Listen Now - Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD
American Scandal
Wondery
4.6 • 18.7K 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 from iconic images of 9-11 to sought after tour souvenirs the boys in blue would seem to go hand in hand with New York City itself. |
| 0:13.2 | But underneath all the iconic imagery and tales of heroism lies a dark and secret history, |
| 0:18.4 | one you've likely never heard before. |
| 0:20.4 | From Peabody Award-winning host Jendari Kuman Yika, Empire City takes you back to the 1800s to a New York City overrun with deadly riots and brawls. |
| 0:30.0 | It's a time when black New Yorkers are being kidnapped off the city streets and sold into slavery in the South. |
| 0:35.8 | But their loved ones can't call the cops for help because the kidnappers are the cops. |
| 0:40.6 | With the fate of American policing on the ballot, find out how the NYPD transformed |
| 0:45.6 | into the most powerful police force the world has ever seen, from Wundery and crooked |
| 0:50.0 | media with Push Black. This is Empire City. You're about to hear a clip from Empire City. |
| 0:55.3 | Follow Empire City on the Wundery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm playing in a central park sandbox with my four-year-old daughter when I see a police officer |
| 1:12.0 | approaching the edge of the playground and my body |
| 1:14.7 | instinctively stiffens something comes over me and I start wondering and and Yola, may ask you a question, |
| 1:24.0 | um, what do you think, what do you think the police do? |
| 1:30.0 | They, they keep people safe. |
| 1:35.0 | I mean that is what the police say their job is. |
| 1:38.0 | But when I hear her say it, I start to panic. |
| 1:42.0 | How did that story did the police keep us safe |
| 1:45.0 | become the story that so many people believe? |
| 1:48.0 | I need to know the real reasons why New York's first professional police department started. |
| 1:59.0 | Tracking down the early history of the NYPD is kind of overwhelming. Where do you even start? |
| 2:04.0 | Thank you for calling the New York City Police Museum. The museum is currently closed. |
| 2:10.0 | The New York City Police Museum seemed like an obvious first stop. |
... |
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