Law & Disorder

by Bruce Chadwick

  The thriving economy also left large pockets of men in particular industries out of work or working for low salaries. The groups of men varied, but there were always large numbers left unemployed in New York. Those out of work in winter had it the worst. “Weather cold, but not unkindly, save to the hundreds or rather thousands of men with wives and children to be fed and kept warm, whom this cruel ‘pressure’ has thrown out of work. They must see with dismay the indications of a severe winter coming,” wrote Strong.44

  At the end of 1854 and start of 1855, there were more and more working-class laborers out of work due to a general economic slump in the country that would lead to the Panic of 1857. “Hard times,” mourned George Templeton Strong on New Year’s Eve 1854. He wrote that 1854 had “been fruitful of calamity; war in Europe, financial distress here, abundant disaster everywhere. Personally, I have gained nothing, have rather retrograded toward evil.” It was a few minutes before midnight. Then he scribbled, “There goes the clock, the old year is out, amid a fusillade [cannon fire] from the distant German region, east of Tompkins Square, that sounds like the preliminary skirmish of a great battle.”45

  The large Common Council usually found it impossible to get anything done. The council rarely raised taxes because that move would be accompanied by criticism from big business, homeowners, and the press. Taxes stayed proportionately low for a large city, and the city never had enough money to build its infrastructure, create job programs, and help the poor. In addition, a series of state supreme court rulings in those years confirmed the concentration of much of the city’s local governing power in the hands of the state legislature. And on top of all of that, the members of the state legislature, many of whom lived far away from New York City and despised its residents, continually tinkered with and revised the city’s charter, taking away yet more power and giving it to themselves.46

  New York’s great economic boom, then, always included pockets of poverty and was accompanied by chaos in the city government.

  * * *

  There was a general lack of interest in the problems of the cities. In 1850, just 15 percent of the nation’s population resided in cities; the rest were farmers and had no interest in policing and crime. So the cities received no national help from anyone and continued to erode.47

  The nation’s political leaders also pushed American nationalism beyond reasonable bounds, determined to push west relentlessly to establish a new and larger country. Hundreds of thousands of individuals, traveling in groups or alone, forged across the Appalachians and into the Mississippi region, building roads, stage depots, villages, and crossroads along the way, leaving the cities behind.48

  Congress and various national leaders wanted to show the world that America was one large country and that all of its people spoke with one voice. They did not. Ethnic and political groups squabbled throughout the country, especially in cities such as New York. To city dwellers, especially to New Yorkers, crime and the malfunctioning police force were a huge problem, even though America overlooked it. President James Buchanan went even further. He did not want to stop at simply stretching America from coast to coast; he wanted to gobble up as much of the world as he could in a ridiculous attempt at American internationalism. He tried to seize by force, or purchase, Cuba and the upper third of Mexico and in 1857 even nearly blundered his way into a shooting war in Paraguay. American nationalism was a charade.49

  Besides, ever since the founding of America, a wide gap had been maintained between the federal government and the states. The states did not want the federals intruding on their operation, afraid of what they always perceived as federal power grabbers, and always held them at arm’s length, making it nearly impossible for any federal official to provide assistance in fighting crime or reforming the police, even if he wanted to do so.

  New York City asked for no help in crime and police matters and received none.

  In the days before Havemeyer was sworn in, some of the city’s newspapers launched a biting attack on him and said that he was obligated to reform the city government, and that included the police department. Some had little hope that it would be done. “We shall never see the city governed as it should be until its law-observing, God-fearing, vice-hating citizens shall consent to throw national and state politics entirely out of the question and unite in choosing officers who will have no other sins than those of securing an efficient and wholesome city administration,” complained Horace Greeley of the Tribune, whose circulation would climb to a city/national total of 175,000 by 1857.50

  Editors were surprised when the new mayor plunged into police reform on his very first day on the job. In his inaugural message, he told the Common Council that the police department was “complicated and inefficient.” He said of the police that “the evil should be remedied before its effects are experienced” and asked the council to immediately pass both the state and city bills on police reform.51

  Reforms such as the elimination of police fees and rewards were well publicized, but, in fact, that system did continue quietly. Grateful property owners would reward police with a bonus for a job well done, and the police would accept it. A number of the new police were members of the old constable force, kept on to train the new arrivals. The old constables did not want to let go of the fee-and-reward system and promoted it when the new force began operations. Constables cajoled rewards out of people who had property stolen from them and persuaded many of the new police to do the same.

  A. M. C. Smith, a constable who lingered and joined the new force, earned $1,640 in rewards from 1845 to 1847, or nearly an additional year’s salary per year. Many police recovered an amount of stolen money, kept half, and then asked the victim to give them a percentage of the remaining half that they gave to him. He did so just to get some of his money back.

