Seven Highly Effective Police Leaders

1895-Modern Times

Brandon Kooi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000465242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Diritto penale

This book provides a valuable addition to the policing literature by detailing the backgrounds and histories of seven important police leaders: Teddy Roosevelt, August Vollmer, O.W. Wilson, Penny Harrington, Bill Bratton, Chuck Ramsey, and Chris Magnus.

Seven Highly Effective Police Leaders teaches important history, highlighting the impact on the evolution of American policing by academia and social science. Each historical biography demonstrates the importance of each leader's decision-making and how it continues to shape the future of U.S. law enforcement. Readers are informed about each police leader's background and how their leadership was shaped by the political and historical environments in which they led.

The book is useful for educational courses in policing, American history, leadership, and strategic planning. Additionally, the general public will find this book insightful regarding contemporary mass social justice protests linked to the unique history of the United States.

Chapter 1

Teddy Roosevelt – New York Police Reformer

DOI: 10.4324/9780429272226-2

The Man in the Arena

Before he became the 26th President of the United States (1901–1909), Teddy Roosevelt was the Vice President for William McKinley (1901), the 33rd Governor of New York (1899–1900), the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1897–1898), and the President of the New York Board of Police Commissioners (1895–1897). In all of these positions, Roosevelt was a consummate reformist who fought against government corruption. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on October 27, 1858, in New York City. He died at the age of 60 on January 6, 1919, while sleeping at his home on Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. Thomas Marshall, Governor of Indiana, was quoted as stating, “death had to take him in his sleep, for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight” (Roosevelt, 1947, p. 447). Although Roosevelt was the President of the New York Police Commission for only two years, his leadership in fighting police corruption had a ripple effect across the nation that began a historical challenge against the political status quo. For New York City, the status quo consisted of embedded corruption led by Tammany Hall¹ and the city police department through its patronage system. That system consisted of political favoritism and graft connected primarily to Irish Catholics who worked to help immigrants and local businesses. Police leaders also helped immigrants and their political business interactions as long as they paid their extortion share. Additionally, if those businesses involved illegal gambling and vice crime, police would serve as protection as long as they received their cut of the profits.

History of Police in America and New York City

The police are historically new to the criminal justice system and not mentioned nor conceived of during the writing of the Constitution or state governments’ formation. The rise of cities created the need to invent the police, beginning first with loosely organized night watches and constables who worked on behalf of the judiciary. The constable system originally supplemented private civil matters directed toward offenders through the court system (Steinberg, 1989). In 1635, Boston instituted its first semi-organized night watch that operated on a communal volunteer basis. New York created its watch system in 1658, and Philadelphia did the same in 1700. Often these volunteers showed up for their posts drunk or not at all. Many watch volunteers did so to evade military service, while others did so out of punishment for prior criminal activity. Philadelphia created a day watch in 1833, and New York did the same in 1844 to supplement its new bureaucratic police force (Gaines, Kappeler, & Vaughn, 1999).

Influence of the British 1829 Metropolitan Police Act

Reconsideration for the night watch system came in the aftermath of the 1829 Metropolitan Police Act in London. British Home Office Secretary Robert Peel introduced legislation to Parliament that created the world’s first modern police department out of Scotland Yard. Based on Peel’s prior military experience in Ireland and his governmental experience as the Home Office secretary, a quasi-militaristic and civil social control organization arose (Palmer, 1988). London’s full-time officers became known as “Bobbies” or “Peelers.” This new police force was cheaper than using the military for populous control and was eventually legitimized by citizens while also being more responsive to voters. The British police system of the 1830s served as an organizational precedent for an evolving urban American police movement. Several historians contend that the creation of the police in the United States was not as a response to increased crime as much as it was for the suppression of riots throughout the nineteenth century.

Consequently, American police development was sporadic and unprofessional compared to the careful strategic planning that occurred with the London police (Miller, 1999). Moreover, the uniqueness of policing American riots frequently had to do with conflicts between abolitionists and proponents of slavery. In 1838, in response to several mob riots, Boston organized the first municipal police department, and Philadelphia formed a police force by state law in 1854 (Lundman, 1980).

