Listen Now - Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD
Over My Dead Body
Wondery
4.4 • 28.3K 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 global brand awareness than the NYPD. |
| 0:05.0 | From iconic images of 9-11 to sought after tourist souvenirs, |
| 0:10.0 | the Boys in Blue would seem to go hand in hand with New York City itself. |
| 0:14.8 | But underneath all the iconic imagery and tales of heroism lies a dark and secret history, |
| 0:20.8 | one that you've likely never heard before. |
| 0:23.4 | From Peabody Award-winning host, Jendurai Kumanika, Empire City takes you back to the 1800s, |
| 0:29.8 | to a New York City overrun with deadly riots and brawls, a time when Black New York City overrun with deadly riots and brawls, a time when black New Yorkers are being |
| 0:35.6 | kidnapped off the city streets and sold into slavery in the South. |
| 0:40.0 | But their loved ones can't call the cops for help, because it turns out the kidnappers are the cops. |
| 0:46.8 | With the fate of American policing on the ballot this fall, |
| 0:50.2 | find out how the NYPD transformed into the most powerful police force the world has ever seen. |
| 0:57.0 | From Wundery in crooked media with Push Black, this is Empire City. |
| 1:02.0 | I'm about to play a clip from Empire City. |
| 1:04.3 | Follow Empire City on the Wundery Apper |
| 1:06.4 | or wherever you get your podcast. I'm playing in a central park sandbox with my four-year-old daughter |
| 1:18.8 | when I see a police officer approaching the edge of the playground and my body instinctively stiffens. |
| 1:26.1 | Something comes over me and I start wondering and Yola, |
| 1:31.6 | may ask you a question. |
| 1:36.0 | What do you think the police do? |
| 1:39.0 | They keep people safe. |
| 1:44.0 | I mean that is what the police say their job is. |
| 1:46.8 | But when I hear her say it, I start to panic. |
... |
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