late.

    Duneier attributes Ghetto’s entrance into Black vernacular to Black soldiers coming back from WWII. Sociologists like Du Boise and Clayton saw the Ghetto as the origin of segregation, and as mentioned earlier, Du Boise had seen them up close. However, neither seemed to realize that for a Jew in Europe, living outside the walls might not have been practical. Those neighborhoods were the only place they knew, and might be the only place where they wouldn’t be attacked in the street. Even if the Ghettos were freed, did the residents have the money to live elsewhere? The same way that Virginia Dobbins found herself in unfamiliar territory in Chicago, a Jew living outside of the Ghetto, whether in Berlin Frankfurt, or Prague, faced too much risk.

    The Harlem section of this book is split between Kenneth Clark (1940’s) and Geoffrey Canada (2000’s). Clark, a Columbia-educated academic, found that White organizations were getting all the Federal money, while Black schools and non-profits were treated more like charity recipients. One of Clark’s more disturbing studies found a troubling problem among Black men; those that couldn’t find work or support their families were likely to lose their standing in the household, and be more likely to desert their families. This isn’t unique to Black families in the USA: I’ve heard that Ethiopian Jews in Israel and Bukharian Jews in Queens have had the same problem.

    Another issue behind the success or failure that the author doesn’t go into is private charity. Since the earliest days of immigration, the different ethnic groups (Chinese, Jewish, Irish, or Italian) had their own benevolent lodges, and they relied on their own when help was needed. I can cite a personal example; my family recently found the grave of a relative who died at age two in 1923, and the beautifully-carved headstone could not have been afforded on her father’s garment worker salary. There must have been a benevolent lodge that paid for it.

    Geoffrey Canada figures heavily in the contemporary section of this book, because in contrast to Kenneth Clark’s fight against the dehumanization of the Black family, Canada struggled against crack, crime, and teenage pregnancy. Ironically, Dr. Canada started his teaching career at a South Boston school full of violent Irish-American kids (made famous in the book All Souls: A Family Story From Southie.) No guns were involved here, just fists, and the boys only fought when there was an adult around to break it up. However, one thing that the author doesn’t explore is the issue of the job prospect discrepancy. An Irish boy in Boston has a greater chance of getting blue-collar job, most likely through a relative or the friend of the family. A Black boy, however, has no chance. The construction, trucking, and maintenance businesses are almost all White, and the Irish or Slavic businessmen are more likely to hire their own. Duneier cites Julius Wilson’s research in Chicago to support this; Wilson called it a “segmented labor market,” where skilled-work positions are closed and civil-service jobs become the only option. Dunier also mentions how the Civil Rights movement deluded young men; they’re taught to expect a pot of gold, so they reject manual labor, and they can’t start from the bottom and work their way up.

    A constant theme in this book is the comfort zone versus the need for safety. In the Dobbins case, the homeowner sought healthier lodgings, but wasn’t safe in the new White neighborhood. In the case of the Great Migration, Blacks from the Deep South sacrificed the communities they’d grown up with in order not to get killed by the KKK. On one hand, they’d be safe in the North from white mobs, but on the other hand they would only be safe in a Black neighborhood. While they would be safer in the North, they’d be leaving behind their church, their extended family, and their familiar support network.

    Chicago’s housing projects became a de facto Ghetto for Black residents, long after Black Americans were moving out. Unlike the Ghettos that Du Boise explored in the 1900’s, the Chicago neighborhoods had none of the restrictions. The Ghettos of Italy and Germany had walls around them, with gates that were locked at night. In contrast, Chicago’s “Ghettos” had none, those who wanted to were free to leave or enter. It was commonplace for Black Americans in Chicago or Harlem to leave the neighborhood to work, same as it is now. The difference though is that there were few Black people in the Chicago housing projects who had full-time jobs. If the parent was on welfare for 20 years, there would be no reason for her to travel out of the neighborhood, and the Cabrini-Green or Robert Taylor projects would be the only place that those single mothers knew. The children would then become fixed to the place, and get stuck.

   Geoffrey Canada’s approach is more practical and realistic. Back in South Boston, where the Irish boys would only fight when the authorities were present, he made the boys an offer; fight alone in the empty lot, or return to class. Most of them chose the latter, obviously, but it made an impression. He knew that you couldn’t persuade people to leave the neighborhoods they knew, but you could modify their habits. While working in Harlem in the 1980’s, he demanded to start a martial arts program which kept Black children out of trouble (for some reason, Asian combat sports do more to keep kids out of trouble than basketball and boxing.) His Harlem Children’s Zone, a network of schools and health services, is designed to improve things within the community, so it will be a safe and healthy place to be, not something that people are desperate to escape from.

    I’m going to sum this up with a personal experience. For a time, I worked in a construction company, with Ukrainian carpenters and an Irish supervisor. The Ukrainians, a tough and unsmiling bunch, were all teachers back in Ukraine. When I asked why they gave it up they said they couldn’t survive on a teacher’s pay back home. The desire for better pay I can understand, but what about the sudden change? How can anyone just pick up and leave behind all they’ve ever known? When I asked one of them how they handled the transition, he said “what transition, I had nothing to leave behind!” Unlike a Black family in the Great Migration, however, these Ukrainians had two major assets; first, they’d all learned vocational skills back in their old country that they could use in New York, and secondly, their entire extended family made the trip as well. Not only would they be more likely to get a high-paid job, but their elder relatives could watch the children while the parents worked.

