The New York City Police Department was established in 1844. At the time, New York City's population of 320,000 was served by an archaic force, consisting of one night watch, one hundred city marshals, thirty-one constables, and 51 municipal police officers. Peter Cooper, at request of the Common Council, drew up a proposal to create a police force of 1,200 officers. John Watts de Peyster was an early advocate of implementing military style discipline and organization to the force. The state legislature approved the proposal which authorized creation of a police force on May 7, 1844, along with abolition of the nightwatch system.
Under Mayor William Havemeyer, the NYPD was reorganized on May 13, 1845, with the city divided into three districts, with courts, magistrates, and clerks, and station houses set up. The NYPD was closely modeled after the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England which itself used a military-like organizational structure, with rank and order. A print from 1873 dedicated to the New York Municipal Police: “Our Police. Faithful unto Death.”
In 1857, a new Metropolitan police force was established and the Municipal police abolished. The Metropolitan police bill consolidated the police in New York, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Westchester County (which then included The Bronx), under a governor-appointed board of commissioners. Mayor Fernando Wood and the Municipals, unwilling to be abolished, resisted for several months.
Throughout the years, the NYPD has been involved with a number of riots in New York City. In July 1863, the New York State Militias were absent to aid Union troops, when the 1863 Draft Riots broke out, leaving the police who were outnumbered to quell the riots. The Tompkins Square Riot occurred on January 13, 1874 when police crushed a demonstration involving thousands of unemployed in Tompkins Square Park. Newspapers, including The New York Times, covered numerous cases of police brutality during the latter part of the 19th century. Cases often involved officers using clubs to beat suspects and persons who were drunk or rowdy, posed a challenge to officers' authority, or refused to move along down the street. Most cases of police brutality occurred in poor immigrant neighborhoods, including Five Points, the Lower East Side, and Tenderloin.
Beginning in the 1870s, politics and corruption of Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish immigrants infiltrated the NYPD, which was used as political tool, with positions awarded by politicians to loyalists. Many officers and leaders in the police department took bribes from local businesses, overlooking things like illegal liquor sales. Police also served political purposes such as manning polling places, where they would turn a blind eye to ballot box stuffing and other acts of fraud.
The Lexow Committee was established in 1894 to investigate corruption in the police department. The committee made reform recommendations, including the suggestion that the police department adopt a civil service system.
20th century
Around the turn of the century, the NYPD began to professionalize under leadership of then Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. The NYPD also began to emphasize training, and took advantage of technological innovations such as fingerprinting.
The economic downturn of the 1970s led to some extremely difficult times for the city. The Bronx, in particular, was plagued by arson, and an atmosphere of lawlessness permeated the city. Frank Serpico wrote about corruption he encountered in his time as a police officer in this era in a book, which was later turned into a movie and television series. In addition, the city's financial crisis led to a hiring freeze on all city departments, including the NYPD, from 1976 to 1980.
This was followed by the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was one factor in the city's homicide rate soaring to an all-time high. By 1990, New York set a record of 2,262 murders, a record that has yet to be broken by any U.S. major city. Petty thefts associated with drug addiction were also increasingly common.
In 1993, Mayor David Dinkins appointed the Mollen Commission, chaired by Milton Mollen, to investigate corruption in the department. The commission found that “Today's corruption is not the corruption of Knapp Commission days. Corruption then was largely a corruption of accommodation, of criminals and police officers giving and taking bribes, buying and selling protection. Corruption was, in its essence, consensual. Today's corruption is characterized by brutality, theft, abuse of authority and active police criminality.”
In the 1990s, under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the NYPD oversaw a large reduction in crime across the city, which has been attributed to the NYPD's implementation of CompStat under Bill Bratton, broken windows policing, as well as general demographic changes, and subsiding of the crack cocaine epidemic. [edit] 21st century
On September 11, 2001, 23 NYPD officers were killed when the World Trade Center collapsed due to terrorist attacks. More lives were lost that year than in any other year in the department's history.
Gun control problems in the city came to the forefront during the last two weeks of 2005, when two officers were shot to death by criminals using illegal weapons.
