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They wished they were honest
In fifty years of prosecuting and defending criminal cases in New York City and elsewhere,Michael F. Armstrong has often dealt with cops. For a single two-year span, as chief counsel to the Knapp Commission, he was charged with investigating them. Based on Armstrong's vivid recollections of this watershed moment in law enforcement accountability—prompted by the New York Times's report on whistleblower cop Frank Serpico—They Wished They Were Honest recreates the dramatic struggles and significance of the Commission and explores the factors that led to its success and the restoration of the NYPD's public image. Serpico's charges against the NYPD encouraged Mayor John Lindsay to appoint prominent attorney Whitman Knapp to chair a Citizen's Commission on police graft. Overcoming a number of organizational, budgetary, and political hurdles, Chief Counsel Armstrong cobbled together an investigative group of a half-dozen lawyers and a dozen agents. Just when funding was about to run out, the \"blue wall of silence\" collapsed. A flamboyant \"Madame,\" a corrupt lawyer, and a weasely informant led to a \"super thief\" cop, who was trapped and \"turned\" by the Commission. This led to sensational and revelatory hearings, which publicly refuted the notion that departmental corruption was limited to only a \"few rotten apples.\" In the course of his narrative, Armstrong illuminates police investigative strategy; governmental and departmental political maneuvering; ethical and philosophical issues in law enforcement; the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the police's anticorruption efforts; the effectiveness of the training of police officers; the psychological and emotional pressures that lead to corruption; and the effects of police criminality on individuals and society. He concludes with the effects, in today's world, of Knapp and succeeding investigations into police corruption and the value of permanent outside monitoring bodies, such as the special prosecutor's office, formed in response to the Commission's recommendation, as well as the current monitoring commission, of which Armstrong is chairman.
eBook
Rethinking the Red Scare
Using New York as a lens, this book examines the Red Scare that griped America between 1919-1923 and the pattern it established for future episodes of political repression.It also presents the first in-depth study of the Soviet Bureau, the unofficial Bolshevik embassy that attempted to establish commercial ties with American businessmen, as well.
eBook
Policing the Jewish Quarter
From the turn of the twentieth century to the United States' entry into World War I, American Jews proved largely amenable to the liberal politics of progressivism.1 But Jews in New York City over this period found themselves in profound disagreement with municipal reformers over the future of law enforcement, especially the policing of immigrant communities. Though scholars debate the nature of progressivism, historians generally agree that the Progressive Era was one of electoral and governmental reform, ambitious efforts to quell raging class conflict, and the accumulation and centralization of state power to deal with the social problems wrought by industrialization and urbanization.4 In New York City, Jewish immigrants most often encountered progressive politics through interactions with the local city government managed by City Hall and Gotham's courts. NYC Police Commissioner and Irish immigrant William McAdoo wrote in his 1923 memoirs, Guarding a Great City, that Jews \"who have come here fresh from Europe, especially during the recent troublous times, have at once great suspicion and fear of the police.\" Because of negative experiences especially in Russia, \"the words 'police,' 'law,' 'prison,' conjure up dire possibilities in their minds, and for self-protection they naturally become evasive and secretive.\" Tensions between immigrant Jews and law enforcement thus emerged as a major social concern that progressives hoped to alleviate.7 Then in September 1908, controversy erupted over crime in immigrant neighborhoods, when the North American Review published \"Foreign Criminals in New York,\" by Theodore Bingham, New York's police commissioner from 1906 to 1909.
Journal Article
