{"id":1244,"date":"2012-09-04T13:28:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T17:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/?p=1244"},"modified":"2012-09-04T13:32:02","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T17:32:02","slug":"the-nypd-in-the-darkest-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/?p=1244","title":{"rendered":"The NYPD in the Darkest Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a new show on BBC America about the early New York police department in the years just following the end of the Civil War. It’s called Copper<\/strong>. I was afraid they were going to white-wash the story a bit, but they haven’t. So if you are interested in law enforcement history, while this is a fictionalized account, they are getting some things right.<\/p>\n

And, as long as I’m on the subject, a book called Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York<\/a>, by Richard Zacks, chronicles Roosevelt’s attempts to clean up the mess depicted in Copper. From the Amazon review, where it was listed among the Best Books of March 2012:<\/p>\n

“Those living in New York City today may be surprised (or not!) to read about the state of their city in the 1890\u2019s; overrun with prostitution, gambling, boot liquor and Tammany Hall, NYC was known as the \u201cIsland of Vice.\u201d Enter the ever-ambitious Theodore Roosevelt, years before he became president, who stepped-in as the NYC Police Commissioner and made it his mission to clean up the city. Richard Zacks\u2019 enthusiastic account of this period is a fun read\u2014an adjective rarely used to describe history books. It would be difficult to invent a cast of characters as exuberant and flawed as those involved here, and Zacks brings them all to life with ease. He clearly enjoys the subject, elevating this well-researched book into something memorable.”<\/p>\n

A detail from a photograph in Jacob A. Riis book, How the Other Half Lives<\/em>. The caption for this photograph reads: Police station lodgers waiting to be let out. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a new show on BBC America about the early New York police department in the years just following the end of the Civil War. It’s called Copper. I was afraid they were going to white-wash the story a bit, but they haven’t. So if you are interested in law enforcement history, while this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piV6s-k4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1250,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions\/1250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}