Listen Now - Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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.

Listen to Empire City wherever you get your podcasts: Wondery.fm/Empire_City.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	No other police department has more global brand awareness than the NYPD from iconic images of 9-11 to sought after tourist souvenirs
0:09.0	The boys in blue would seem to go hand in hand with New York City itself. But underneath all the iconic
0:14.4	imagery and tales of heroism lies a dark and secret history, one that you've likely never heard
0:20.4	before. From Peabody Award-winning host Cengarai Kumanika, Empire City takes
0:25.4	you back to the 1800s, to a New York City overrun with deadly riots and brawls, a time
0:31.4	when black New Yorkers are being kidnapped off the city streets. and kidnappers are the cops. With the fate of American policing on the ballot this fall,
0:45.1	find out how the NYPD transformed
0:47.3	into the most powerful police force the world has ever seen.
0:51.0	From wondery and crooked media with Push Black. This is Empire City.
0:55.6	I'm about to play a clip from Empire City. Make sure to follow Empire City on the
0:59.9	Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:03.0	I'm playing in a Central Park sandbox with my four-year-old daughter.
1:10.0	When I see a police officer
1:15.2	approaching the edge of the playground and my body instinctively stiffens.
1:20.9	Something comes over me. and I start wondering and Yola,
1:26.0	me ask you a question.
1:28.0	Um, what do you think what do you think the police do?
1:34.0	They keep people safe.
1:38.0	I mean that is what the police say their job is.
1:41.0	But when I hear her say it, I start to panic. How did that story that the police keep
1:47.7	us safe become the story that so many people believe? I need to know the real reasons why New York's first professional police department
1:57.7	started.
	...

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