History, Natural History & the Arts
Sullivan County, NY native Edwin Vincent Churchill was 34 years old and a New York City motorcycle cop when he was killed in one of the most notorious shootouts in NYPD history.
Another policeman, a four-year old girl, and three perpetrators were also killed in the incident, and 12 others — mainly innocent bystanders — were wounded. [Read more…] about A Catskills Native & A Notorious NYPD Shootout
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The new book Finding Judge Crater: A Life and Phenomenal Disappearance in Jazz Age New York (Syracuse University Press, 2021) by Stephen J. Riegel is a fascinating chronicle of the life, times, and notorious disappearance of Judge Joseph F. Crater in Jazz Age Manhattan. [Read more…] about New Book Sheds Light on Jazz Age Disappearance of a NY Judge
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
As debates about reducing funding for U.S. police forces continue, the new book Policing the Big Apple: The Story of the NYPD (The University of Chicago Press, 2021) by Jules Stewart offers an enlightening historical overview of one of the world’s largest metropolitan contingents: the New York City Police Department. [Read more…] about Policing in New York City: A New History Published
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
The new book The East River Ripper: The Mysterious 1891 Murder of Old Shakespeare (Kent State University Press, 2021) by George R. Dekle looks at the Jack-the-Ripper-style murder of a woman in a New York City brothel, dealing with issues of alleged police misconduct, false conviction, racism, and illegal immigration. [Read more…] about The East River Ripper: A Mysterious 1891 Jack-the-Ripper-Style Murder
In early November 1966, my sister and I ― armed with a bucket of home-made paste, a wide brush, and a thick roll of “Vote No” posters ― headed off from my student apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to plaster the surrounding area with the signs.
The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (PBA), a very powerful police union, had placed a referendum on the New York City ballot to remove civilians from the Civilian Complaint Review Board. [Read more…] about Subversion of NYC’s Police Brutality Policies: A Short History
The killing – some would say execution – of George Floyd by a senior Minneapolis police officer (and field trainer) and the militarized police response to Black Lives Matter protests have led to calls for a systematic reevaluation of policing in the United States.
The issues raised by protestors are definitely not new. In 1960, James Baldwin wrote in an Esquire magazine article that the police “represent the force of the white world, and that world’s real intentions are, simply, for that world’s criminal profit and ease, to keep the black man corralled up here, in his place.” [Read more…] about The 1900 New York City Anti-Black Police Riot
In his new book Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth Of The NYPD (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) historian Bruce Chadwick argues that rampant violence led to the founding of the first professional police force in New York City.
Chadwick paints a picture of a bloody and violent city, where race relations and an influx of immigrants boiled over into riots, street gangs roved through town with abandon, and thousands of bars, prostitutes, and gambling emporiums clogged the streets.
Chadwick says that in the 19th century the crime rate was triple what it is today and the murder rate was five or six times as high. The drive to establish law and order involved some of New York’s biggest personalities, including mayor Fernando Wood and journalist Walt Whitman. [Read more…] about Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth Of The NYPD
On Tuesday, April 14, 1903, an Irish woman named Frances Connors leaned out of her window from the fifth floor tenement house at 743 East 11th Street on Avenue D, New York City, and discovered a man’s body stashed inside a wooden barrel.
The man, who sported a thick mustache speckled with gray hairs and a scar shaped like the letter ‘v’ on his left cheek, had been viciously stabbed, his neck almost severed from side to side. Inspectors on the scene had an inkling the man was one of the many Italian immigrants who had recently made their way into New York, and who perhaps had become involved with La Mala Vita, the bad life. [Read more…] about Lt. Joseph Petrosino And The Italian Squad