–from the Wikipedia Encyclopedia
Motorcycle cop history from H-D
The history of Harley-Davidson Police and Fleet sales is long and rich – and almost as old as the Motor Company itself. Before there was even a commercially produced Harley-Davidson V-Twin, policemen were patrolling on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Through the economic ups and downs of the Motor Company’s history, the police and fleet businesses have helped keep the Harley-Davidson brand alive.
The Beginning
The first Harley-Davidson police motorcycle was delivered to the Detroit Police Department in 1908. Right from the start, police departments recognized the tactical advantage provided by a maneuverable vehicle such as a motorcycle along with Harley-Davidson’s reputation for reliability.
Through the Teens
Harley-Davidson motorcycles accompanied General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing in pursuit of Pancho Villa after he attacked Columbus, NM in 1916. Harley-Davidson motorcycles proved their value as military hardware. Shortly after the Mexican foray, the U.S. was drawn into World War I – as were approximately 20,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Motorcycles were a great aid in dispatching messages before the advent of reliable radio communications. Most of these motorcycles had sidecars which could be fitted with machine-gun mounts if needed.
The Roaring ’20s
Back on the home front in the 1920s, state police forces were being formed in several states to protect rural areas from lawlessness and to enforce Prohibition. The motorized vehicle of choice on rutted rural roads was the motorcycle. In 1921, six troopers kick-started their Harley-Davidson motorcycles and the Washington state troopers were in business. In those days, considering the territory officers had to cover, a motorcycle needed to be reliable. In Louisiana, for example, a force of just 16 men on motorcycles patrolled the entire state.
By 1920, Harley-Davidson was the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. As mass production increased the numbers of cars and motorcycles on the road, and most speed limits were not enforced, highway fatalities skyrocketed. In 1926, a special office for fleet sales to law enforcement was established. Harley-Davidson published the goal of helping law enforcement “curb this tragic traffic slaughter.” Being faster and more maneuverable than most cars on the road, Harley-Davidson motorcycles gave police the upper hand against speeders. By the end of the 1920s, more than 3,000 police departments and government agencies used Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
The Great Depression As with most manufacturers, the Great Depression hit Harley-Davidson sales hard. Starting with the stock market crash of 1929, sales fell each year until 1933. But even in that year, Harley-Davidson aggressively marketed its product as “The Police Motorcycle” and supported national campaigns for traffic safety. The three-wheel Servi-Car, introduced in 1931, became very popular with police departments for traffic and parking enforcement and continued to serve as a Harley-Davidson standard for 41 years.
World War II and the 1950s During WWII, Harley-Davidson produced 88,000 motorcycles for the war effort, including the horizontally opposed, two-cylinder, shaft-drive XA 750 model. (They were never sold to the public and only 1,000 were made.) For its patriotic efforts, the Motor Company was awarded four prestigious Army-Navy “E” awards.
In the 1950s, teenagers took to street racing in hopped-up jalopies. To slow this trend, the Pittsburgh Police Department formed its Harley-Davidson motorcycle officers into a Hot Rod Squad. The image of a motorcycle cop parked behind a billboard became an icon of Americana. And the idea that a police officer would sit on anything other than a Harley-Davidson wouldn’t be conceivable until the 1970s.
An important relationship developed in the 1940s and continues to this day as Harley-Davidson and Northwestern University’s Center for Public Safety (formerly the Traffic Institute at Northwestern) have worked together for more than 60 years to provide officer training.
Recent History
In the last five years, Harley-Davidson police sales have more than doubled. Today, just as in the late 1920s, more than 3,400 police departments ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles in the U.S. alone. Harley-Davidson Police motorcycles are also used in 45 countries. This is a dramatic increase from the Motor Company’s 80th Anniversary twenty years ago, when just over 400 state, provincial, county and municipal police departments were equipped with Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Harley-Davidson donated 37 motorcycles to the New York Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York State Police.
The Future
Throughout the years, police and military organizations have realized the advantages of using Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Today, benefits such as high resale value and the ability of the motorcycle to enhance public relations (critical to community policing efforts) continue to increase our police/fleet business. “There is something undeniably right about a cop on a Harley-Davidson.”