New York City Municipal Police before Roosevelt

On May 7, 1844, New York passed the Municipal Police Act, which created a formalized bureaucratic police force at the New York City Common Council’s request. The act called for 1,200 quasi-militaristic officers. However, a debate between the common council and the mayor lasted another year over who would be responsible for hiring officers. Mayor William Havemeyer² appointed George Washington Matsell as the first police chief after the Municipal Police Act, which passed on May 23, 1845, repealed the watch system. Similar to Peel’s London officers, there was an expectation that newly hired New York officers lived in their police precincts. However, that policy was frequently ignored and officially abolished in 1857.

By 1853, New York issued navy blue uniforms to police officers, which was no easy transition. Previously, only soldiers and servants of the wealthy had uniforms. Not only was the public initially resistant to uniformed social control, but the officers were also reluctant due to public ridicule (Lane, 1967). However, the uniforms allowed for easy public access to visible patrol officers and improved communication with the community (Monkkonen, 1992). In 1853, legislators also placed the police under the Mayor, Recorder, and City Judge’s control, allowing these officials the authority to hire and fire police officials. In 1854 Fernando Wood³ was elected as the 73rd Mayor of New York City and re-elected in 1859 as the 75th mayor. Political opponents accused Wood of only hiring Democrats and replacing fired officers with Democrats. During the election, Wood had his officers and the street gang Dead Rabbits make sure voters who opposed him did not make it to the polls. Through political corruption, Wood, and other Tammany Hall politicians, had the support of the lower-class Irish⁴ voters who felt protected from the patronizing anti-immigrant Republican elitists. Immigrants also supported Wood because he refused to enforce temperance laws on working-class saloons. Consequently, a municipal civil war began with influence from the state legislature in Albany and created predictable tension for New Yorkers.⁵

Municipals vs. Metropolitans

In April 1857, Republican politicians in Albany rewrote the city charter and stripped the mayor of most of his powers. Moreover, the legislatures abolished the corrupt New York City Municipal police. In its place, they created a Metropolitan police force governed by a board of commissioners, Superintendent Fredrick Tallmadge,⁶ and ultimately Governor John King. This political power grab from the Republicans in the state capital was a direct attack on the Democratic Party (i.e. Tammany Hall) that controlled the New York City government, Mayor Wood, and the Municipal police force. Wood resisted and claimed the state government’s creation of a Metropolitan Police force was unconstitutional (Lankevich, 2002). Chaos soon consumed the city as both the Metropolitans and the Municipals provided police services. Two separate police headquarters operated and lead to physical encounters between officers who represented the opposing departments.

The state law required the city to pay officers for both agencies. Wood argued that the state of New York lacked the authority to remove the Municipal Police. However, the state Supreme Court ruled against the mayor and called the law that created the Metropolitan Police constitutional. The court ruling led to a few hundred Municipal officers, out of the 1,100 man force, replaced by a Metropolitan police force (Williams, 2018). About 800 officers remained with the Municipals. The conflict came to a head when the state attempted to issue an arrest warrant against Wood for inciting riots. On June 16, 1857, only a couple of months after their creation, the Metropolitan officers arrived at City Hall to execute the warrant on Mayor Wood. However, Municipal Chief Matsell and his officers stopped them. A physical confrontation occurred, resulting in several injured officers and a call to the National Guard and Seventh Regiment military to put down the police riot (Williams, 2018).

Wood and King called a truce, and the mayor reluctantly gave up control of the police to the state, but the transition remained contentious. Over the July 4th weekend of 1857, the city suffered one of its most notorious riots, the “Dead Rabbits Riot,” in the Five Points district of lower Manhattan (Anbinder, 2002). In 1859, Chief Matsell was forced to resign and moved to an Iowa farm but later returned to New York and became the National Police Gazette magazine publisher. The growing conflicts became a precursor to the New York City “Draft Riots” of 1863, the largest riot in American history at the Civil War’s height (Bernstein, 2010).

In 1873, William Havemeyer returned as the 80th mayor of the city; he was also the 66th (1845–1846) and 69th mayor (1848–1849). Once again, Matsell became the superintendent of the city police and the President of the police commission. However, Havemeyer lost his subsequent reelection, and Matsell was ousted a second time. These changes further cemented the link between politics and police leadership.

Boss Tweed and the Gilded Age

Political corruption in New York had long made national news before Roosevelt’s arrival as a police commissioner. The Municipal Police Act of 1844 placed control of the police ...