Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

deals could be quite profitable for the cops. Between January 1, 1855, andApril 30, 1857, Robert Bowyer of the New York Police Department earned$4,700 in rewards-more than twice his salary for the same periodYSometimes, no effort would be made to retrieve the stolen property, or toreturn it to the victim. Pickpockets and con artists were generally allowed to goabout their business unmolested so long as they cut the cops in on the action.The profits then worked their way up the political food chain. The cops wererequired to give a portion of their take to their commanders, the local politicians,and their affiliates, thus avoiding any punishment.28Shakedowns weren't restricted to illicit enterprises, either. Legitimate businessescould also be inconvenienced by strict enforcement of the law andwere vulnerable to the disruption caused by routine harassment. Builders,bootblacks, produce merchants, and other peddlers had to pay off the beatcop, or else they might be taken in for blocking the sidewalks.29The system of bribery and extortion that was nineteenth-century policingfar surpassed anything that could be termed individual misconduct, oreven organizational deviance; it resembled nothing so much as institutionalizedcorruption, state-sponsored crime. Graft and the abuse of power werenot merely allowed, they were expected, required, and enforced-withinthe police department and throughout the city administration. The politicalmachine may best be understood as an exercise in government of, by, andfor corruption.This fusion of government and criminality follows a certain kind of logic. In''War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," Charles Tilly argues thatBanditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war making all belong onthe same continuum .... [C)onsider the definition of a racketeer as someonewho creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments'provision of protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering.To the extent that the threats against which a given government protectsits citizens are imaginary or are the consequences of its own activities,the government has organized a protection racket.30The history of American cities gives concrete expression to Tilly's theoreticalclaimY In the classic political machines, government agencies andorganized criminal enterprises were not only moral equivalents, they oftencomprised the same people. Nineteenth-century policing did not just resembleracketeering, it was racketeering, unmistakably.The police were a central component of this system. Both the protectionschemes that ensured the cooperation of the underworld and the brawling gangsthat controlled the polls on election day relied on-at the very least-the acquiescence of the police. In many respects the development of the political machinesdepended upon the simultaneous development of the modern police. At the sametime, the modernization of policing made possible important advances in municipalgovernment. In particular, the police provided the means by which the powerof local government could be consolidated into a single coherent system. In thisrespect, the rise of political machines resembled the earlier rise of the state itself.A brief comparison of these processes may tell us something about the engineeringof power and the uses of policing in establishing its claims.59