New York Police in the 1850s
The New York City police first organized in 1853 when the state mandated uniforms and established a supervisory commission. Democratic Mayor Fernando Wood corrupted the commission, however, when he cajoled members to give him sole power over the police. In 1857, the Republican Party gained control over the state government and created a new force, the Metropolitan Police. Wood, however, refused to give up his police force, which he called the Municipals. The city now had two police forces with a distinct ethnic divide: the Municipals, mostly Irish Catholic immigrants, and the Metropolitans, primarily Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
In Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, historians Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace wrote about the two forces, “Chaos ensued. Criminals had a high old time. Arrested by one force, they were rescued by the other. Rival cops tussled over possession of station houses.” After a fight outside City Hall, the state’s Court of Appeals ruled the Metropolitans as the city’s legitimate police force. The decision forced Wood to disband the Municipals the day before a major riot on Independence Day.
The Wood-aligned Dead Rabbits, an Irish Sixth Ward gang, caught the weak Metropolitans off guard with an assault amid the festivities. Luckily, a rival gang affiliated with the Know-Nothings, a political party consisting of anti-immigrant, Protestant-leaning Bowery Boys, came to the police’s rescue. These gangs of mostly young laborers and apprentices had ruled respective neighborhoods since the 1830s. However, these groups, far from organized, were more like raucous social groups for young men. The clash between the gangs allowed the police to beat a retreat, but order was not restored until the National Guard arrived. Twelve people were killed, including two police officers, and 41 others were injured.
The new superintendent
Political forces continued to interfere with the police until John A. Kennedy became the new superintendent in May 1860. Kennedy allowed former Municipals to rejoin the force. The attempt to conciliate incensed Irish Catholics failed, however, because the Metropolitans continued to target immigrants. In one day in 1860, Metropolitans arrested 500 “street vagrants,” mostly immigrants, for the vaguely defined crime of “disloyalty to the Union.” Kennedy also used his powers during the Civil War to arrest 4,000 army deserters in a single year, again mostly immigrants. During the 1862 midterm elections, his officers singled out immigrant voters in a ploy to keep them from the ballot box.