   In the end, the only people who will make such a change are either desperate, or brave enough to make the jump.

Blankets by Craig Thompson

   After reading Craig Thompson’s Habib, where a little girl marries an older man (considered rape in most countries) I can see that he obviously connects with kids who are getting screwed, which is what this story is about. He and his brother live in the attic, share a bed, and if they make so much as a sound, their abusive father locks one of them in a closet. Don’t bother screaming that there are spiders in there or you’re afraid of the dark, because a guy who locks his kids in the closet won’t give a damn what they’re going through. If you wonder what motivates his parents to act like this, one word: RELIGION! Their parents are nut-job Christian fundamentalists, and they lay a massive guilt trip on the poor kid when he’s caught drawing a nude woman. It’s been said that people who go to church have fewer problems in life, but I have to wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Thompson use religion as an excuse for sadistic behavior.

Because his parents are so strict, he doesn’t learn to make decisions. He gets beaten up at school by the older boys, then molested at home by a teenage babysitter. The parents send him to some stupid Christian camp during the winter break (what kind of kid wants to spend his winter break at camp?) and he gets bullied there too. That is, until at age 16, when he meets a bunch of teenage misfits who flip the bird at authority. One of them, a girl named Raine, takes a liking to him, and that’s where the dynamic suddenly changes.

Raine’s family is even more messed up than Craig’s. She has two adopted siblings, both of whom are retarded, and the burden of caring for them falls on her. Her parents are not preparing those (adult) kids for independent living, and to top it off, she has a narcissistic older sister who takes parenting duties very lightly. I got the feeling that during the time Craig spends with Raine, he sees the dangers of letting adults make the decisions for you. In his family, his parents dictate what he should think, and in Raine’s family, the parents hand her the responsibility of caring for two retarded adults. It seems to get him thinking harder about his life.

The title Blankets comes from the fact that he and his brother sleep in the same bed, until the parents decide to spend more money getting them their own. But in some ways, Craig is left in limbo. It takes him a long time to really think for himself, and perhaps Raines family is the spur to leave home. Maybe he thinks that this is how he’ll end up if he stays. Being stuck taking care of his parents doesn’t sound fun, does it?

The drawings in this comic are extremely realistic, despite his use of sharp lines. It reminded me of El Greco’s paintings, with their gaunt, hollow-cheeked figures and depressed faces. The style works perfectly here. After all, Blankets is a depressing story about depressed people.

This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff

    Years ago, a man came into my classroom and handed out fliers for his missing kid. Now this guy was big and intimidating, and he was clearly very angry, so I thought to myself “okay, he’s pissed off that his kid’s run away.” Not unreasonable, it can be stressful tracking down a runaway. But if he really wanted to find the boy, why did he give me such a blurry photo?

Tobias Wolff’s autobiography of his lousy childhood doesn’t have a an especially complicated story. It’s the 1960’s, the author’s parents split, the father keeps the older brother, his wife keeps their younger son “Jack” with her. First they go to Utah to try Uranium prospecting (does anybody even remember that craze?) and then to Washington State, where she hooks up with a brute named Dwight and things get rough. There’s no self-indulgence here, no self-pity or the “I had a horrible life” attitude. I expect that after living a life with unreliable parents, you learn to do more on your own, and he certainly does; paper routes, work, forging his report card so he can get into boarding school. When he finds out that his stepfather has stolen his money, he makes one last dash to get revenge; he sneaks back into the house, steals Dwight’s guns, and pawns them. This had to be the best part of the book.

Tobias Wolff’s memoir is no surprise to me, but the story isn’t typical of the period. His mother shacks up with a man who has kids and is legally married to someone else, so this would have raised eyebrows at the time. Then again, his mother is completely spineless, so why wouldn’t she shack up with a brute like Dwight? Since this was the 1960’s, a time when cohabitation was not allowed, I could tell it was going to be bad. This man already has kids of his own to take care of, so what does he want with a woman who brings along another one? Tobias’ older brother gets to live with their father, who doesn’t pay any child support, so in effect the boy is told that he doesn’t count. Perhaps he only expects the very worst? When he tries to escape by asking an uncle in Paris to take him in, his mother writes in advance that Toby has problems, so that option doesn’t work out either.

   Perhaps I’ not shocked by this story because I’ve seen it before. There are families where the father is an abusive drill sergeant, the mother is completely spineless, and the kids grow up angry. But This Boy’s Life takes place in the early 60’s, and not only was Tobias (he calls himself “Jack” in his youth) dealing with a brute stepfather and coward of a mother, but he was also dealing with a lack of rights. It was an era when a man wouldn’t get jail time for beating his stepson and stealing the kid’s money.

Back when I was 13, I was in a bible study class and we got to the part where the Jews say “let’s go back to Egypt, I miss the food, I miss the melons, I miss the onions.” The teacher said to us “we learn a lesson here, don’t dream of the past, it was never as good as you remember.” When I disagreed, he said “Ben, we didn’t have to lock our doors when I was your age, because we had nothing to steal!” As for this book, maybe the message is “the past sucks” and we shouldn’t look back? Perhaps this book is an anti-tribute to the Eisenhower-Kennedy era? It certainly makes life in the 50’s and 60’s look horrible; women had no rights, kids had no rights, men controlled the family finances, kids had no advocates, nobody ever believed a kid who said he was being abused.

This is why I never believed Michael Jackson when he said “I was robbed of my childhood.” I would say “childhood sucks Michael, you didn’t miss anything!”