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Empire City Podcast: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD [1]

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Date: 2025-02-19

The police tell us they are here to protect us. But what if their original purpose was something else altogether? Peabody Award-winning host Chenjerai Kumanyika takes listeners on a journey to uncover the hidden history of the largest police force in the world – from its roots in slavery, to rival police gangs battling across the city, to everyday people who resisted every step of the way. As our society debates where policing is going, Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD explores where the police came from. Empire City is made with a commitment to ensure the stories of those who were and are still impacted by the NYPD are always part of the stories we tell ourselves about the police, about America, and about democracy. Hofstra University’s Alan Singer is interviewed in Episode 2. Hofstra Assistant Professor Diane Hodson, who teaches courses in podcasting and audio storytelling at the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, is senior story editor and executive producer on the podcast. Hodson, Singer, and Chenjerai Kumanyika will be on a panel discussing Empire City at Hofstra University on February 26, 2025. The event from 11:20 until 12:45 at the Guthart Cultural Center Theater in the Axinn Library , is free and open to the public, but advanced registration is required.

Episode 1: They Keep People Safe – Chenjerai takes us back to the summer of 1835, when Black New Yorkers are being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the south. But their friends and families can’t call the cops, because it turns out the kidnappers are the cops…can a group of Black resistance fighters stop it?

Episode 2: If It Bleeds It Leads – Before the NYPD existed, New Yorkers strongly opposed the idea of an armed police force – until James Bennett, the powerful publisher of the New York Herald, changed everything. The pages of the Herald were laced with racial slurs and charges that labor unions were organized by “foreign socialists.” A big break for the Herald and newspaper circulation was the sensational murder and dismemberment of Helen Jewett in an upscale New York City brothel. The city’s newspapers sensationalized the story, blamed the cops, and a new force was born. But will these cops work to solve the case or will they spend their days hunting something –or someone– else? Empire City is made with a commitment to ensure the stories of those who were and are still impacted by the NYPD are always part of the stories we tell ourselves about the police, about America, and about democracy.

Episode 3: What’s Done can Be Undone – New York’s power-hungry mayor weaponizes the police to help him control the city – and bulldoze a thriving Black community for his own real estate profits. The state, fearing that the mayor and his police have become too strong, wage a war for control – and create their own rival force.

Episode 4: They’ve Got Weapons – Horrific race riots erupt when New York City starts to draft soldiers into the Civil War. A mob of white people, who resent fighting for emancipation, direct their rage at the Black community as well as the police… and all hell breaks loose. The NYPD pushes for more firearms – but will they use them to protect New York’s most vulnerable, or subdue them?

Episode 5: The Moral Crusade – Officers in early New York didn’t just police the city’s vice economy; they profited from it. But when America’s first professional vice fighter Anthony Comstock strong-arms the NYPD into enforcing his vision of morality, he also transformed how and what we police.

Episode 6: The Rotten Orchard – It’s like clockwork: every 20 years or so, a corruption scandal forces the NYPD into the hot seat. But how did this cycle begin? To find out, we go back over a century ago to the very first investigation into the police where the NYPD is put on trial like never before.

Episode 7: The American Problem – New York’s police start to realize that beating up and arresting immigrants is making them distrustful of cops. In response, a police chief has an idea, borne out of his time colonizing the Philippines: control the population by recruiting local community members to police their own people.

Chenjerai Kumanyika teaches nonfiction audio journalism and podcasting at New York University. He previously was a rapper, including with the group Spooks. He received a Peabody Award for Kumanyika won a Peabody Award for a history podcast about the American Civil War.

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