  This was a standard illicit practice among the new police. The fees added up, too. One officer, Robert Bowyer, a former constable, in some years in the 1850s earned twice as much in fees as he did in his salary; as the reward for one job, he collected $1,500, or twice his salary for the entire year. Some other police were given rewards to travel somewhere to perform a service for someone. Many of these police, who hid their illegal rewards well, were seen as fine, upstanding members of the force by the press and public. Bowyer, as an example, was hailed as a respectable officer by the Herald after he was charged with the vicious clubbing of a man during an arrest.52

  Citizens, proud of the heroism or extra work of an officer, often banded together and raised money for him. That is what happened to a Patrolman Clarke, of Newburgh, New York. He had been gunned down and nearly killed in a fight with an African American. Grateful and sympathetic citizens raised a hefty $250 reward and gave it to him. Despite this double-dipping system, patrolmen and their captains were always trying to get pay increases from the Common Council, sometimes requesting them every few months.53

  One step forward was the city’s attitude toward police injuries. The city originally did not pay medical expenses but started to do so in critical cases in the 1840s. Patrolman Thomas Lynch died in 1849 as a result of injuries suffered putting down a riot in 1847. He was out of work fourteen months before he passed. He had remained on salary but had no medical coverage. The Common Council voted to give his widow, Ann, a cash bonus when he died, and she paid medical bills with that money. Patrolman Martin Van Nostrand was badly hurt in an 1849 riot and could not work for a year. The city paid his salary for the year and then, at the end of it, voted to pay his medical costs, too. Patrolman William Wilson was badly hurt by a rock propelled by a slingshot as he arrested two men. They got away, and Wilson was put under a doctor’s care for six weeks. His wife petitioned the Common Council, and they agreed to pay his salary while he was bedridden and then gave her a lump-sum cash payment to pay his medical costs.54

  One reason for the many police deaths and injuries in the 1840s was that most police officers carried no weapons except the nightstick. Weapons were at their own discret
ion and many declined, believing they could enforce the law with their nightstick; that often failed. Many police were injured in the Astor Place riot and other confrontations for that reason. Most police did not carry weapons until the late 1850s.55

  The continuing problem with the new police department was the same as that of the old. As long as political patronage remained, New York had a law enforcement agency run by the Democratic Party and Tammany Hall. It served the politicians and not the people.

  Peter Cooper warned Havemeyer and the Common Council about that right after the election, telling them that under the new ordinance the city had “political police” and not true law enforcers. “It would not be long before the most corrupt party would bid the highest for the spoils of office,” he said.56

  Viscount James Bryce, a British political scholar, was aghast at the influence of political patronage in New York City that he saw on his lengthy visit to America. “The party system … has enormously aggravated the patronage and corruption.… In great cities we find an ignorant multitude largely composed of recent immigrants untrained in self-government.” He said that good men did not get into politics, leaving the work to “sordid wirepullers and noisy demagogues.” Bryce added with a sneer that “Satan has turned his heaviest batteries on the weakest part of the ramparts.”57

  Havemeyer paid no attention to Bryce or other critics of political patronage. He told everyone that he would personally interview all eight hundred men who would serve as the patrolmen in the city’s first professional police department, and he did. He also kept all of his interviews secret, even the names of those he chose, to prevent political intervention by others.58

  He was applauded by the press. Editors wrote that he talked to each candidate in his office, asked others about their character, and told all that they could talk to him whenever they wanted; he would also call them into his office from time to time for reports on the reformation of the police department. He sought men of high moral character as well as men with law enforcement skills and did everything possible to keep politics out of the selections.59

  The editor of the Commercial Advertiser cheered, assuring its readers that the mayor had “worked hard at this business.”60

  What everyone seemed to overlook in their praise, though, was that Havemeyer was the mayor, a politician, and a Tammany champion. Everything he did to avoid political patronage was political patronage. He handpicked the men for the Democrats, not for the city.

  Those who applauded the mayor overlooked one other important aspect of his methods, readily admitted by his clerk. Havemeyer wanted tough men. He wanted men who knew how to beat up criminals, use force to subdue those they arrested, and strike fear into the hearts of the lawbreakers in the city. He did not ask for experience in police work or for any training for the job. He just wanted brutal law enforcers. He knew, everybody knew, that the criminals were out of control and had to be reined in, and quickly. The mayor did not seek college professors; he sought, his clerk said, friends of gamblers, prizefighters, and known thieves. It was Havemeyer who coined that famous phrase about the police, “New York’s Finest.”61

  Cooper and others feared that the police would be run by Tammany Hall. They were right. The Common Council rejected Havemeyer’s first choice for chief of police, experienced and respected magistrate Robert Taylor, solely because he was a Whig, and insisted on a Democrat.

