NYPD and the Black Community

Policing and Criminalizing the Black Community

• Danger for African Americans came from various sources, including the New York Police Department (NYPD).

• The early NYPD was primitive by modern standards and lacked sufficient staffing.

• In the early 1800s, night watchmen were the primary enforcers, with daytime police unable to manage the city's increasing crime.

• Only sixteen constables and sixty marshals were tasked with patrolling the disordered city.

• The New York Kidnapping Club exploited the small police force and the power held by Constable Boudinot and City Marshal Nash.

• Only constables and marshals could arrest under a magistrate's orders, enabling Nash and Boudinot to terrorize Black residents with warrants.

• Black residents feared the police presence in their neighborhoods due to the actions of these officials.

• Boudinot and Nash did not wear uniforms or badges, making it difficult to distinguish legal authorities from others.

• The NYPD's dark blue uniforms were introduced much later.

• Nash and Boudinot's income depended on fees from arrests, incentivizing them to over-police the Black community.

• Newspaper accounts routinely noted the race of the accused, reinforcing the perception of higher crime rates among Black residents.

• Black communities faced constant police surveillance and harassment; the Sixth Ward, including Five Points, had more arrests than other areas.

• Disproportionate rates of arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Black residents were common in northern cities.

• New York City was notably opposed to racial equality.

• The mayor supported constructing new prisons, including one for women.

• New Yorkers struggled to reconcile the city's rapid prosperity with poverty, prostitution, and crime in areas like Five Points.

• Five Points was internationally infamous for its destitution, with overcrowded tenements and dangerous conditions leading to frequent fires.

• Walt Whitman described New York's extremes: classes, nationalities, morality, vice, wealth, and degradation.

• The Old Brewery in Five Points was a focal point of destitution, housing immigrant families in overcrowded rooms and becoming notorious for lawbreaking.

• Charles Dickens noted the premature aging of houses due to "debauchery" and the scowling appearance of broken windows.

• There were over forty-five hundred places to buy liquor in the city, and over twenty-five thousand arrests were made each year

• The police force was poorly paid, demanding, and dangerous.

• There were few qualifications, constant supervision, shabby offices, and long hours

• A lengthy suspension for "conduct unbecoming of a policeman" was handed out

• Officers' logbooks show "laborers" composed most of the population arrested.

• By all accounts crime rates rose dramatically in the 1830 and 1840s as neighborhoods became overcrowded and poverty stricken.

• A scholar estimated about 10 percent of the city's population had a criminal record by the eve of the Civil War in 1860

• This meant that large sums had to be spent on the city's prisons, like the Tombs and Bridewell

• By the mid-nineteenth century the Tombs was notorious throughout the world

• The Tombs designed to replace Bridewell Prison

• The TOmbs was built in the swampy and unsanitary Five Points area

• Generations of prisoners complained about leaking ceilings, foul odors, and sewage seeping through the floors.

• The Tombs complex included city courts and police headquarters.

• The Tombs was divided its levels according to the nature of its inmates' crimes

• The Bridewell and the Tombs were packed and filthy

• Incarceration had become a method of punishment

• Ruggles paid dearly for activism towards the slave-trading case

• Ruggles had a commotion outside his door followed by knocking

• Nash tried to trick Ruggles into believing he approached his home on Lispenard Street on private business.

• He pressed to open this door or he will force it open

• Nash and fellow officers dashed off to see citys police chief Jacob hays

• Hays had been working in this role for three decade was not a friend of new yorks black community.

• Jacob hays remained at the head of the cit police untuil his death in 1849

• They promulgated a legend that he apprehended criminals with intuition and with unerring judgement in the middle of crowds

• The citys leaders didn't care if Hayson's police crossed the line and broke procedure if it meant catching criminals.

• The warrant with Hays enabled Boudinot et al to take liberties with the law in the name of finding criminals

• armed with a warrant from hays, nash returned to ruggles front door with crewmember Josephone Michaels

• Michaels had a note saying high constable hAys wants to seize ruggles as a slave

• Nash declared that they were unable to catch the fellow out the door

• Nash declared had he caught the fellow out the door "we would have fixed him"

• Micheals agreed: "yes, if he would not go i would have soon put an end to his existance; he would never interfere with Brazilians again"

• he was soon to find, did not remain in hiding

• As soon as ruggles entered the building at noon boudinot pounced on ruggles and dragges him to the police office.

• boudinot grabbed ruggles jammed him against one of the marble pillars of city hall and muttered "I was after you last night"

• ruffles charged with charges of fomenting a riot

• ruggles on the way to bellvue prison

• ruggles said the final goal was to cell him into southern slavery

• ruggles charged with resifting arrest and was eventually released and his will fortified.

• rugges has been sending colored people and can send black to the south

• city conservatives were impressed because with chastened by the arrest

• city conservatitives relished the possibility that the arrest and imprisonment would chasten him

• the citys conservataives interference in the brillante cAse

• the paper conceded due to the white aboltitionists has instilled that they areae injured and oppressed race.'

• the case of the abraham gosily explosion by the recorder seemed more in trouble comitting a man to slavery

• in late august by francis collerie had foud one his absconded ,man fled to maryland and settle dim nwe york claiming abraham was really JEsse Collier

• black witneses sarah mendes and catherine peel

• it was not until after slavery where things had been easier to identify

• paper documantation and wutness testominny . black and white all together sharing one unit in town at 149 Suffolk Street,

• Sarah Mendes and Catherine Peel living with gosely since 1934

• colleir lawyers, the slave owner in charge and abraham has been there for more than two years from the supposed slave owner coming and taken abraham away. Catherine said that the testomianl in that was the baby and that what been put over also had the black in and had witness their names also

• with black witness , whiter there and did a stand and yell on them

• The white in new york had been declared free and what could go on from that

• riker wanted black rights and superceded those in that

• the white in this case had not that and has been black

• with commiting black and white . Rikers now and did bend backward for the southern

• blacks carried "Free papers"

• After the 1835 conflagration, vigilant night watchmen enforced law and order. However, the daytime police force remained inadequate.

• By the mid-1830s, the daytime police force was inadequate to deal with crime in a city approaching three hundred thousand people.

• Police officers were poorly paid, which caused morale issues. Captains complained frequently of officer absenteeism, which officers complained of overwork and fatigue.

• Riker said the end of slavery was near, and would lead to "such a scene of anarchy, confusion and bloodshed" and there was a wink to friends on wall street that

• This will take some time and have us at a point over the commecne and the for fathers bonded

• With Riker giving this idea, the abolitionist said it could be on the part and some new

• Van Rensselaer stated that he done what it may had the some and did do with the the black and the white side could not have that to be some

• Ruggles said we have our place our city is infestred with knappers

• Ruggles said in the Black the way the kidnappiers kept coming*

• Ruggles and his Black neighbors made an effort to not be be only victims of the situation

• 1836 Black wanted to identify more measures and where they stood

• The members with leading black acivists were housed with black Children

• Thomas Van and John all black leaders wanted all to show

• and show out that the the did to keep it that way

• could work as one more than any thing.