Listen Now - Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD
British Scandal
Wondery
4.5 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At a time when we’re debating where policing is going, we’re going to tell you where the police came from. Guided by Peabody award-winning host Chenjerai Kumanyika, Empire City will provide the first accessible narrative history of the American police and its place in popular culture. Who are the police? And why were police departments created in the first place? To find answers, we’re going to tell the origin story of the largest police force in the world: The NYPD. We begin in the late 1800’s at a moment when the entire police force was on trial. It’s the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the NYPD, and it all plays out like a high stakes courtroom drama. What follows is the action-packed account of how the NYPD got to this point and what happened next. It involves Black abolitionists fighting slave patrols in the courts of Gotham; two rival police forces duking it out for power at City Hall; the origins of the true crime genre; and how the NYPD spread their tactics worldwide.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | No other police department has more brand awareness than the NYPD. |
| 0:04.0 | Think about it. |
| 0:05.0 | 9-11 photos, sitcoms, the souvenirs you can get right in Times Square with the logo across the chess. |
| 0:11.0 | But underneath all the iconic imagery and tales of heroism |
| 0:14.8 | lies a dark and secret history that you probably never heard. I'm Chingerai |
| 0:19.0 | Komenika and my new podcast Empire City reveals that history. |
| 0:23.3 | We go back to a time when black New Yorkers are kidnapped off the streets |
| 0:26.8 | and sold into slavery. |
| 0:28.3 | And the kidnappers are the cops. |
| 0:30.5 | We uncover how police made money off the crime they reported and went to war with themselves on the steps of City Hall. |
| 0:36.0 | It's the story of what the badge was really created to protect and who it really serves. |
| 0:41.0 | At a time we're debating where policing is going, we're going to tell you where the police came from. |
| 0:46.0 | From Wundry and Cricket Media with Push Black, this is Empire City. |
| 0:50.0 | I'm about to play a clip from Empire City. Follow Empire City on the |
| 0:54.7 | Wundry app or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:57.0 | I'm playing in a Central Park sandbox with my four-year-old daughter |
| 1:08.0 | when I see a police officer approaching the edge of the playground and my body instinctively stiffens. |
| 1:14.3 | Something comes over me and I start wondering and Yola, |
| 1:20.5 | me ask you a question, what do you think the police do? |
| 1:28.0 | They keep people safe. I mean that is what the police say their job is, but when I hear |
| 1:36.3 | her say it, I start to panic. How did that story that the police keep us safe become the story that so many people believe? |
| 1:49.0 | I need to know the real reasons why New York's first professional police department started. |
... |
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