  The final choice for the new police chief was an odd one. The mayor and aldermen sought tall, strong, muscular, intimidating patrolmen, yet as their boss they picked the rather dumpy, forlorn-looking George Matsell. The very first chief weighed over three hundred pounds, and his clothes rarely fit him. He had difficulty getting around. He had thick muttonchop-style sideburns that swept down from the hair on his head over his cheeks. He had vision problems and wore thin, iron-framed eyeglasses. He did not look like an action hero at all. He was organized, though, could be tough when he had to be, and, most of all, had a deep and abiding faith in the justice system, understood the problems of the criminal infestation of New York, and had been, for several years, leading small forces of patrolmen out into the city at night to keep the peace. Most important, he was a Tammany Democrat. He seemed guided by something, although no one seemed to know what. Matsell was not someone who had grown up in a law enforcement family, either. His father owned a small bookstore in Manhattan, next to the Metropolitan Hotel. In his twenties, he left his father’s business and opened up his own bookstore at the corner of Pearl and Chatham Streets, spending most of his spare time reading, not plotting strategies to guard the people of New York City. He was one of the very last people you would expect to be put in charge of the police force of the largest city in America.62

  Matsell took over the police department in early August 1845, when the eight hundred new officers began walking the streets. He turned in reports to the mayor and council on a regular basis, worked hard at reorganizing procedures, and met with aldermen and civic leaders. After three months, he felt he had turned the department around.

  So did the mayor. Havemeyer was so pleased with the new police that he issued a special report on November 1, 1845, in which he said that he and Matsell had done a splendid job. “The City has been comparatively quiet; we have had no serious riots, and serious offences have not been frequent. The preventive powers of the system have been fully exhibited, and its operation in bringing offenders to justice, and carrying out the other objects for which it was adopted, can be shown fully by the excellent record of persons that have been apprehended by the police of the city,” he wrote.63

  In addition to reforming the police, Mayor Havemeyer was instrumental in the creation of a new immigration policy for the city and state. He also worked hard at increasing the number of streets and homes connected to a dreadful sewer pipe system. The mayor also worked hard at improving the transportation system of the city and increased overall health care.

  His new police force, of which he was so proud, did not get off to a very strong start. The eight hundred cops did not cover the city well. Nearly 10 percent called in sick each day. Others spent their time on administrative duty. Three work shifts cut the number of patrolmen on the streets at any one time down to just a few hundred.

  Tough as they were, the new police were afraid to venture inside the boundaries of the Five Points hellhole in the middle of the Sixth Ward. In 1846, Mayor Havemeyer assigned thirteen extra policemen to the Sixth Ward, with specific instructions to patrol Five Points, make arrests, and break up illegal activities on the streets and alleys, in addition to monitoring the street gangs and gambling dens in the area. They continued to avoid Five Points, though, and ignored any and all messages sent to them by the mayor.64

  Many New Yorkers were not satisfied with the new force and did not see any distinction between it and the old herd of bumbling constables. As early as 1847, less than two years after the debut of the new force, public officials were already calling for another reform of the reformed department. It was very troublesome. The department had “failed to meet the just expectations of the community,” said new mayor William Brady, who called for an end to it during the two years that the Whigs controlled the city. “In the opinion of candid and observing minds the good order and quiet of the city” were not “more conspicuous than under the former system.”

  Brady wanted a new force with 1,200 night watchmen and several hundred day marshals. He was turned down. Mayor Havemeyer had said that the failure of the system was due to political patronage and that the two-year appointment should be made an indefinite appointment. Alderman Thomas Tappan said the larger force would be “a system rendered odious by its inefficiency and disgraceful by its corruption.”65

  Problems with appointments and reappointments under the continued political patronage system began as soon as the new police started to patrol their beats in 1845 and 1846. Democratic aldermen represented the First Ward in 1846 and named twenty-four policemen. The Democrats were replaced by two Whigs in 1848, an
d only two of those twenty-four officers were reappointed. All nineteen cops appointed by Democrats in 1848 in the Tenth Ward were fired by the two Whigs who took office as aldermen in 1850. About 99 percent of the officers named by one party were reappointed in the next election, despite their records, if that party retained the alderman’s seat in that ward.66

  The political patronage of the new police department caused James Gordon Bennett of the Herald to scoff that there was no difference between the new and old departments and that the new cops were only useful to help the political parties at the polls.67

  Some policemen knew how to get themselves reappointed even if they fell out of political favor in their home ward. Officer George Walling learned that trick early in his career. All you needed to do was move out of your ward into another, where you could convince that alderman to give you the job. He was not reappointed in 1849, so he moved to the next ward and became friendly with an alderman there, who appointed him to a new term.68

  The people who put together the first professional police force bragged that from then on, all of the New York police would be trained, but that did not happen for years. How could they be? They were the first. The original requirements were merely that the new cops be U.S. citizens, be able to read and write in English, never have been convicted of a crime, and be a one-year resident of the state, under the age of thirty-five, in good health, of good moral character, and, oddly enough, taller than 5'8". No professional experience was required, and no skills in law enforcement were needed, either.69